Dallas Braden Perfection Extends His 15 Minutes Of Fame

Before today Oakland's Dallas Braden, a ninth round pick of the 2004 draft out of Texas Tech, had only 52 career starts and was probably most famous for this season's spat with Alex Rodriguez. In an April 22 game pitching against the Yankees, Rodriguez ran over the pitcher's mound as he returned to first base after a foul ball which, as one of those quirky unwritten rules of baseball, didn't please Braden. In a subsequent two week war of words through the media, Rodriguez mocked Braden and calling him "a guy that has a handful of wins in his career" and as recently as Friday concluded that "I really don't want to extend his extra 15 minutes of fame he already has”.




On Sunday, Braden extended those 15 minutes permanently when he pitched only the 19th perfect game in the history of major league baseball as he dispatched 27 Tampa Bay batters in 109 pitches, striking out six in the process. An impressive achievement for a pitcher with a W/L record well under .500 and a career xFIP nudging 5. Fangraphs noted that with a career 6.9 hits, 2.0 walks and 0.2 reaching on errors per 27 batters faced the chance of Braden pitching a perfect game was 0.001517% or, if you're a betting man, a juicy +6591900 underdog. The game lasted a shade over two hours in front of 12,228 fans at the Oakland Coliseum with most of the Yankees team who watching the game in the Fenway Park's visitor's clubhouse as they prepared for their evening game with the Red Sox. One of the few Yankees players not watching? Alex Rodriguez.





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