Nobody's Perfect, Not Even a Perfect Fool

First the good news: The Tampa Bay Rays lost this afternoon, 4-0 to the Oakland Athletics. This means the Yankees are now tied with the Rays for first place, a game ahead of them in the loss column. Pending tonight's game with the Red Sox, of course.

Now for the weird part: The winning pitcher for the A's was Dallas Braden. The guy who whined like a bitch when Alex Rodriguez crossed his mound the other day. He pitched... a perfect game.

We Yankee Fans said, "Accomplish something in the major leagues, then you can talk." Well, he listened.

These are some of the pitchers who have thrown perfect games in the major leagues: Cy Young, Addie Joss, Ernie Shore, Jim Bunning, Sandy Koufax, Catfish Hunter, Tom Browning, Dennis Martinez, Kenny Rogers, David Wells, David Cone, Randy Johnson, Mark Buhrle.

But you know who else pitched a perfect game? Charley Robertson. Don Larsen. Len Barker. Mike Witt.

Larsen did it for the Yankees in the World Series, so we remember him. Witt burned out. Barker threw a once-in-a-lifetime game, and other than that he was hopelessly wild. And Robertson? Anybody know anything else about him? Seeing as how he did it in 1922, probably not.

In other words, Braden has now done something worth remembering, but he's still a clown.

In the immortal words of Huey Lewis, "Nobody's perfect, not even a perfect fool."