When Mark Buehrle Has A Perfect Game Through 8, I Go To Chili's

I listened to the first 7.5 innings on XM. As the bottom of the 8th started, I rushed out of work, sped over to the nearest bar (Chili's... yeah), and watched the game with some Sox fans and off-duty employees.

"You want anything?" asked the extremely friendly bartender.

"Nah, not yet. Maybe later... if certain things happen."

She seemed oddly confused before responding: "Uh, oh, well, if you just came in here to watch it, that's O.K. by me."

Sigh.


Among fans, yet alone at my table, I sat and watched. Baseball -- when compared to hoops or football -- really isn't my game at all. But I love the White Sox and I love history, so the moment was too meaningful to deny. Being at work was an impossibility. No hitters and perfect games are so damn collective.

I glanced over at another table to see a focused dad with his antsy young son, dressed in a Jermaine Dye j-shirt.

"He's been shown the way," I thought.

A young couple in their mid 20s, maybe the only people in the place who weren't there intentionally, seemed excited only because everybody else was.

A guy decked out in a Sox hat and shirt nervously smoked a cigarette outside before rushing in for the top of the 9th. The room buckled up.

3 more, 3 more, 3 more.

The Wise catch? Good lord. The budding tension and stomach wrenching moments brought me back to the 2005 playoffs. Hawk's quote saying something like "given the circumstances, one of the best catches I've seen in 50 years in this game" continues to ring in my head.

Buehrle K'd Michel Hernandez for his second-to-last out. A 'he gone' erupted from Hawk in a tone that I don't think will ever be replicated or topped again. We witnessed a perfect game, a perfect catch, and the perfect 'he gone' all in the same game. Things do come in threes.

And that last out. Whoo. Hawk* damn near turned Alexei's first name into a prayer verse. Not to far from his "Crede!" call for Buehrle's no-no in '07. But this one was bigger. A perfect game automatically makes it bigger, yes, but there's also the first place implications. 2007 was a season of individual milestones, but it never led to anything bigger. If anything, it simply served as a lesson and reaffirmed to fans that playoffs matter more.

* - And yes, I'm aware I used Hawk as a crutch to contextualize the last three outs

But let's not look too far into the future; my favorite pitcher of all-time pitched a perfect game. All in all, a great day.