38 Pitches

Curt Schilling is a pitcher for the Red Sox. He has a blog. A day or two after each start, he posts a summary of his performance. People then comment in droves (unfortunately you have to have a WordPress account to be able to comment). On Thursday, Schilling was still pitching in the bottom of the ninth and had two outs. He was working on a no-hitter. The next batter got a single. D'OH!

In the post for that game - 6/7/07 vs. Oakland - he writes that "someone referenced Ben Davis bunting to break up a perfect game in the 8th inning in 2002. I said what I’ve always said. I never said a word about that bunt and whether or not I thought it was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and I never have. The game was 2-0 at that point, so the tying run was at the plate and the hitter was someone who’d swung the bat well against me."

Now, a perfect game means that there have been no baserunners. How then, with a 2-0 lead and a perfect game in progress, can a batter represent the tying run?