On a quiet Sunday afternoon in August, in front of a half-empty stadium, pitching for one ordinary team against another, Drew Rasmussen nearly made history.
Unless you’re a fan of the Tampa Bay Rays or the Milwaukee Brewers, you probably have no idea who Drew Rasmussen is. Drafted in 2018, he made his major league debut in 2020 for Milwaukee and was traded to Tampa Bay early last season. He pitched well enough to earn a spot in the Rays’ rotation, but never got to the eighth inning of a start before Sunday. And then he almost accomplished something that no MLB pitcher — not Max Scherzer, not Justin Verlander, not Shohei Ohtani or Clayton Kershaw, nobody — has done in 10 years.
Rasmussen led a perfect game into the ninth inning. In a position game with the final AL wild-card spot on the line, Rasmussen faced 24 Orioles in eight innings and knocked down all 24, one after another. He was negotiating; he had thrown only 79 pitches and reached ball three with only two batters, both in the second inning.
And then, in one of those heartbreaking moments that make sports so glorious and so heartbreaking, he threw his first pitch of the ninth, an 86 mph slice, only to see Baltimore’s Jorge Mateo throw it down the outfield line. left. Just like that, the perfect game was gone. Rasmussen would get the win, and the Rays now have a crucial series win against Baltimore in the wild-card battle, but the chance at immortality was gone.
“I mean, I’ll take it,” Rasmussen said after the game, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “eight perfect [innings]. It helps our team’s chances of winning. I wouldn’t say it was disappointing. I was so close. Very few can say they have done that.”
He is right. Nearly 235,000 major league baseball games have been played since 1876…and only 23 perfect games. They come out of the blue, and rarely from the casters you’d expect. Greg Maddux never threw one. Not Roger Clemens, not Tom Seaver, not Nolan Ryan. Do you know who has him? Guys like Philip Humber and Tom Browning and Len Barker, pitchers who had everything working in perfect harmony for nine magical innings on a single day of their careers.
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No one in the majors has pitched a perfect game since August 15, 2012, when Félix Hernández did it for the Mariners. Rasmussen may never come this close to perfection again, but given the fact that he pitched a perfect game in college for Oregon State, you never know.
What’s maddening is how many perfect games seem to end, like Rasmussen’s, in the ninth inning, glory in sight but not yet achieved. Last year, the White Sox’s Carlos Rodón lost perfection in the ninth when he hit a Cleveland batter in the foot. In 2015, Scherzer, then with Washington, hit a two-out batter in the ninth. Yu Darvish of Texas knocked down 26 batters before the 27th threw a return hit up the middle. And in one of the worst umpiring atrocities in sports, Detroit’s Armando Galarraga lost a perfect game when an umpire incorrectly ruled a runner safe at first with two men out in the ninth. In all, 13 potential perfect games have been botched by the 27th-place hitter.
Baseball is the worst of all sports because it obsesses over its own mythology, all the “Field of Dreams” molasses, and nostalgia for the good old days that always threaten to overshadow today’s players and games. But at times like this, when someone rises up to touch immortality, there really is something to all that “Baseball Is Life” jazz.
On any given day, you can achieve perfection. And if you don’t, you get up the next day and start shooting again. Because you never know what could happen then, either.
This story was adapted from Read & React, the morning newsletter of Yahoo Sports. To subscribe and receive the newsletter for free in your inbox every morning, click here.
ST PETERSBURG, FLORIDA – AUGUST 14: Drew Rasmussen #57 of the Tampa Bay Rays reacts during the ninth inning against the Baltimore Orioles at Tropicana Field on August 14, 2022 in St. Petersburg, Florida. (Photo by Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Images)
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Contact Jay Busbee at [email protected] or on Twitter at @jaybusbee.
Source: sports.yahoo.com