Assorted Reactions to Clayton Kershaw’s No-Hitter
Jeremy Blachman is the author of Anonymous Lawyer, a satirical novel that should make people who didn't go to law school feel good about their life choices. Read more at McSweeney's or elsewhere. He likes e-mail.
Mark Willard (LA radio guy): That was more than a perfect game. That was a perfecter game. I get it, a perfect game is 27 up, 27 down. But what Kershaw did last night was 28 up and 28 down.
No, Mark. A perfect game has been agreed to be when no runners reach base. Also, a nine inning game always has a maximum of 27 outs. Kershaw did not record 28 outs.
Scatterbrain, have you no sense of poetic speech? This isn’t a case of some behind-the-ties sabermetric-hating, cigar-toting, dumb ol’ sportswriter being stupid, that’s actually a very nice turn of phrase. The point is that Kershaw, for 28 batters, pitched well enough to create results that should have created outs, it only happened that 1 of them did not result in one for reasons out of Kershaw’s control. Kershaw pitched more than “should” have been required of him to pitch a perfect game.
No, I get all that. I just thought it was silly. Rather than complaining that his game did not fit the pre-defined criteria of a perfect game, just marvel in the amazing game that he pitched.
It just felt like Armando Galarraga all over again…
No one’s complaining but you.
Stop it. This comment doesn’t belong here in NotGraphs.
Yeah, stick to the bad jokes and memes, please.