Having three perfectos pitched this year got me wondering.
In team sports you do have your share of rare and impressive accomplishments for single game accomplishment.
In basketball, you'll have players who will score 50 or 60 points a game (or in Wilt Chamberlain's case, 100). In hockey, you'll have players who have scored 5 goals in a game. In football, you'll have quarterbacks with 500 yard passing games or running backs with 200 or even 250 yards rushing in a game.
All those are incredible. With Chamberlain's record, I'm hard pressed if we'll ever see it again in our lifetimes.
However, there's a difference between those performances and a perfect game. How? Well, a hockey player who scores 5 goals could score 6. A quarterback could pass for 550 yards. And although unlikely, a basketball player could--plausibly at least--score 101 points in a game.
But a perfect game, on the other hand, is finite. It is--as its name suggests--perfect. 27 up, 27 down, with no men reaching on base. A pitcher cannot do any better than that, and is very hard pressed to do that.
The only other accomplishments in sports that I see are similar are a hole in one in golf, or a perfect game in bowling. But golf and bowling--while they can be played with teams--are not necessarily by nature team sports. So in terms of team sports, I would argue the perfect game is unrivaled.
The only thing that would beat a perfect game, in my mind, would be a perfect game with 27 strikeouts. Now that would be something to see--it would mean not a single batter was able to hit a ball in fair territory. Can't say I ever see that happening in MLB, although I read somewhere recently a high school softball pitcher pulled it off.
But what do you think? Is the perfect game the most impressive single game accomplishment in all of team sports?
In team sports you do have your share of rare and impressive accomplishments for single game accomplishment.
In basketball, you'll have players who will score 50 or 60 points a game (or in Wilt Chamberlain's case, 100). In hockey, you'll have players who have scored 5 goals in a game. In football, you'll have quarterbacks with 500 yard passing games or running backs with 200 or even 250 yards rushing in a game.
All those are incredible. With Chamberlain's record, I'm hard pressed if we'll ever see it again in our lifetimes.
However, there's a difference between those performances and a perfect game. How? Well, a hockey player who scores 5 goals could score 6. A quarterback could pass for 550 yards. And although unlikely, a basketball player could--plausibly at least--score 101 points in a game.
But a perfect game, on the other hand, is finite. It is--as its name suggests--perfect. 27 up, 27 down, with no men reaching on base. A pitcher cannot do any better than that, and is very hard pressed to do that.
The only other accomplishments in sports that I see are similar are a hole in one in golf, or a perfect game in bowling. But golf and bowling--while they can be played with teams--are not necessarily by nature team sports. So in terms of team sports, I would argue the perfect game is unrivaled.
The only thing that would beat a perfect game, in my mind, would be a perfect game with 27 strikeouts. Now that would be something to see--it would mean not a single batter was able to hit a ball in fair territory. Can't say I ever see that happening in MLB, although I read somewhere recently a high school softball pitcher pulled it off.
But what do you think? Is the perfect game the most impressive single game accomplishment in all of team sports?
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