How to Ruin a Perfect Game
Can't we just enjoy this?
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Mark Buehrle is not Greg Maddux. And that's OK.
If Mark Buerhle's perfect game is a rowdy, fun party, we've already unfortunately reached the stage when someone says something dumb and kills the vibe. Ladies and germs, we give you Chicago Tribune baseball columnist Phil Rogers:
And the Sox would have known what it was to experience a loss like the one the Cubs did when they allowed Greg Maddux to sign with the Braves. I sometimes have referred to Buehrle as "the left-handed Maddux," to the amusement of at least one friend who worships the ivy at Wrigley Field. But look at him now. Look at him real hard.
OK! Let's do that! Because Greg Maddux is quite possibly the greatest pitcher of all-time -- he's certainly in the top five -- while Mark Buehrle is a very good but probably not Hall of Fame pitcher who happened to both pitch a no-hitter and a perfect game in the same career. Those two things are both very cool and impressive. They do not a Hall of Famer make.
First of all, longevity: Greg Maddux was still pitching ace-quality stuff at age 36. Buehrle is still only 30. Maddux has more than 355 wins. Buehrle has 133. Maddux, in his prime, was among the greatest to ever pick up a ball: he has ten seasons in which his WHIP was lower than 1.1, and four seasons when his WHIP was lower than 1, which is sort of mind-blowing. What's more, he did it during in the heart baseball's steroids era, when pitchers were routinely flayed by hulked up superstars. If Maddux is not the greatest pitcher of all time -- that's probably a stretch, that argument, but given the other modern candidate (Roger Clemens) and his dalliance with steroids, it's certainly an argument people are having -- he is one of them.
All of which is not to take anything away from Buerhle. We love Mark Buerhle. We couldn't have been happier this week. When DeWayne Wise made that catch, our heart stopped. But to overuse hyperbole with Buerhle actually does him a disservice. He's not Greg Maddux, nor is he Pedro Martinez, nor is he Cy Young. He's Mark Buerhle. His no-hitter and perfect game are incredibly impressive feats that we will never forget. We should be able to celebrate those accomplishments -- to have our party, as it were -- without someone ruining it with undue and unfair comparisons. Can't we just love Mark Buerhle for who he is?
Let's keep this party going, folks. Just keep the really punch-drunk attendees away from the microphone.
Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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Posted Friday, Jul 24, 2009 - 10:29 AM CST
