Is Anything Better than Perfect?

Dallas Braden’s shocking perfect game on Sunday was only the 19th in MLB history, a history that includes many players who’s images can only be seen as etchings on mountain rocks and who’s existence cannot be proven. The only other Athletics pitcher ever to throw a perfect game was Catfish Hunter in 1968.

The victim of perfection was even more surprising. The Tampa Bay Rays have the best record in baseball, and only the Yankees have scored more runs in the AL. The Rays are stacked with young talented hitters like Evan “my second favorite” Longoria, Carl Crawford, and BJ Upton, yet no matter what how many times those guys were brought up Braden continually credited veteran journeyman utility player, Gabe Kapler, as his toughest out. For those of you who don’t understand baseball terminology, veteran journeyman utility player is a nice way of saying old mediocre backup player.

Braden proved to have little-to-no respect for baseball’s superstars when he blew his lid on Alex Rodriguez on April 22 after A-Rod jotted through the pitchers mound on his way back to the dugout. Get the hell outta my office! Apparently this is an unwritten, and seldom heard of, rule in baseball. It seems like baseball has a lot of those… maybe they should start writing them down… A-Rod understandably took a minor shot at the unproven Braden, claiming he was looking for his “fifteen minutes of fame”.

While Braden will still never reach the celebrity actress-dating, record-breaking status that A-Rod has a achieved, he certainly etched his name in baseball’s everlasting history with a perfect game on mothers day, capped off with a hug from his teary-eyed grandmother who happened to be one of the very few Oakland A’s fans in attendance.

Flashback

July 23, 2009, White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle threw the 18th perfect game in MLB history against the very same Tampa Bay Rays. They weren’t quite as hot as they were coming into Sunday’s game against Braden, but the Rays record sat at a very respectable 52-43 and they were the defending American League Champions. How has this offensive powerhouse who has been one of the five best teams in baseball since the beginning of 2008 become a target for slow-throwing lefties to toss perfect games?

Old Man Pitcher

It’s hard to top perfection, but something similar happened over the weekend that was even more unprecedented. On Friday night, 47 year-old Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer stepped out of the fountain of youth, or maybe the hot tub time machine, and became the oldest player in MLB history to throw a complete game shutout, allowing only two hits and walking none, leading the Phils to a 7-0 victory over Atlanta.

Moyer is pushing 50, yet consistently fooling NL hitters with more junk than a Chinatown thrift store, but to throw a complete game shutout is just ridiculous. This will go down as one of the most underappreciated performances in sports history. I’m not trying to take away from Braden’s perfect game, but that happened 18 times before. If he can come back in twenty years and do the same thing with a two hit cushion, I’ll give him equal props.

Triple-Double… Supersized

There were several great performances this weekend that were upstaged by history-making pitchers. Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo made the Cavaliers look foolish on Sunday as Boston tied the series 2-2. Rondo finished with a monster triple-double (29 points, 18 rebounds, 13 assists), but even those numbers don’t do justice to the way he controlled every aspect of the game while making great plays like he was Shakespeare (get it?). The best of which came in the fourth quarter when Rondo froze LeBron James in mid-air while he salivated for one of his patented backboard bashing blocks only to be fooled with a flying pump fake and behind the back pass that deserves to be played with great NBA playoff highlights for years to come.

Bombs over Boston

Mark Teixeira officially broke out of his routine April slump by homering three times against the rival Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday. The gold glove first baseman became only the second player in Yankees history to hit three bombs against the hated Red Sox, joining the great Lou Gehrig (not bad company). Yankees fans will give Teixeira a pass for hitting .136 in April since he put all his cheese on one cracker on Sunday, embarrassing the Boston pitching staff from both sides of the plate and proving he is once again ready to turn things around in May.

Teixeira’s slump pattern is the oddest in a sport full of odd slump patterns. Like clockwork, Tex has hit .237 with 23 homers and 83 RBI throughout his career in April, all career lows. In any other month Teixeira’s career lows are .277, 40 home runs and 119 RBI. I wouldn’t expect this from a young switch-hitting, well-rounded player who keeps himself in good shape and I wouldn’t really care if he wasn’t on my fantasy team in keeper league! Next year he’s staying on my bench in April.

Iron Ticket

Iron Man 2 made a major bang this weekend, as expected, cashing in $133.6M in ticket sales. The most impressive part, other than the upgrades to his already badass flying robot suit, is the dominance Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, and the rest of this locked and loaded cast has over the box office, blowing away A Nightmare on Elm Street ($9.1M), How to Train your Dragon 3D ($6.7M), and Date Night ($5.3M). Iron Man 2 competing against this list of B movies you probably haven’t heard of, and hopefully haven’t seen, seems like LeBron James jumping in a game of 21 at a YMCA in Des Moines, Iowa. But at least Hollywood is branching out: Super hero sequels, horror movie remakes, 3D animation and over-the-top romantic comedies are all things you just don’t see enough of these days…