Where were you when Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game?
As White Sox fans, most of us can probably recall where we were at for those 123 minutes of baseball on Thursday, July 23, 2009.
I was in college, living in Pasadena. I just got to a meeting at the Cheesecake Factory on Colorado Boulevard with someone who was offering me some freelance work.
When I arrived, the Sox were in the fifth inning. At some point, I remember seeing ESPN with an alert about it. The idea at the time that Mark Buehrle, a contact pitcher, would complete a perfect game against a high-OBP team like the Tampa Bay Rays seemed impossible, so I wasn’t worried.
Although ... the meeting was taking awhile, and I was trying not to look at my phone. The more I tried to avoid it, the more my phone buzzed. Something was happening and it was big … and then the TV’s switched to the Sox game.
Look, I wanted the freelance work but I wasn’t going to miss this game. “Dave. This is going to sound completely unprofessional, but a pitcher on my favorite team is six outs away from a perfect game and I need to watch this.”
Luckily for me, Dave was also an avid sports fan, so we put our meeting on hold and directed our attention to the TV, nervously consuming every second of the game and every piece of bread and cheesecake that was on the table.
Watching Buehrle complete that perfect game was surreal. The Catch, the Hawkisms (“Call your sons! Call your daughters! Call your friends! Call your neighbors! Mark Buehrle has a perfect game going into the ninth!”), the celebration at the end with the dog-pile on Buehrle was a perfect sports moment.
For this fan and active member of the Mark Buehrle for the HOF campaign, I understood the privilege of being able to witness one of my favorite players accomplish this incredibly rare feat. (Little did I know Philip Humber would pull off the Seattle Miracle a few years later.)
I would have loved to be in Chicago for this game, or even on my couch at home, but that’s what makes moments like these special. You don’t know where you will be, or who you will be with, but somehow you find a way tune in and be apart of something that will forever connect all White Sox fans.
Where were you when Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game?
For prints and artwork inquiries visit https://www.paintedbytom.com or follow Tom on Twitter @tom_paints.
Tom Borowski grew up in Northwest Indiana as a die-hard White Sox fan during the '90s. After watching the White Sox win the World Series in 2005, Tom packed his bags and left for California to study at the Art Center College of Design. (As a side note, the two events were not related.) Since graduating, Tom has been working in animation for more than a decade. His resume includes Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Walt Disney Imagineering, Dreamworks, and Amazon to highlight a few. Working with SI and South Side Hit Pen, Tom will focus on the art of the White Sox — painting and writing about Sox images both current and historical.