It wasn't that long ago that the Chicago White Sox were an under-the-radar cursed franchise. The Cubs and Red Sox got all the attention, and the Indians even had a movie made about them, but the White Sox languished with the worst of all worlds: no championships, no sympathy.
South Side Sox: Ruminations On Philip Humber
In the past ten years, though, they have a championship and two perfect games -- few, if any, teams an baseball can match that combination of excitement and rarity, though Rangers fans can come close with two pennants and Bengie Molina hitting for the cycle.
Over at South Side Sox, Jim Margalus presented some thoughts and stats and pictures related to Philip Humber's perfect game:
Humber's fastball was much more reliable for quality strikes, and he used it to his advantage later on. He and Pierzynski flipped the script on the Mariners the third time through the order, establishing the fastball and using the curve and a much-tighter slider as putaway pitches. The pitch he used to strike out Michael Saunders to record the first out of the ninth inning might have been the best slider of his life.
Margalus lists and breaks down the pitches Humber threw, and he includes pictures and .gifs of the fateful last swing. Conclusion of that last swing: Anyone who says with a rigid certainty that they’re sure it was or wasn’t a swing ... probably worth ignoring. It was that close.
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