On 2 June 2010, Armando Galarraga started the Detroit Tigers’ defense against Cleveland Indians and soon retired 26 batters quickly. However, he would have scored a memorable perfect game had the umpire, Jim Joyce, not erred and denied Galarraga the chance to retire the 27th batter, Jason Donald. Jim Joyce’s error was so huge that he offered a teary apology later to Galarraga, which leads to a critical question: what is a perfect game in baseball?
A perfect game in baseball refers to when a pitcher strikes out all of the opposing team’s batters in a row in all nine innings. It means the pitcher does not commit any defensive errors like a hit-by-pitch nor throw more than three balls at the batter.
To date, teams in the Major League Baseball (MLB) have managed only 23 perfect games. For context, a typical MLB season has about 2,500 games, and perfect games have been recorded at an interval of roughly eight years. It means it takes approximately 20,000 matches to see a perfect game, which is not even an accurate estimate. So why is scoring a perfect game so challenging? Well, it might help if we first learn the basics of baseball.
The Basics Of Baseball
According to Statista, the Major League Baseball (MLB) was the second most followed league in the United States in 2019. While 33% of sports fans in the country said they followed the National Football League (NFL), 16% rooted for MLB, 10% for the National Basketball Association league (NBA), and 3% for Major League Soccer (MLS).
Moreover, a glance at the money the MLB has earned over the past two decades underlines Americans’ love for the sport. During this time, the average franchise value of MLB franchises rose exponentially. For instance, Statista figures show that the average franchise value of MLB franchises in 2002 was $286 million. In under 20 years, this value is up 566% to approximately $1.91 billion.
The sport is so deeply ingrained into the country’s culture that the National Archives dubs it “America’s favorite pastime.” Fans do not just love it for sport – Baseball has played a critical role in the country’s desire to heal racial differences and marshaling political support for popular courses.
Building on this support, the sport expanded into the MLB, incorporating the American and National Leagues. However, one must acknowledge that baseball is popular in North America and a few other places like Japan and South Korea, where the natives interact substantially with Americans. One of the reasons few people worldwide enjoy the sport is an inadequate understanding of how it works.
How Baseball Works
Baseball is one of the oldest sports in the world that currently enjoy substantial support. Although at first glance, the sport appears easy, perhaps that is why some find it joyless. After all, players spend up to three hours throwing a ball at another player with a stick who swings and either misses or hits.
A single baseball game includes two teams, and each team fields nine players per game. Each game has nine rounds or innings – one inning is complete when each team bats once.
Typically, a baseball game begins with the home team on the defense. It means the home team will start pitching, and the visitors will start at the home plate – with one of their players batting.
The visiting team with their player at bat is said to be on the offense. Therefore, the objective for the pitcher is to out the batter by obtaining three strikes or a fly-out. Outing a batter means eliminating them before they make the run to first base.
In the first half of the first inning, the home team’s pitcher throws the ball at the visiting team’s batter located at the home plate. The batter has a few milliseconds to make up his mind – whether to swing or not. If he swings and hits the ball, he will start running to first base after the defending players catch the ball.
However, the batter can only start running if the ball falls with the field’s fairground and if the ball bounces on the field once before being caught. If the batter hits the ball and ends up in the foul ground, the umpire will call one strike.
On the other hand, the batter might decide to take the pitch (meaning he does not swing the bat). In this case, the umpire will call one strike if the ball breezes through the strike zone. But this does not have to be the case because the rules state that the pitch results in a strike as long as the batter swings and misses (regardless of where the ball passes).
The story is different when the batter takes the pitch (does not swing) and the ball passes outside the strike zone. Here, the umpire will call a ball. The batter can walk to the first base if he keeps the strike count below three and receives four balls.
The pitcher’s objective is to out the batter during the game, which could come after three strikes, a fly-out, tap-out, or any other means. The teams exchange positions when the team on offense loses three batters.
For the batter, the objective is to run to the first base. This could happen when they receive four balls or hits the ball far enough into the outfield to allow sufficient time to run to first base. If time allows, the batter can run all the way through the second and third base to the home plate and record a home run.
Scoring The Perfect Game
Definition
The MLB defines an official perfect game as one where a pitcher (or a combination of pitchers) eliminates all the nine batters of the opposing team consecutively in all of the nine innings. It means no batter can make it to the first base for the entire course of the match.
How To Score a Perfect Game
A pitcher could score a perfect game in three primary ways:
Minimal Perfect Game
This is a perfect game achieved by throwing a minimal number of pitches. For instance, a pitcher could throw the ball to the home plate, and the batter hits it hard. The ball then flies into the fair ground, and the defending team gets a fly-out.
As you may recall, a fly-out occurs when the catchers in the outfield catch a flying ball before it hits the ground. Of course, the batter is immediately retired after this.
Another way a team can retire a batter quickly is through tag out. Here, the batter swings and hits the ball, and starts running to base. However, the opposing team quickly catches up and tags the batter before hitting the first base.
If the pitcher retires all nine batters from the opposing team with the first pitch (either through tag out or fly out), it means the game will end with 27 pitches. This is the minimum possible number of pitches and amounts to a minimal perfect game.
Strike Out Perfect Game
Here, the pitcher throws perfect balls such that no batter makes a hit. This technique is challenging because the pitcher must successfully strike out all nine batters by ensuring they miss the ball.
No-Hitter
The MLB defines a no-hitter as the game where no batter who hits the ball gets to the base. The batter will either hit the ball to foul ground, get a fly out, or be tagged out for all nine innings.
The only way a batter can get to the first base in such a case is through a walk – where the batter receives four balls, or defensive mistakes like hit-by-pitch, a wild pitch on strike three, catcher’s interference, passed ball, or any other error.
Why Perfect Games In Baseball Are Rare
According to SBNation, the odds of an average pitcher pitching a perfect game when facing average batters in an MLB match was 0.000983% as of 2012. It means the likelihood of one perfect match happening comes once every 34 seasons.
For context, SBNation further estimated that the odds of an amateur golfer hitting a hole-in-hole was 0.000007843%, 0.0008% for 137 professional tennis matches in a row without a service break, and 0.1% for a tsunami hitting the United States Pacific Northwest in three decades.
Perfect games in baseball are rare for two primary reasons. In the first place, the pitcher must retire one batter after the other. This is a challenging feat, and very few pitchers can manage.
On the other hand, the defense must remain calm enough to avoid making errors on the field. This is because any mistake could send the batter to first base, spoiling the perfect game.
All these things are difficult to achieve in an intense game – all professional baseball games are high-pressure. Because of the intensity of the pressure, perfect games in baseball are a rare achievement.
Conclusion
Ten years after Jim Joyce denied Galarraga a perfect game, the baseballer said in an interview that he would be honored if the MLB recognized that the June 2010 game was perfect. Knowing what an accomplishment a perfect game is, one cannot help but empathize with the player.