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Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies pitched a perfect game against the Florida Marlins at Sun Life Stadium on May 29, 2010. He retired all 27 batters he faced, striking out 11, and the Phillies won 1–0. It was the 20th perfect game in Major League Baseball (MLB) history, the second by a member of the Phillies, and the second of the 2010 MLB season.

Background

Roy Halladay

Main article: Roy Halladay

At the end of the 2009 season, Halladay approached the Blue Jays front office and informed them that he was not interested in playing for a rebuilding team and that he was interested in a trade to the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees, teams he believed were capable of a World Series run.

2010 Philadelphia Phillies season

Main article: 2010 Philadelphia Phillies season

The Phillies began their 2010 season with a starting rotation of Halladay, Cole Hamels, J. A. Happ, Kyle Kendrick, and Jamie Moyer. Kendrick, who the Phillies intended to use as a reliever, was promoted to the rotation after Joe Blanton suffered an injury during spring training. Halladay, the team's new ace, received the Opening Day start, beginning the season with a game against the Washington Nationals on April 5. In his National League (NL) debut, Halladay allowed one earned run on six hits while striking out nine batters in seven innings. He earned the win in the Phillies' 11–1 rout of Washington, and teammate Jayson Werth told reporters after the game, "Roy was magnificent. He was exactly what we expected." In his next start, facing the Houston Astros on April 11, Halladay pitched his first complete game of the season. He allowed seven hits while striking out eight batters in the 2–1 Philadelphia victory.

Halladay pitched his first shutout of the season on April 21 when he faced the Atlanta Braves. He allowed only five hits in the 2–0 win, during which he also struck out seven batters and walked one. He pitched another shutout, his second with the Phillies and the 17th of his career, when Philadelphia broke the New York Mets' eight-game winning streak on May 1. Halladay allowed only three hits and one walk while striking out six batters in the 10–0 victory. Halladay's May 29 matchup against the Florida Marlins was coming off of his shortest start of the season: on May 23, the Boston Red Sox scored seven runs off of him, six earned, in 5+2⁄3 innings. The loss gave him a 6–3 record for the year, and he saw his ERA lifted from 1.64 before the game to 2.22 after. The Phillies as a team entered the game with a 27–20 record in 47 games played.

Dallas Braden's perfect game

Main article: Dallas Braden's perfect game

On May 9, 2010, Dallas Braden of the Oakland Athletics pitched the 19th perfect game in MLB history when he prevented any members of the Tampa Bay Rays from reaching base. Braden threw 106 pitches and struck out six batters; the final out of the game was made when Gabe Kapler hit a ground ball to Cliff Pennington, who threw to Daric Barton to secure the game. Only once in MLB history had two pitchers been perfect in the same season: Lee Richmond's and John Montgomery Ward's perfect games—the first and second of all time, respectively—occurred five days apart during the 1880 season. Prior to Braden, the last pitcher to throw a perfect game had been Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox, who also defeated the Rays in 2009.

Game summary

Halladay's perfect game took place on May 29, 2010, at Sun Life Stadium, the home ballpark of the Florida Marlins. The game was scheduled to begin at 7:10 p.m. (EDT), with an outside temperature of 85 °F (29 °C), cloudy skies, and 12 mph (19 km/h) winds from right field. Mike DiMuro was the home plate umpire, and Tim Welke, Jim Reynolds, and Bill Welke umpired at first, second, and third base, respectively. The starting pitcher for the Marlins was Josh Johnson, who had a 5–1 record and 2.43 ERA for the season up to that point. He entered the game with an 18-inning scoreless streak and had won his last two starts. Halladay's batterymate was catcher Carlos Ruiz, while Wilson Valdez and Juan Castro filled in for injured Jimmy Rollins and Placido Polanco at shortstop and third base, respectively.

Halladay was the second Phillies pitcher to pitch a perfect game. The first, Jim Bunning, achieved the feat on June 21, 1964. Pitching the first game of a doubleheader at Shea Stadium, Bunning retired every member of the New York Mets he faced. Additionally, Halladay was the 10th member of the Phillies to pitch a no-hitter, and the first since Kevin Millwood against the San Francisco Giants on April 27, 2003. Of the 20 MLB pitchers who had recorded a perfect game at the time, Halladay, who was 33 years and 15 days old, was the sixth-oldest.

