In
this baseball tale, everybody’s perfect. That’s because it’s all about
perfect games, normally one of baseball’s rarest happenings. Something that
(up until last year) happened only 17 times in 138 seasons – essentially once
every seven years -- has to be by definition rare. That fact notwithstanding,
some baseball fans had to be wondering just what in the world was going on
Saturday night, when Roy Halladay threw, not just the 20th perfect
game in major league history (dating back to 1871), but the third perfect game
in less than a year.
July
23, 2009 – Mark Buehrle, White Sox vs. Rays, 5-0
May
9, 2010 – Dallas Braden, Athletics vs. Rays, 4-0
May
29, 2010 – Roy Halladay, Phillies vs. Marlins, 1-0
Other
than the past 10 months being particularly unkind to Florida-based teams, it
seems astounding that three perfect games could happen in such close succession.
But it’s not. All Halladay’s, Braden’s and Buehrle’s gems really
indicate is the idiosyncratic nature of perfection. In fact, so random are feats
like this, that Braden’s and Halladay’s 20-days-apart perfect games
weren’t even the first time two such events had happened in the same calendar
month. And thereby hangs a tale… one of baseball’s oddest.
 |
Dallas Braden celebrates his perfect game with his grandmother, Peggy Lindsey, May 9, 2010 in Oakland.
(Photo: Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images) |
On
June 12, 1880 – just about 130 years ago – rookie pitcher J. Lee Richmond of
the Worcester Ruby Legs (yes, there really was a National League team by that
name… the franchise eventually became the Philadelphia Phillies) tossed the
first perfect game in major league history, a 1-0 win over the Cleveland Blues.
Five days… five days later, on June 17, 1880, John Montgomery Ward of the
Providence Grays pitched the second, a 5-0 win over the Buffalo Bisons. And
then, 24 years went by before the Boston Americans’ Cy Young completely shut
down the Philadelphia Athletics on May 5, 1904. And that span was nothing
compared to the 84 years between Ward’s gem and the next National League
perfect game, by the Phillies’ Jim Bunning, on Father’s Day (June 21) 1964.
This
particular time line is pretty well known. The really interesting part, from the
historians’ point of view, involves the parameters of
Richmond
’s and Ward’s feats. From one perspective, it’s utterly incomprehensible
that even a single perfect game could be pitched in 1880. From another, there
were actually aspects of the game in 1880 that made it easier for
Richmond
and Ward than you might at first think.
Let’s
recall some of the salient aspects of baseball in 1880. Most significant from
the point of view of the possibility of a perfect game is the fact that
fielder’s gloves weren’t exactly real common at that time, and those that
were in use were generally more like today’s batting gloves. Thus, fielding a
ball cleanly (or even preventing a hit by a sparkling defensive gem) was a
highly problematic occurrence. For example, in Ward’s perfect game, the Grays
made zero errors (duh), while
Buffalo
made seven. The fielding averages for the 1880 season bear out the rarity of
the day Ward’s defense had on June 17, 1880. For instance, Ned Williamson of
Chicago, one of the finest fielding third basemen of his time, did indeed lead
everyone at the hot corner in fielding average, with a mark of .893. Davy Force,
normally
Buffalo
’s second baseman (he had the day off on June 17), and one of the 19th
Century’s notable defensive stars, had a .939 fielding average at second in
1880 – better than every other fielder at every other position except first
base and pitcher. Overall, the National League fielding percentage in 1800 was
.901… meaning there was a 1 in 10 chance that a fielder would boot any
individual chance.
However,
it’s also true that
Richmond
and Ward did have some advantages for throwing a perfect game. First of all,
although the 19th Century is often thought of as a high-offense era,
that wasn’t always the case, mainly due to variations in the pitching
distance. In 1880, with pitchers still standing just 45 feet from the batter (a
foot closer than the pitching distance in present day Little League!), offense
was at a premium. Exactly four hitters posted batting averages higher than .309
– George Gore (.360), Cap Anson (.337), Roger Connor (.332) and Abner
Dalrymple (.330). The league batting average was a modest .245.
Secondly,
suppose Cleveland leadoff man Fred Dunlap (who made two errors himself in
Richmond’s perfect game), let the 3-2 pitch to him leading off the game go
by… after all, it was in the dirt, no need to chase a bad pitch. So, Dunlap
would have had walk, right? Wrong. Dunlap wouldn’t have gotten a walk if the
6-2 pitch was over his head. It took eight balls to draw a walk in 1880. Or,
suppose Ward had plunked
Buffalo
first baseman Dude Esterbrook with a pitch late in his game. Did the Dude go to
first and break up the historic moment? No, the hit batsman rule didn’t come
into the NL until 1887.
