It was some kind of Mother's Day for Oakland A's pitcher Dallas Braden, who threw a perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays Sunday, only the 19th perfect game in baseball's long history. Appropriately, his grandmother was there to witness it, and the achievement made for a great story in that his mother was a cancer victim and baseball was taking Mother's Day as an opportunity to promote cancer awareness.
Stories like these are what make sports such an alluring part of our culture. Braden threw a perfect game, but he threw it under the perfect circumstances. The story would not be the same if Braden throws the perfect game two months from now. It happened Sunday, when he happened to be pitching on Mother's Day, at home, against the right opponent (the Rays were perfected last year too by White Sox hurler Mark Buehrle). It was not only a perfect game, but a perfect moment. The scene following the last out of the game will probably end up being more memorable than the game itself. And that's the beauty of baseball, or all sports for that matter - you have the physical accomplishments, the wins and losses, the statistics - and at the end of the day, people remember storylines like Braden's. There's more to baseball than just numbers, and moments like this one prove that it's also not just a game.
It's a perfect game.
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