Guest Post: King of Perfection

One of the stories I never quite got around to writing about in 2012 was the perfect game thrown by Felix Hernandez of the Mariners. Today's guest poster has been nice enough to correct that oversight:

Even With Perfection, Felix Hernandez Was Overlooked

     Despite another lost season for the Seattle Mariners, in August of 2012 the team experienced their ace reach true perfection. Felix Hernandez threw the 23rd perfect game in baseball history last year, and the 2nd of 2012 when he faced the Tampa Bay Rays.
     From the very beginning, Hernandez was looking even better than the Cy Young Award winner has in the past. He began the game by inducing a ton of weakly hit ground balls and fly outs. Striking out two the first time through the order was impressive, but it was not until the sixth inning that things got interesting.
     In the top of the sixth, Hernandez began to turn it up a notch, and the crowd took notice. He struck out the 7-8-9 hitters for the Rays to complete the second time through the order. When he came out for the seventh, he got outfielder Sam Fuld to roll over a ball, but then BJ Upton came up for the most controversial part of the perfect game.
      Upton grounded out to Sean Rodriguez at third base, but Rays manager Joel Madden would come out and actually be ejected for arguing the call. After a delay, some wondered if Hernandez would cool down. He responded by striking out five of the last six batters he faced, putting his stamp on baseball history.
     With so many perfect games and no hitters thrown in recent memory, Hernandez never really received the attention he deserved, even in fantasy baseball circles. In fact, that has sort of been his problem his entire career. Even during his Cy Young award season, many looked at his 13-12 record as though it was his fault.
      Ironically, the Mariners only offered him one run of support during that August game. He was one swing away from getting a no-decision in that game for the ages. Even by Hernandez’s standards, he was simply dominant in every way manageable in that game.

27 Outs

Every baseball game is the same.

Each team seeks to record 27 outs against its opponent. It does this in 3 out bursts, seeking to prevent the other team from recording those outs in order. 

Every baseball game is different.

Every game brings players who are different from who they were the day before. Their batting averages have ticked up, or down. Sometimes they are hurt, or healed a little more. Each day hitters practice in a cage, tweaking and refining swings. Fielders take grounders and fly balls, teammates suggest methods and movements to improve. The starting pitcher's identity is, by definition, rotating around every day. Sometimes the fastball has extra pop. Sometimes a curve ball keeps hanging up. Legs tilt, knees bend, arms tire.

The same batter will find himself higher and lower in the lineup, one night seeing the bases full over and over again. On other nights, he will stand out on the bases, wondering why his teammates can't move him beyond first. Pitches bounce, runners scamper on wild pitches, balls kick into the stands, get snatched back from over the fence, deflected into the seats off of gloves (and heads), and spin fair and foul at the last millisecond.

Sometimes, if you are very lucky, you get to go to a game where almost nothing happens. When a pitcher allows no hits, and records 27 outs, he can put a 'no-hitter' on his calling card. When he allows no baserunners, and the same 27 out he can write the much more unusual 'perfect game'. It is the top of the mountain for a pitchign performance.

Every perfect game is the same.

One pitcher records 27 outs in perfect order. His solution to the challenge of 27 outs is to allow nothing to happen, except 27 outs. There is, in many ways of looking at it, only one way to pitch a perfect game.

Every perfect game is different.

Baseball is a game of stories. Because there is no clock, nothing pressing the game forward, there is time for a story between every action on the field. There does not have to be a story between every pitch, that would just be silly, but there is time for one. Every wince of a hitter who has fouled a ball off his own foot can be captured and mulled over. The look on a fielder's face when he has made an error, and is waiting for the next ball to be hit- to see if he will get a chance to redeem himself- can be read and mulled over in the moments between those pitches. Every time the ball is put into play, we, as fans, wait to see what it will add to the story.

Last night, baseball wrote a story called "Matt Cain's Perfect Game". Cain is lucky enough to pitch for the San Francisco Giants. I say lucky, not only because they were the underdog winners of the 2010 World Series, a team which Cain also belonged too, but for other reasons as well. The Giants have a wonderful stable of storytellers, many of them who put their work on the Internet. When good writers are able to write about a magic moment in the life of someone they love, about something they love, only good things can happen.

So, allow me to guide you to a few sources for the full story of Matt Cain, and his perfect game.

First the 2 highlights from MLB.com, to get you into the mood. First, Blanco's game saving catch in the 7th and the full game recap.

Here are all 27 outs:

Now, on to the stories:

Grant Brisbee wrote his reaction for the always high quality McCovey Chronicles.And he gives you 50 great things about the game, that's 50 stories in one, and there is room for them all.

Wendy Thurm seizes the keyboard at Fangraphs for this one.

Somebody noticed Ted Barrett was behind the plate, and thought that seemed familiar.

And last, the incomparable Joe Posnanski, with thoughts on the game, and the nature of the perfect game itself.

You can have a piece of this game, even if you weren't there. You, and I, for that matter, can share it now, through they eyes of others who experienced it in different ways. We, and our thought on Cain's moment of perfection, they become part of our own stories.

That is the magic. The ability to share a moment through a game, across time and space. I offer my congratulations to Mr. Matt Cain, and hope he enjoyed his magic moment as much as the rest of us did.