Talking About A Perfect Game in Baseball

With apologies to football, basketball and hockey fans – baseball has the rare perfect game, you all have the clock.

Yesterday, for only the 20th time in Major League history, Roy Halladay threw a perfect game for the Philadelphia Phillies against the Florida Marlines. Since 1880, that’s 130 years, there have been just 20 perfect games out of thousands of total games.

While Roy Halladay will get credit for the perfect game, he was quick to give credit to his teammates, for he knew, as all baseball fans know, that without the other eight men on the field that there couldn’t be a perfect game – someone’s got to call the pitches (the catcher) and someone’s got to catch the balls that are put into play (the catcher and the fielders).

I once got within one out of seeing a no-hitter at RFK stadium (before it was named after Robert Kennedy). The Washington Senators were losing to the Chicago White Sox, 1 – 0, it was the bottom of the 9th with two outs and Washington didn’t have a hit. For the only time in my life I wanted my home team to lose so I could say I saw a no-hitter. I thought it was the least the Senators could do for me, seeing as how they ended up in last place every year. But nah – they couldn’t even do that; one Senator got on base and the next guy homered and they won the game 2 –1.

Anyway, back to the perfect game – on our best days, whether it’s pitching a perfect game, or a no-hitter, or going 5 for 5, whatever the case may be, on our best days our accomplishments are never solely our own – others have contributed to them. The thing is, not only do we need to be aware and thankful for those who have built into our lives, but we ought to be intentional about building into the lives of others. I hear so many people talk about what they’re going to do for others some day – and I see that it seldom happens – we are not suddenly going to change our lives when we retire, we are not going to miraculously reverse decades of self-centered living. And then there are those funerals I’ve conducted that happened long before the deceased had planned for it…strange how that can happen.

Who am I helping throw a perfect game today? What about you, who are you helping?