Buehrle Perfect Game

[Censored by Laurie]

Too lazy to go find a link...mad props

[CMJ]

Wow, those are really rare. Awesome job

[Quoner]

I guess the Rays didn't tip his pitches from the buildings inside The Trop.

[NT03]

yAHOO

[hickoryhouse]

There were no stats for this back then but I remember throwing a perfect game on Baseball for the NES when I was a kid. I was freaking excited, can't imagine how Mark Buhrle is feeling

[Mean Green 93-98]

Wow, those are really rare. Awesome job

It takes a little help.

But an incredible outing from a great pitcher.

[KingDL1]

Wise's catch

Video pretty cool

[cwb]

Not much of a baseball guy so tell me what a perfect game is. My guess is no hits and no walks. In my opinion, a perfect game would be 27 straight strikes.

[Mean Green 93-98]

Not much of a baseball guy so tell me what a perfect game is. My guess is no hits and no walks. In my opinion, a perfect game would be 27 straight strikes.

I assume you mean 27 straight strikeouts. But your guess is pretty well correct--no man can reach base, by hit, walk, hit by pitch, etc.

It's been done 18 times in history: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/history/rare_feats/...re=perfect_game

[CMJ]

I didn't realize there was once an 84 year gap in the NL without one!

[oldguystudent]

Not much of a baseball guy so tell me what a perfect game is. My guess is no hits and no walks. In my opinion, a perfect game would be 27 straight strikes.

It's been explained already that it's 27 batters and 27 outs with no base runners, but your interpretation takes it to another level where a perfect game could be either 81 pitches for 81 strikes (hence 27 consecutive 3-pitch strike-outs) or 27 pitches for 27 consecutive outs (Wherein all 27 batters swing at and make contact the first pitch, but either fly or ground out as a result). Either one of those scenarios would be absolutely once in an eon events.

[greenminer]

Where does a perfect baseball game rank in a list of sports' greatest feats?

[greenminer]

Just thinking off the top of my head:

Barry Sander's senior season is still astronomical.

...and (showing the bias) so was Jamario's fresh season.

What about MMA? The Gracie family's old streak...

I can't recall his name, but I know that it is a South American (Brazil, I think) that is the international basketball career leader in points scored, and it is not even close. The guy refused to play in the NBA

Lance's streak in the Tour de France.

What Roger Federer is doing is nothing short of remarkable.

There have been a few instances where a college defense held the opposition to negative net rushing (it was done in the Sun Bowl Game not too long ago).

I know that many of those I have listed blur the debate between single instances/games vs. streaks over long periods of time. But still, might not be a bad theme for a new thread.

Edited July 24, 2009 by greenminer

[oldguystudent]

Where does a perfect baseball game rank in a list of sports' greatest feats?

As far as individual achievement? Let's try to quantify it. Since 1900, (rough estimates on numbers here. I'm not researching the specifics!), lets say an average 158 games a season times and average of 22 teams / 2 times 108 years. That's 187,704 games in that time span. 16 of those have been perfect games (2 recognized perfect games are pre-1900). So the chances of throwing a perfect game would be roughly 16/187,704 or .008%.

Excluding events that have a frequency of 1, such as Wilt Chamberlain scoring a 100 in a game, I'm hard pressed to come up with another individual achievement that is this rare.

[greenminer]

Excluding events that have a frequency of 1, such as Wilt Chamberlain scoring a 100 in a game, I'm hard pressed to come up with another individual achievement that is this rare.

Is a pic of RV Sexytime an achievement?

[Censored by Laurie]

As far as individual achievement? Let's try to quantify it. Since 1900, (rough estimates on numbers here. I'm not researching the specifics!), lets say an average 158 games a season times and average of 22 teams / 2 times 108 years. That's 187,704 games in that time span. 16 of those have been perfect games (2 recognized perfect games are pre-1900). So the chances of throwing a perfect game would be roughly 16/187,704 or .008%.

