September 2026

Perfection!

I don’t know how many baseball games I’ve been to in my life. I would guess it’s in the neighborhood of 1000. I joined here to get a better idea of how mny ballparks I’ve been to. By my count here, I visited #100 (when counting major league, spring training, minor league, college, collegiate summer & international) earlier this month at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and I got to see something that in those previous ~1000 games I had never seen, a Perfect Game.

I’ve never really even gotten that close. The only no-hitter I’ve seen was Chris Bosio for the Mariners when I was in elementary school. The only close calls I remember are Taylor Sinclair taking one into the 8th for the Missoula Osprey (with as I recall a major assist from the official scorer), and Stephen McCray losing on in the ninth for the Tennessee Vols vs. Binghamton University in an early season game in 2010. But in both of those games there were walks.

A perfect game in a minor league park means that not everyone is aware of what’s going on and since Thomas Pannone was pitching for the visiting team the music and sound guys didn;t get into it until the 9th. But the players knew what was up and celebrated like crazy. There were a couple line drives to the outfield, one close play at first, and a 3 ball count on a batter in the 9th, but it was a dominant performance overall.

The kids and I also saw one last Squirrels game, I would’ve gone Sunday if they had made the Championship Series, and saw them get blown out by the Baysox. Lastly, I went up to DC for a day. I saw the National Archives Museum, random monuments, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the Nationals coming back to beat the Mets in a drizzly rain. Ronny Mauricio’s home run landed near where I was sitting. Francisco Lindor’s 300th career homer and both of Andres Chaparro’s both went to Left Field.

9/7/26 Durham Bulls 0 Nashville Sounds 3 Star of the Game: Thomas Pannone

9/9/26 Richmond Flying Squirrels 3 Chesapeake Baysox 8 (left after 8 final 7-8) Star of the Game: Ethan Anderson

9/27/26 Washington Nationals 6 New York Mets 4 Star of the Game: Andres Chaparro

That will do it for in person baseball for me this year. I hope there’s Major League Baseball as scheduled next year and I hope the players come out ahead in negotiations. While I’m wishing, I wish I had the money to travel to playoff games. Maybe one day there will be one in Nats Park again. But come February I will be watching the Rams (hopefully at Carmax?) and Spiders and come spring we will go cheer for the Flying Squirrels. Because MLB does not equal baseball.