Braden Walks the Walk into History

The sports world doesn’t normally like someone who talks too much. Fans and media will admonish a player like Derek Jeter for giving the stock, safe answers, but when a player is outspoken, he is called an idiot, a malcontent, and someone just looking for attention. In truth, we want out athletes to speak about the desire to win and little else. We have even stricter standards for new players. Those players must actually prove something before they even get the chance to utter a word that will be accepted. For that very reason, the Oakland A’s Dallas Braden was becoming a punch line to many jokes around Baseball. After all, he went after Alex Rodriguez after the future Hall of Famer had the audacity to walk across the mound. While that “un-written” rule does have truth in some circles, most could not believe that Braden would not only react that way during the game, but also continue to talk about it for weeks after the incident. That disbelief is exacerbated when one considers that the southpaw has a 17-23, 4.62 ERA record in his four seasons. And yet, Braden continued to talk.

And, he talked some more. He was even beginning to make Alex Rodriguez look like the victim when he spoke about how people from his hometown handle problems. Here was a pitcher, with virtually no track record, speaking his mind, insulting one of the best hitters of all-time. One would think that that the media and fans would love someone who had the courage (with a touch of craziness) to say things that most have written and spoken about the Yankees’ third baseman. But, it was the opposite. The more Braden talked, the more he struggled. The more he struggled, the more he became fodder for bad jokes.

After giving Rodriguez a verbal beating and while beating the Yankees on April 22^nd, Braden would struggle in his next two starts. On April 28^th, the Tampa Rays battered him for 6 runs on 8 hits along with 3 walks in just 4 innings of work. Braden would follow that start up by allowing 11 hits in 7 innings to the Texas Rangers. On Sunday, Mother’s Day, Dallas Braden wouldn’t just talk. He would walk that walk to join just 18 other pitchers. On Sunday, Braden was perfect. For all of the talking and subsequent abuse thrown his way, Dallas Braden did what everyone will accept from an outspoken athlete. He did something extraordinary. And, the extraordinary came in the same fashion as Braden’s altercation and behavior with Rodriguez. His perfect game came with surprisingly meaningful setting, against an unlikely opponent, and in such an odd, different fashion.

Domination of a Different Sort

Braden became the 19^th pitcher to ever throw a perfect game. In just his 68^th career appearance, Braden will forever become a part of Baseball lore. His is the southpaw pitcher who tamed an offense that headed into the game with the sport’s best record, a team batting line of .257/.338/.416 (ranking 5^th, 6^th, 6^th in the AL), and winners of 12 of their last 16 games. He tamed a team that battered him must two starts ago. He did it to a team that was the victim of a perfect game just last July. The Rays’ were also the team that Mark Buehrle pitched his historical masterpiece. Perfect games are rare enough, let alone having back-to-back instances thrown against the same team. Two, essentially, soft-tossing southpaws were able to achieve perfection against a talented lineup that features patient hitters who also have quite a bit of speed. Surely, it is coincidental, but the Rays are a difficult team to get a win against, let alone be perfect against. Braden completed the rare feat without breaking 90 miles per hour on the radar gun. His 109 pitches averaged just 86.75 miles per hour. His sinker averaged just 85 miles per hour while his changeup clocked in at an average of 70 MPH. He threw 77 of his 109 pitches for strikes. While that is not surprising, consider that Braden had all but 5 pitches either called for a strike or put into play. That’s right, Braden was only able to elicit five swings and misses for the entire game. Pitching a perfect game is a rare accomplishment, an incredible accomplishment. It is even more rare when that perfection comes with so many balls put into play. He literally defied the great odds when nothing, not a swinging bunt or a soft groundball allowed a fast runner to get on. No ball found a hole. Save for the couple of lineouts to left field, no batted ball even challenged the quest for the perfect game. That’s just as rare and just as odd as an inexperienced pitcher barking at a future Hall of Famer for stepping foot on a mound.

The Storyline

Most analysts interested solely in the results will simply shrug at the surroundings of Braden’s perfecto. Surely, the surroundings would likely be on Disney’s rejected pile for a potential film, but they are there and they are important. Braden lost his Mother to cancer as a high school senior. His performance on Mother’s Day during Major League Baseball’s campaign for breast cancer awareness is significant. Some may call it irrelevant or corny, but cancer is never corny. Losing a parent at a young age is never corny. Watching Braden embrace and cry with his grandmother isn’t corny. It is about a person overcoming obstacles in a young life, overcoming obstacles during the early stages of his career. That last sentence may sound corny, but sometimes reality is corny. Reality isn’t corny enough so perhaps the best thing to do is to grab hold of these moments, not trivialize them, and fully appreciate the fragility of that moment. Cancer has hit most people in some form. It hit Dallas Braden’s life by taking his Mother. The highest individual accomplishment he’ll ever have on a Major League pitching mound happened on Mother’s Day with the Stadium adorned in pink.

Staying True

The perfect game might have been the perfect opportunity for Braden to back peddle from the Alex Rodriguez talk. He didn’t; his grandmother didn’t. Both mentioned Rodriguez and Braden is still holding true to his anger with Rodriguez’s perceived violation of Baseball etiquette.  However misguided one believes Braden’s anger is, one thing is now for certain. It is not just a show. If it were, Braden could easily back off and bask in his newly found fame as one of just 19 men to ever throw a perfect game. He could bask in the glory that he did it without a 90 MPH fastball, without making many hitters swing and miss, and against an opponent who many feel is the best team in the game by a wide margin. But, he continues to talk about Rodriguez’s disrespect for the game and his perceived selfishness. His feelings and actions remain the same despite his new and improved status.

Braden may have launched his name into mainstream consciousness as the guy who didn’t want his mound walked on by Alex Rodriguez, but he is now the guy who pitched a perfect game in the Major Leagues during some pretty special circumstances. He has been talking for a few weeks and has been a punchline to many “15 minutes of fame” jokes. With yesterday’s performance, those 15 minutes just got extended, indefinitely.

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