White Sox journeyman Philip Humber tosses a perfect game

White Sox journeyman Philip Humber tosses a perfect game

It was only the 12th win of his career, even though he will turn 30 this year and has been in and out of the majors since 2006.

Did you know - there were no regular season perfect games between 1922 and 1964, although Don Larsen threw one in the 1956 World Series. That represented a span of more than 40 years without a regular season perfecto, and there was only one in the 14 years before that. That means there was only one regular season perfecto in 56 years (and that one was a fluke which I'll get to in a minute). Back in the day, a perfect game was a real rarity, but it is no longer a rare event. There have been four in the last four years, and there should have been five. Umpire Jim Joyce's incorrect call took one away from Armando Galarraga in 2010, and that would have been the third perfect game in 23 days!

About that fluke I mentioned: the only man to throw a regular season perfecto between 1908 and 1964 was an unlikely candidate, perhaps more unlikely than Philip Humber. Charlie Robertson, like Humber a White Sox hurler, came into that game with a lifetime record of 1-1. He would finish his career with a depressing record of 49 wins and 80 losses. He competed in eight major league seasons and never finished a single one of them with a winning record. So he was never any good, not even when he became an experienced hurler, but when he threw his perfect game in April of 1922, he was a greenhorn making his fourth major league start. Despite his inexperience and overall lack of talent, he threw the only regular season perfecto in that entire 56-year era, and did so against one of the better hitting clubs in major league history, a Tiger team which featured Bobby Veach (.327 with 126 RBIs that year; three times before having led the league in RBI), Harry Heilmann (four batting titles; .356 that year) and Ty Cobb (11 or 12 titles, because one is disputed; .401 that year). The 1922 Tigers scored 828 runs, 71 more than the rival Yankees of Babe Ruth and Home Run Baker. In fact, of the 21 teams which have been shut down by a perfect game, the 1922 Tigers were the least likely victims, because their team OBP was an outstanding .373. To make Robertson's perfecto even more unlikely, he did it before the Detroit fans, making him the first man in major league history to throw a perfect game on the road!

(The Tigers claimed Robertson was doctoring the ball that day and submitted several game balls to the AL office. Their appeal was rejected, but as we look back on Robertson's career we might suspect that the Tigers had a legitimate complaint.)