Sunday, July 26, 2009

Perfection

This is more of a thought than a full-blown post. Thursday Blaine e-mailed me with the news of Mark Buehrle’s perfect game in a 5-0 win against the Tampa Bay Rays. On my way out of work a couple hours later, I saw two co-workers downstairs, one of whom is a big White Sox fan. I asked if he had seen what happened in the game, and he hadn’t, so I urged him to go check a computer. But he just sits down as I start talking to the other guy, so I pull up ESPN.com on my phone and hand it to him, leading to an immediate stream of celebratory swearing. The other guy’s curiosity now piqued, he comes over to see what it is, and I tell him the Sox threw a perfect game. He shrugs his shoulders, completely unimpressed.

The next day I the non-fan comes into my office, and he asks if I heard about the baseball game yesterday where nothing happened. Very funny, but it made me think. The boxscore listed an attendance of 28,036 at U.S. Cellular Field Thursday. Of those twenty-eight thousand, surely some were at their first baseball game. Perhaps some were even forced to come by pushy friends. Well, can you imagine finally convincing someone to go to a baseball game with you, and you end up seeing a perfect game, and afterwards they complain that nothing happened? I think I would go ballistic.

On the other hand, if you didn’t like baseball it might be pretty boring. I mean, maybe DeWayne Wise’s catch would have looked kind of cool. But overall, you might not feel like going to a baseball game ever again.

2 comments:

blaine said...

It couldn't have been THAT boring, especially if you were a Sox fan. They won 5-0, so it's not like there was no scoring. I could understand if it had been 1-0 or something.

Anyway, how about those Rockies winning the series against the Giants over the weekend. That gives us a 2-game lead in the wild card.

I'm glad they were able to get Bettancourt, but I was kind of hoping more for a George Sherril or a Chad Qualls. I suppose anything is an improvement over our current bullpen.

I'm more excited about this years' Rockies team than back at the end of 2007 because they have been able to play consistently well for over 2 months now. I'm not sure what changed because the players are all the same. I've always thought that a baseball manager has very little influence on the outcome of the game, but every since Tracy was promoted to interim manager the Rockies have been on fire. Coincidence?

Mike said...

Of course it's not boring if you're already a Sox fan. My point is if you WEREN'T a fan, a perfect game might be kind of lame, which is funny because any baseball fan would love to be at one. Plus a non-fan would wonder why the teams were so badly mismatched.

I think a manager can have an impact, sure, but it looks like Tracy has had a gigantic impact out of proportion with whatever decisions he's made. I don't know what's different either. I can see what you mean about 2007: it'd be fun to watch a team have momentum for a while, rather than just one insane hot streak, but of course I'll take either one. And if we don't make the Series, I'll take 2007 for sure.