Excluding events that have a frequency of 1, such as Wilt Chamberlain scoring a 100 in a game, I'm hard pressed to come up with another individual achievement that is this rare.

That 100 point game was such a fluke though...the fourth quater was an abortion of a basketball "game" and it took him 63 shots. Hell, I hate him, but Kobe's 81 a few years back was more impressive than Wilt's gimmick game...shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breathe as a perfect game.

Individual achievement? Tiger's '00 U.S. Open at Pebble where he was the only golfer under par...at a stupid -12 under (Bjorn and Els were runner's up at +3)...and to only a slightly lesser extent his '97 Master's.

[Quoner]

Bill Mosienko, Chicago Blackhawks. 3 goals in 21 seconds.

[CMJ]

Bill Scanlon - only player in ATP history to win a set without losing a point. A "golden set" - 24 points - is as perfect as perfect can be in tennis.

[cwb]

Booger's somersault/forced fumble/fumble recovery/sack vs muts.

[Green P1]

Kim Jung Ill's round of golf at 38-under par, which included 5 hole-in-ones, is the single greatest achievement in all of sport.

[hickoryhouse]

Kim Jung Ill's round of golf at 38-under par, which included 5 hole-in-ones, is the single greatest achievement in all of sport.

Mulligans don't count

[oldguystudent]

Mulligans don't count

What about MulliKims?

[SCREAMING EAGLE-66]

As far as individual achievement? Let's try to quantify it. Since 1900, (rough estimates on numbers here. I'm not researching the specifics!), lets say an average 158 games a season times and average of 22 teams / 2 times 108 years. That's 187,704 games in that time span. 16 of those have been perfect games (2 recognized perfect games are pre-1900). So the chances of throwing a perfect game would be roughly 16/187,704 or .008%.

Excluding events that have a frequency of 1, such as Wilt Chamberlain scoring a 100 in a game, I'm hard pressed to come up with another individual achievement that is this rare.

---An unassisted triple play is more rare...about 10 I think. Randy Velarde of Midland playing for Oakand or the Yankees did one about ten years ago and I think one has happened since.. He was playing second base and caught a screaming fly ball, tagged the runner from first before he could get turned round, then beat the guy that had been on second back to his base. Tough to do plus there has to be no outs with the runners in the right place.

[GreenBat]

---An unassisted triple play is more rare...about 10 I think. Randy Velarde of Midland playing for Oakand or the Yankees did one about ten years ago and I think one has happened since.. He was playing second base and caught a screaming fly ball, tagged the runner from first before he could get turned round, then beat the guy that had been on second back to his base. Tough to do plus there has to be no outs with the runners in the right place.

The home run cycle is absolutely the rarest of feats in baseball, even more impressive than pitching a perfect game and certainly more rare than the regular cycle, which happens at the frequency of 0.0011 percent of the time.

The home run cycle has never been accomplished at the major league level and has only been recorded once at the minor league level in professional baseball.

To put it in perspective, baseball statistics gurus can't define the odds of achieving the feat because it has happened only once in recorded history -- that coming on July 27, 1998 when Tyrone Horne did it for the Class AA Arkansas Travelers in a 13-4 win over the San Antonio Missions.

[oldguystudent]

---An unassisted triple play is more rare...about 10 I think. Randy Velarde of Midland playing for Oakand or the Yankees did one about ten years ago and I think one has happened since.. He was playing second base and caught a screaming fly ball, tagged the runner from first before he could get turned round, then beat the guy that had been on second back to his base. Tough to do plus there has to be no outs with the runners in the right place.

For the stats geeks in here, if trying to compare perfect games vs unassisted triple plays, would you state the frequency of unassisted triple plays per play, inning or game?

I remember Randy Velarde pulling that off. That was crazy!

Now hitting for the home run cycle, I think gets disqualified from my original post because I explicitly excluded things that had happened only once.