Is the perfect game the most impressive single game accomplishment in team sports?

[DownUnderDodger]

A bowler netting 10 wickets in an innings in cricket, or a batsman scoring a double or triple century in cricket are arguably as good as or better than a perfect game. Every team sport has its magical moments/performances and it is impossible to compare sport to sport. A perfect game in baseball is as god as it gets for a pitcher, but what about 4HR from 4 at bats by a batter?

[Captain Cold Nose]

Not only is that very, very difficult to do but also how many times does a batter come to the plate 5 times in one game. Sure it happens but not that often.
I read about Gehrig's 4 homer game and if I recall in one at bat, game recap described as a long fly ball.

I'm more impressed with Gehrig's three triples in a game called on account of rain in the fifth inning. At least, the story about it.

[GiambiJuice]

Totally agree. All strikeouts is the perfect target to shoot for. And so far in MLB history, whose perfect game had the most KOs? (Answer below)


(Koufax with 14 vs.Cubs in 1965)

I believe Matt Cain shares the record.

[YankeeMan]

My big question is why so many Perfect Games recently? Here are some theories:

http://sabr.org/research/modeling-pe...tters-baseball

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/16...perfect-games/

[Inkling]

They had this exact discussion on a Montreal sports radio station recently (they didn't limit it to 'team' sports though). A lot of the same points were made but another one that was brought up was shooting a 59 on the PGA Tour. Breaking 60 has only been done a handful of times in history. As others have brought up though, it's not as binary as a perfect game, you can always shoot 58 (theoretically, it's never been done on the PGA Tour as far as I know). There's something very 'clean' about a no-hitter or perfect game, it's not a degree of anything.

[yankillaz]

I still remember Fernando Tatis' two grand slams in the same inning. I probably wouldn't have stuck so much had he not been on my roto team at the time.

But to have that happen required so many things to fall into place that there's a chance it's never duplicated.

This is my pick

[ipitch]

This is my pick

4 HRs in a game is far more impressive, I'd say.

How many players have even had a chance to bat with the bases loaded twice in an inning? Hard to say, but I would estimate that it's no more than 500. So, 1 in 500.

Now, since all you need is 4+ at-bats, there have been about 2,500,000 chances for a player to hit 4 HRs in a game. 13 have
done it. That means it's done about 1 out of every 192,000 times.

(if my estimates are correct)

[scrabblehack]

What about quarterback passing efficiency?

The maximum is 158.3. Now a quarterback with 99% completion gets as good of a score as one who throws 77.5%.

Apparently it has happened 60 times. If that goes back to the 1920's, then it might be comparable to the baseball perfect game. Right now, there are 240 NFL games per season....roughly the same for 35 years...yeah Carolina and Jacksonville are new. Before the mid 1970's there were 196 games per season.

Well it looks like it only goes back to 1960. So there have been somewhere around 11000 games, and 22000 chances.
So only 1/366 or thereabouts.

There are 2430 baseball games per year. If you go back to 1960, there were as few as 1232 per year. Anyway, at least 150000 games, and 300000 chances. So there have been no more than 23 perfect games....1/6522.

So then yes a perfect game is a rarer event than a perfect quarterback passing efficiency.

[Brooklyn]

They had this exact discussion on a Montreal sports radio station recently (they didn't limit it to 'team' sports though). A lot of the same points were made but another one that was brought up was shooting a 59 on the PGA Tour. Breaking 60 has only been done a handful of times in history. As others have brought up though, it's not as binary as a perfect game, you can always shoot 58 (theoretically, it's never been done on the PGA Tour as far as I know). There's something very 'clean' about a no-hitter or perfect game, it's not a degree of anything.

I'd agree breaking 60 is incredible, but always though of 50 as "perfect" on a golf course. That's as low as you can score on a normal course without holing one from the fairway

[DiggerODell]

How about playing 20 years or so and just being a good individual.