White Sox’s Buehrle Goes Perfect on Tampa Bay Rays
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Chicago White Sox ace lefthander Mark Buehrle cruised through eight innings of perfection on Thursday before nearly losing his bid for perfection in the ninth. Opening the ninth inning, Buehrle’s 2-2 pitch to Tampa Bay rightfielder Gabe Kapler broke in and Kapler nailed it. The Sox had just made a late-inning defensive replacement placing DeWayne Wise in centerfield. Wise made for the left centerfield fence, leaped and was able to extend his glove above the wall to snare Kapler’s homer bid. The next 2 Rays hitters struck out and harmlessly grounded out as the White Sox’s Buehrle went perfect on the Tampa Bay Rays by a 5-0 score.
Buehrle, whose earlier bid for a perfect game against the Texas Rangers in April, 2007 was only marred by a fifth inning, 1 out walk to Sammy Sosa, went totally clean this time against Tampa Bay — 27 up, 27 down — nobody reaching. Buehrle threw 116 pitches in his el-perfecto complete game.
AP sports writer Andre Seligman reports in his recap for Yahoo sports that Buehrle’s perfect game was “the 18th perfect game in major league history.”
In most perfect games in my lifetime, the game’s perfection inevitably turns on a great defensive play as happened on Wise’s great grab of Kapler’s homer bid. Classic, in my memory, was the Father’s Day, 1964 perfect game thrown by Phillies great Jim Bunning against the New York Mets where the game turned on a hard line drive for which Phils 2nd baseman Tony Taylor lept to snare for the perfection-saving out.
The White Sox went up by 4-0 in the 2nd inning on 2 singles and a walk followed by 1st baseman Josh Fields’ grand slam homer to leftfield. They capped their scoring on an RBI double to rightfield by 2nd year shortstop Alexei Ramirez.
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