Even with
these advantages, given the fielding records of the day, and given the fact that
Richmond only struck out five, and Ward only two (meaning there were 25 balls
put in play, and each one of them had a 10 percent chance of being erred upon),
you have to say that Richmond’s and Ward’s feats, especially since they were
five days apart, constitute a collective miracle. That was even more so in
Richmond
’s case. You see,
Cleveland
first baseman Bill Phillips, in leading off the fifth inning against
Richmond
, apparently dropped what would have normally been a clean single into right
field. Except that Philips either loafed on his way to first or Ruby Legs right
fielder Lon Knight was playing very shallow, because Knight threw Phillips out
at first, your everyday 9-3 putout (scored as R-A instead of 9-3 in the
scorecard of the game) that saved the first perfect game for posterity. If
that’s not idiosyncratic, nothing is.
After
Cy Young’s effort, perfect games were pretty scarce up until the mid 1960s,
despite the years from 1900 to 1920 being known as the “Deadball Era.”
Picking up from Young’s game…
Addie
Joss – October 2, 1908
Charlie
Robertson – April 30, 1922
Don
Larsen – October 8, 1956 (in the World Series, of course)
Then,
within four years, came perfect games by Bunning, Sandy Koufax (Sept. 9, 1965)
and Catfish Hunter (May 8, 1968), a not altogether shocking distribution,
considering how depressed hitting was in the 60s. However, after the hitting
picked back up in 1969, 13 years went by without a perfect game, after which
they became almost common in the 80s and 90s… and none of these was by a Sandy
Koufax.
Len
Barker – May 15, 1981
Mike
Witt – September 30, 1984
Tom
Browning – September 16, 1988
Dennis
Martinez – July 28, 1991
Kenny Rogers – July 28, 1994
David
Wells – May 17, 1998
David Cone – July 18, 1999
There
really is no single explanation for perfect games all of a sudden starting to
come at three and four year intervals (or less), starting in 1981. No more than
there is an explanation of the four perfect games in six years (2004 to 2010) of
the 21st Century. (Let’s not forget Randy Johnson’s May 18, 2004
beat down of the Braves.) The best explanation is that they come in a random
distribution.
What’s
not at random are the types of pitchers who typically throw perfect games. With
few exceptions, they are either Hall of Fame caliber pitchers (Ward, Young,
Joss, Bunning, Koufax, Hunter, Johnson, Halladay), or good pitchers having very
good days (Barker, Witt, Browning,
Martinez
,
Rogers
, Wells, Cone, Buehrle). That leaves four others… Robertson, Larsen, Braden
and the first perfect game pitcher,
Richmond
. There are at least possible explanations for three of these games.
Charlie
Robertson was a rookie, making one of the first starts of his major league
career, when he shut down Ty Cobb’s hard-hitting Tigers in 1922. He would end
his career with a 49-80 record, six shutouts and an Adjusted ERA of 90. His
perfect game was a fluke, although it is interesting to note that Cobb and the
Tigers complained throughout the game that Robertson was throwing a spitball, or
some other kind of illegal delivery.
Don
Larsen was, by all accounts, more interested in partying than pitching. He went
81-91 with a 99 ERA+ for seven different teams. His throwing a perfect game in
the World Series against the best team ever subjected to a perfect game, the
Brooklyn Dodgers (admittedly an over-the-hill Dodgers, but still most of the
team that had dominated the NL between 1947 and 1955), was arguably the biggest
single game fluke in major league history. (Maybe his no-windup delivery kept
their timing off-balance.) There was a lot of truth in Dick Young’s famous,
ghostwritten lead sentence, “The imperfect man pitched the perfect game.”
Richmond
was a different case. He really only pitched regularly for three years for a
bad Worcester team, and was out of baseball by age 26, choosing instead to
become a doctor. He was 75-100 for his career, but it’s a little hard to
accurately judge him from the perspective of 130 years. It is worth noting that
he was the first left-handed pitcher of any note… which may have been an
advantage to him. Maybe the hitters weren’t used to seeing southpaws.
As
for Dallas Braden, it’s too soon to say what path his career might take. At
the moment though, his career 18-26 record and 96 ERA+ look more like Don Larsen
than Roy Halladay. Maybe he thought the Rays had traded for A-Rod.