Redemption and a Witness to Perfection

By Blaidd Drwg

I wrote recently about missing out on seeing Derek Lowe’s no hitter in 2002. I actually wrote that piece over a month ago, before April 21st happened. What is so special about April 21st? It happens to be the day the Philip Humber of the Chicago White Sox threw the 21st perfect game in MLB history against the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field. It was a day game, so the person who has the tickets in the seats next to mine only needed one of her tickets and asked me if I knew anyone who wanted the other one. My wife’s sister, a big Mariners fan, was interested and joined us – and I am sure that it was something that she won’t regret, ever.

In the 400 or so baseball games I have witnessed, I have seen several no-hitters get broken up with 2 outs in the 8th inning and two get broken up in the ninth. Sitting through a no-hitter, let alone a perfect game, is tough since it could end with one bad bounce, especially if the pitcher throwing the no-no is on the opposing team. I have seen triple plays, 3 home run games, players hitting for the cycle, Ichiro setting the single season hit record, and Rafael Palmeiro’s 3000th hit but never a 9 inning no hitter.

My rule is this – if there is a no-hitter at the start of the 8th inning, you start rooting for that pitcher, regardless of who he plays for, which is exactly what I did on April 21st. It was pretty obvious looking at the scoreboard that Humber had not given up a hit, but I am not sure how many of the 22,000 fans at the game realized that he had not given up anything. He was cruising; his pitch count was in the low 70’s going into the 8th inning and he really looked dominating. The Mariners, not exactly sporting a lineup that would remind anyone of Murder’s Row, sent Smoak, Seager and Montero up to bat in the 8th. Humber retired the side on 11 pitches. You could almost cut the tension with a knife.

I believe the Mariners did something in the top of the 9th (I can’t prove it) that I thought was a little unsportsmanlike – with Steve Delabar on the mound, they seemed to take a huge amount of time between pitches. Like I said, I can’t prove it, but it seemed that way and I wonder if Wedge was trying to leave Humber on the bench longer to get into his head. It actually almost worked.

Humber came out in the 9th and looked shaky – he went 3-0 on Michael Saunders before striking him out. At this point, my stomach was in knots. Most people were pulling for Humber at this point, and you would hate to see him lose the perfect game because his control deserted him all of a sudden. He looked better on Jaso, getting him to fly out on 3 pitches. That left Brendan Ryan as the only thing between Humber and a perfect game. It was an ugly at bat, one that made me hold my breath on every pitch. Humber got ahead of Ryan 1-2. Just one more strike. If I was Ryan, I would have been swinging at anything close, just because I wouldn’t want to be the last out in a perfect game. The next 2 pitches missed badly and all of a sudden, we are sitting with a full count, 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th inning. No pressure on Humber there. Ryan fouled the next pitch off. The tension was incredible. Then Humber threw an ugly breaking ball in the dirt that Ryan checked his swing on. The home plate umpire ruled he went around (from my vantage point behind home plate, it looked like he checked the swing) and the ball went past AJ Pierzynski to the backstop. At this point I am yelling “throw it to first”. Pierzynski is not exactly a fast man but fortunately for Humber, Ryan took 2 steps toward first and then turned back to argue with the umpire. Had he run, he would have easily beaten the throw to first, breaking up the perfect game and leaving the no hitter intact with Chone Figgins on deck. I firmly believe that if Figgins had come up, the baseball gods would have conspired to end Humber’s no hit bid.

So instead of a potentially heartbreaking situation, or at least one of the most bizarre ways that a perfect game would have been broken up, we got to witness perfection, even if it may have been questionably so.