TheGoldSeat

An interesting take on Friday’s game from ESPN’s Buster Olney:

As Scott Baker edged toward a perfect game Friday night, the tension seemed to reflect everywhere, from his face, to the Twins dugout (where his teammates kept a continent of space between themselves and Baker), to the club’s broadcast booth.

Play-by-play man Dick Bremer and color analyst Bert Blyleven spoke openly about the possibility of a perfect game, as the middle innings rolled on. By coincidence, Bremer had been asked to sing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” at the seventh-inning stretch, but he had forgotten about that, he admitted. When a production crew approached him after Baker got the 19th, 20th and 21st outs in the top of the seventh, he thought their presence was somehow related to the special event that Baker was generating. Bremer sang, as asked, and then quickly refocused on Baker and his work.

Blyleven talked about his own no-hitter, how he had approached his catcher during the game and spoke openly about what was happening — Hey, I’m pitching a no-hitter — and he acknowledged that when he was broadcasting David Wells’s perfect game against the Twins in 1998, he had been rooting for the left-hander to complete the feat, because of its special nature.

We all remember where we were for particular moments in history. I was standing behind on a couch in Nashville when Mookie Wilson’s ground ball rolled through Bill Buckner’s legs in 1986, and sitting on the same couch when Kirk Gibson dropped his bat head on Dennis Eckersley’s slider in 1988.

But we also remember who we shared those moments with, and in this case, it would be Bremer and Blyleven, who were exceptional in describing the drama that was building — and also in mirroring the feelings of anyone was happened to be watching, whether it was in the Metrodome or via satellite, in New York.

The perfect game ended in the top of the ninth when Baker walked the leadoff hitter, but the fans in Minnesota stood and cheered, partly to honor his near-accomplishment, but partly out of encouragement; he still had a no-hitter in progress.

With one out, veteran slugger Mike Sweeney, one of the game’s great ambassadors, came to the plate as a pinch-hitter, for his first at-bat since June 17. It seemed like a good matchup for Baker, because he had been mixing a nasty slider with his fastball all night. Maybe Sweeney would roll over a breaking ball and into a doubleplay, you thought.

Baker threw. Sweeney swung. And when his looper began to drop into an area, in short left-center, where there were no fielders, your heart sank with the ball. Bummer.

“I never liked him, anyway,” Blyleven said, of Sweeney.

Perfect.

After the no-hitter was lost, the search was on for the person — or persons — who jinxed it, writes Phil Miller. The near no-hitter was the culmination of a couple of crazy weeks for Baker, writes Kelsie Smith. Sweeney described what Baker tried to do against him, within this Bob Dutton story.