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Mark Buehrle’s perfect game yesterday exemplifies not only a tremendous individual athletic effort (with an equally tremendous defensive team effort behind him), but a statistical rarity. In context, with only 18 official perfect games thrown throughout major league baseball’s 132 years of existence; more people have orbited the moon, more people have won the lottery, more people have been President of the United States, more people have actual credible copies of Erin Andrew’s video, and more people have frequented this website (although just barely). A perfect game occurs about once in every 11,000 major league games. No hits, no walks, no hit batsmen, no opposing player can reach base safely for any reason, basically you’re talking “27 up, 27 down.”

So while an impressive feat such as a perfect game showers the pitcher with eternal glory, how much credit do his teammates get? 8 potential perfect games have been thwarted by fielding errors (defined as a fielder misplaying a ball in a manner that allows a batter or baserunner to advance additional bases, an advance that should have been prevented given ordinary effort by the fielder). In this case, the pitcher is blameless of mistake but wholly prevented from attaining a perfect game due to the mistake of someone else. This may seem ridiculous given the fact that every pitch the pitcher makes must essentially be perfect, overpowering, or accurate (depending on pitcher’s style) in order to keep any opposing players from reaching base. His responsibility and effort for 9 innings would go down the drain if one of his teammates commit a routine fielding error. A prime example is the game on July 10, 2009 when Jonathan Sanchez of the San Francisco Giants was pitching perfectly through the 8th inning when 3rd baseman, Juan Uribe committed an error on a ground ball resulting in a no-hitter for Sanchez rather than the more coveted perfect game.

In contrast, Buehrle’s game on July 23, 2009 would not have come to fruition if not for DeWayne Wise’s miraculous-highlight-reel-gem-of-an-insane catch, with his bare left hand no less, over the top of an 8-foot wall at U.S. Cellular Field that saved this perfect game. So Buehrle’s amazing individual pitching effort would all be for naught if not for Wise’s acrobatic catch on a pitch destined to be a homerun. If the ball had gone over, no one would be left to blame for ruining the perfect game other than the pitcher himself.

To say the least, the perfect game is unattainable without unparalleled joint effort from the pitcher and his fielding mates as much as a perfect game can be ruined by an outside variable such as a routine fielding error, or one bad pitch. Buehrle was quoted as saying he bought everyone a new watch when he had a no-hitter back in 2007, needless to say everyone will be getting something more expensive than a watch this time around, most of all DeWayne Wise.