“Culling the thoughts that occur when you’re standing around waiting for something to happen”

 

Thank the good lord for the genius who invented the little black bar.

That thin veil — the last line of defense between a naked body and a cold, shiver down the spine.

If there’s one thing many athletes lack, it’s shame. From Vlad Guerrero strutting nude in the Texas Ranger locker room to the high school wrestler who dons his brand new singlet on the first day of practice by dropping trou in the middle of the team’s wrestling room without hesitation or regard for the horrified sports reporter standing within eyeshot.

The Internet doesn’t have much use for black bars as athletes are innovating ways to take the nudity outside of the locker room.

Photos of Brett Favre — and allegedly of little Brett — are the latest to surface on the Internet.

The Minnesota Viking quarterback allegedly sent camera-phone pictures of his, for a lack of a funnier term, “junk” to then New York Jets Game Day host Jenn Sterger.

Here’s hoping the Vikes don’t call for any naked bootlegs on Monday night when they take on the Jets.

Some recent athletes that have gone ‘commando:’

*    If Tyler Thomas is in a beaver uniform this weekend, it won’t be of the Oregon State variety when OSU takes on the University of Arizona on the gridiron.

The offensive lineman was booted from the team in August after he was arrested on suspicion of criminal trespassing, criminal mischief and resisting arrest.

What? A guy can’t break into someone’s home with a liver soaked in booze and no clothes? Police allegedly took the belligerent Thomas down with tasers. They say the smell of burnt brisket still haunts that house.

*    Greg Cullen has found his clothes and a new job as defensive line coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Cullen, you may recall, was arrested after driving through a Wendy’s drive through in his birthday suit while coaching for the Detroit Lions. It’s a good thing for Cullen that in Jacksonville, he’s not very far from Paradise Valley Resort, a noted nudist hotspot in Northeast Georgia.

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We can’t all be perfect.

But these days, it seems that it’s becoming easier to go unblemished on the pitching mound.

Baseball prides itself on its imperfections, the anomalies unique solely inside its diamond-shaped heart.

It’s a place where flawlessness is usually reserved for myth.

So, when a pitcher tosses a perfect game, it’s considered entry into an elite fraternity — presumably Epsilon Tau Alpha or ERA to the non-Greek-speaking layman.

It’s a caste of 20 players dating back to 1880 that’s about as privileged as it is fickle when it comes to its enrollment.

Despite the discretionary company, it appears, in an age caricatured by hulking hitters, that it is now easier to toss a perfect game — AKA 27 batters up, 27 batters slink back to the dugout without reaching base. 

There have been 11 perfect games thrown since Len Barker, a man known around the Cleveland Indian clubhouse as “the Big Donkey,” got stubborn with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1981.

That’d be a dozen perfectos, had Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga not been fleeced by Jim Joyce. The first-base umpire incorrectly ruled what would have been the final out of Galarraga’s June 2 bid in Detroit to become the fraternity’s 21^st member.

Conversely, MLB only witnessed the feat nine times in the 100 years prior to Barker’s perfect game.

That’s an average of one every three years in the post-Barker era, as opposed to one every 11 years dating back to the 19^th century.

Perhaps MLB’s new steroid-testing policy has done to the long ball what debit cards did to the panhandling industry — that is, systematically destroy a once-profitable market.

Maybe it’s the pitchers who are much stronger? Of the 65 players suspended by MLB since 2004 for using performance-enhancing supplements, 34 of them were pitchers.

None of them — it should be noted — are members of the perfect game fraternity.

While it can’t be determined whether or not science is being used to gain perfection, we can use science to predict the next one.

Of the 20 perfect game thrown, seven of them have been thrown in May — the most of any month by far.

None have ever been tossed under the humidity of August.

Chalk it up to fresh arms, colder weather and chillier bats.

 

PERFECT GAMES BY MONTH

April – 1

May – 7

June – 3

July – 4

August – 0

Sept. – 3

Oct. – 2

 

It also helps to be pitching on the Lord’s Day to trap a little divine mound magic. Seven of the 20 perfect games occurred on a Sunday afternoon — the most of any day of the week.

Also a mere six of the 20 have been thrown on the road.

Does a foreign city plus the lure of performance inhibitors equate to perfection?

Only one has been thrown on a Tuesday. Monday’s only perfect game was the biggest anomaly of them all: Don Larsen’s call to perfection in the 1956 World Series.

Saturday has played host to two bouts with history. They happened 130 years apart in 2010 (Roy Halladay, Philadelphia Phillies) and 1880 (Lee Richmond, Worcester Ruby Legs).

 

PERFECT GAMES BY DAY OF THE WEEK

Sunday – 7

Saturday – 2

Friday – 3

Thursday – 3

Wednesday – 3

Tuesday – 1

Monday – 1

 

All of these pitchers in this class of perfection have proven to be fallible.

One of Cy Young’s MLB-record 511 career wins was perfect; but the former Cleveland Spiders is also credited with the most losses (316) in history.

There are as many pitchers with losing career records (five) in the perfect game frat as there are hall of famers.

As Joyce, Galarraga and the rest of baseball were painfully reminded last week:

Nobodie’s perfekt.

 

PERFECT GAME NOTES

 

The Florida Marlins are selling roughly 13,000 of the unsold tickets to Roy Halladay’s perfect game on May 29 in Miami. Tickets are going for face value and are selling faster than Halladay shut the Marlins.

…

Dennis Martinez (1991) and Kenny Rogers (1994) threw perfect games three years to the day on July 28.

…

Eight of the perfect games thrown have come from left-handed pitchers.

…

The combined record of pitchers who have thrown perfect games is 3,351-2,424.

 

PERFECT GAMES 

 

Roy Halladay, R*

May 29, 2010

Saturday

 

Dallas Braden, L

May 9, 2010

Sunday

 

Mark Buehrle, L

July 23, 2009

Thursday

 

Randy Johnson, L*

May 18, 2004

Tuesday

 

David Cone, R

July 18, 1999

Sunday

 

David Wells, L

May 17, 1998

Sunday

 

Kenny Rogers, L

July 28, 1994

Thursday

 

Dennis Martinez, R*

July 28, 1991

Sunday

 

Tom Browning, L

September 16, 1988

Friday

 

Mike Witt, R*

September 30, 1984

Sunday

 

Len Barker, R

May 15, 1981

Friday

 

Catfish Hunter, R

May 8, 1968

Wednesday

 

Sandy Koufax, L

September 29, 1965

Wednesday

 

Jim Bunning, R*

June 21, 1964

Sunday

 

Don Larsen, R

Oct. 8, 1956

Monday

 

Charlie Robertson, R*

April 30, 1922

Sunday

 

Addie Joss, R

Oct. 2, 1908

Friday

 

Cy Young, R

May 5, 1904

Wednesday

 

John Montgomery Ward, R

June 17, 1880

Thursday

 

Lee Richmond, L

June 12, 1880

Saturday

 *Road Game