Statistics

Broadcasting

Halladay's game was counterprogrammed against Game 1 of the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals, in which the Philadelphia Flyers faced the Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League (NHL).

Understanding that many Philadelphia sports fans watching the Flyers had missed the perfect game, Comcast SportsNet decided to rebroadcast Halladay's outing, which conflicted with Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Aftermath

Commemorative items

Sun Life Stadium, which had the capacity to seat just over 36,000 fans, had a listed attendance of 25,086 for Halladay's perfect game. The remaining game day tickets were sold both online and at the Marlins' box office at face value to commemorate Halladay's game. Prices ranged from $12 to $300, with most available under $25; the Sun-Sentinel reported that over 3,500 tickets had been purchased within five hours of going on sale. It was not the first time that game day tickets were used as perfect game memorabilia: the Chicago White Sox had done so the previous year for Mark Buehrle's 2009 game against the Tampa Bay Rays. The Marlins received criticism from sportswriters, however, for selling tickets in celebration of a game they lost. The Post-Standard wrote that the team was "commemorating their own epic failure, selling souvenirs to their day of ignominy, profiting from being on the wrong side of history", while Gwen Knapp of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the Marlins "seem to be poaching the success of the visiting Phillies". Both papers also critiqued the message the ticket sales sent to those who attended Halladay's game, who "now have no real proof that they were indeed in attendance", and whose "ticket is no longer proof of witnessing history". Samson defended his decision, saying, "No one is buying a ticket thinking they're going to the game ... It's baseball history. We're just selling tickets."

The month after pitching his perfect game, Halladay told Frank Coppenbarger, the director of team travel and clubhouse services for the Phillies, that he wanted to purchase Baume & Mercier wrist watches as gifts for the Phillies clubhouse. Halladay and Coppenbarger created a list of 67 recipients, including every player on the active roster, the coaching staff, clubhouse personnel, training and video staff, public relations officials, his children, his wife's family, and sport psychologist Harvey Dorfman. Engraved on the back of each watch was the date of the game, the line score, and the name of the recipient. Each watch was presented in a brown box which came with the inscription, "We did it together. Thanks, Roy Halladay." The watch case, meanwhile, was accompanied by a plaque reading, "Couldn't have done it without you. Thanks."

Armando Galarraga's near-perfect game

Main article: Armando Galarraga's near-perfect game

On June 2, 2010, Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers retired the first 26 batters he faced. With two outs remaining in the bottom of the ninth inning, Jason Donald of the Cleveland Indians hit a ground ball to first baseman Miguel Cabrera, who fielded it back to Galarraga. First base umpire Jim Joyce incorrectly ruled Donald safe, giving him a hit and ending the perfect game bid. Galarraga faced Trevor Crowe next, who grounded out to third base. At the time, Joyce believed that Donald had reached base safely, but after watching a video replay in the umpires' locker room, he realized that the call was incorrect and Donald should have been out. Had the game been called correctly, Galarraga's perfect game would have been the third in a span of 24 days. In 2022, a law class at Monmouth University petitioned Rob Manfred, the Commissioner of Baseball, to rule Galarraga's shutout an official perfect game.

Legacy

Halladay's perfect game was part of a dominant season for pitchers across MLB. By mid-June, 24 pitchers had an ERA below 3.00 in a sufficient number of innings to potentially qualify for the ERA title at the end of the season. At the same time, games were averaging 4.47 runs per team, the lowest number at that point in the season since 1993. By the end of July, the average team's 4.94 runs per game were the lowest at that point since the 1992 season, while pitchers were striking out an average of 7.03 batters per game, an MLB record. Only one batter, Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays, had crossed the 30-home run mark. In June, Roy Johnson of ESPN named 2010 the "Year of the Pitcher", citing Braden and Halladay's perfect games, Galarraga's near-perfect game, and Stephen Strasburg's 14-stirkeout major league debut. Sports Illustrated's Albert Chen used the term as well, and he attributed the league-wide advances in pitching to a ban on performance-enhancing drugs for batters, greater attention to the development of young pitchers, and an influx of pitching talent across MLB. At the end of the season, the league-wide batting average was its lowest since 1992, and there had been five official no-hitters and perfect games, not including Galarraga.