Amazing performance.
My favorite pitch? The change he threw to get Jennings whiffing to lead off the ninth.
That pitch wasn't unhittable, it was untouchable. You can't get a hit on a pitch if you can't touch it.
And, like you Doc, I missed the game.
What did we have? Two long flies to the track...neither a line drive, and one solid ball right at Ackley. That might have been the only ball that could have possibly been a hit: If your 2B was mispositioned by 8 ft, and had the range of Boog Powell.
Oh, Blylevin had the best game in/game out curve that I've ever seen. Gooden's was way wonderful, but set up the the 96 mph stuff the guy saw on the previous pitch. I always thought that even if Bert told the batter the next pitch was a curve, told every batter in fact, they might only hit about .200.
When Ryan was in the groove with the Ryan Express, it didn't matter if the hitter was guessing heater: There was too much heat and to much movement.
Yesterday Felix threw those kind of trade-mark pitches.....AND an untouchable slider plus that uber-shuuto.
He was a man who, for 2 hours, mastered his craft as well as anybody baseball craftsman ever has.
Newton with a pencil, Da Vinci with a brush, Lincoln with an audience, Churchill with a microphone.....and, yesterday, Felix with a baseball. Pretty dang as good as it gets.
moe
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I hustled through my morning office work and then hustled down to the golf course. If I spedwalked the course, I could get nine in before my evening classes. Behind the counter, the nice kid had a wry smile. "Did you hear about the Mariner game?"
No, what, I mumbled.
"Do you wanna?"
Whatever, I guess. No clue what he could possibly be talking about. Glanced at the TV. Golf, if you can believe that, was on the monitor in the golf clubhouse. Maybe like GreenPeace had staged a mock orca hunt on the field or something.
"Felix threw a perfect game?"
Wondered if the kid knew for sure what a perfect game meant... probably a no-hitter with an error, or something...
"Twenty-seven up, twenty-seven down." My mouth fell open. You go to thirty games a year, and they're never this game... earlier this year, all my friends went to the Humber game and I stayed home. Anyway...
"And Blowers was here!"
"What ... like at this golf course?!" Now it was clear that the kid ... er, Chris, he's a great guy and a far better golfer than me needless to say ... was baseball-literate.
"Yeah. This was his day off! He came out here to play and the game was going on. Man, we were lauuugghhhh-ing ..."
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We all know, at this time of day, what BABIP is. And that a perfect game has 8 strikeouts, along with a 19-for-19 defensive performance. I was expecting to get home, watch the replay, and probably write up something like this article.
A no-hitter is three things. It's three things, usually... it's a 3-hit shutout type of performance. And it's several balls hitting leather. And it's tremendous composure by a pitcher in the late innings. It actually projected to be sort of a chore to defend Felix' BABIP miracle.
Played my nine in 1:18, shot 48 thanks to a couple of misplaced sand bunkers, showered up and plowed through the class schedule. Ran out to dinner with Cindy ... we were headed to a steak place when we walked by a pasta place with a plate-glass window and they had the replay on. Fourth inning. Walking by, I watched Felix pivot and crack off an overhand yakker. Wow - as good as he's ever thrown in his life. That pitch was the one at 1:55 on this video embed at USSM.
Took a couple more steps to chase after Cindy down the block ... we've been married 31 years, amigo ... then paused to watch a few more pitches. He threw a slider like the one at 2:05 on that video ... maybe that was the one. My eyes bugged out on springs like the cartoon coyote when he sees the lady coyote.
We retreated back down the block, sat down in the pasta place, and soaked in the performance. It's trite to finish with "Today was the best that Felix Hernandez ever threw a baseball." But that is the case. For me, the best part of August 15th, 2012 is that the day Felix threw his best, was the same day that he got his perfect game.
If Felix Hernandez executed those pitches every game, he would probably throw one, or two, or three, perfect games every year. Jaso, breathless with nerves on TV, said "No human can hit that curve ball." He meant the statement literally. Dr. D accepts the statement literally. Felix was just snapping off the pitches today, the way he did in that season opener at Fenway that one time, you remember? Except this was better. As they said about Cliff Lee once, he was murdering souls out there.
Felix pitched like a perfect game, deserved a perfect game, and got a perfect game. That wasn't a BABIP miracle. That was a game where, if it were boxing, they'd have stopped the fight. If ever there was a game you'd call a "Legitimate Perfect Game," you just saw it.
......................
The last perfect game in the A.L. was Philip Humber's. Humber was on fire that day, and he threw well, but Philip Humber used pedestrian stuff, nice location and neat pitch sequences against a weak lineup. That was one of the least-deserved perfect games ever.
The game before that ... Dallas Braden. Six strikeouts in that game. You see where I'm going with this?
The other A.L. perfect games aren't exactly a roll call of HOF'ers. Before Humber and Braden, in order ... Buehrle, David Cone at 36 years of age, David Wells, Kenny Rogers, Mike Witt, Len Barker ... here's the whole list. As a group of games, it's a group of 3-hit (or 5-hit) shutouts turned BABIP miracles. (By contrast, the N.L. perfect games have been like Halladay, Unit, Koufax, Cain on a 14-K day, etc.)
So when you call it "the most deserved perfect game ever pitched," actually you could say that it ties with Koufax', Unit's, and Halladay's. It's the most-deserved perfect game ever in the American League, but that makes a kludgy headline. Full disclosure hereby delivered. :- )
If you don't consider the importance of the game, but rather the sheer quality of the pitching, the quality times the outcome, it's possible that Felix' August 15th game just now was the zenith of A.L. pitching history. Disagree? Riddle me this. Can you visualize a superior pitching performance?
A Hall of Fame pitcher went out there Wednesday and ... just pitched perfect. When you call that baby a Perfect Game, say it like you mean it.
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Comments
... and oh yeah. Forgot about Ryan's curve. Sometimes that was better than anybody's.
Don't you wish you could show the kiddies the hook that Blyleven threw? Somebody go look up his stats. His fastball was very ordinary and he had only those two pitches.
:daps: Moe
Absolutely satanic breaking stuff. You're right about Blyleven's hook, but he could spot the fastball pretty much anywhere he wanted and as we've learned a located fastball is a real weapon. Honestly, though, Aaron Seely built a whole career on a curve ball that, although great, was not as good as Felix's.
I hate myself for not being in town for this game.