danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Baseball is an old game.  Men have been playing it for hundreds of years, and playing it professionally for more than a hundred.  Well over two thousand Major League games are played each season (counting  post-season play, the number is closer to 2,500).  Still, since 1880 there have been fewer than twenty perfect games.  The most popular way to put this feat in perspective is to point out that more Americans have traveled to the moon than thrown a perfect game.  It is an indescribably difficult task for a pitcher: allow no opposing batter to reach base, period.  Sometimes a decade will pass between one perfect game and the next.  Last year, my beloved Rays lost a perfect game to Chicago’s Mark Buerhle.  Yesterday, they lost a perfect game to Oakland’s Dallas Braden.  The Rays are the best team in baseball right now, and have only lost three or so times on the road all season.  Dallas Braden earned that perfect game.  Watch some clips.

Filed under: Current Events, Sports on May 10th, 2010