On July 23, 2009, Mark Buehrle retired all 27 Tampa Bay Rays he faced at U.S. Cellular Field -- saved by a bare-hand catch, consecrated by a presidential phone call, and finished in 2 hours 3 minutes by a soft-tosser who admitted he had no business doing it.
On the afternoon of July 23, 2009, Mark Buehrle was one out from history when Gabe Kapler hit a changeup deep to left-center at U.S. Cellular Field. DeWayne Wise -- a defensive replacement installed precisely for moments like this -- reached the warning track, his glove made contact, the ball popped loose against the wall, and he caught it bare-handed while falling toward the grass. The 28,036 fans on the South Side knew instantly. The 18th perfect game in Major League Baseball history had just been saved by the man subbed in to save it.
Final: White Sox 5, Tampa Bay Rays 0. Two hours and three minutes. Twenty-seven consecutive outs. Six strikeouts. 116 pitches.
Two innings before Wise's catch, Josh Fields had put the game away with a 2nd-inning grand slam -- four of the five runs, one swing. Buehrle never shook off catcher Ramón Castro once throughout the entire game. He worked fast and he worked straight. That was his operating principle.
Within minutes of the final out, President Obama -- a lifelong Sox fan who was en route from a town hall in Shaker Heights, Ohio, to the Cleveland airport -- saw the news on his BlackBerry and placed an immediate call to Buehrle. Press secretary Robert Gibbs relayed that Obama called it "an unbelievable achievement" and joked the game may have happened because he "wore a White Sox jacket to the All-Star Game last week." "As a fan, it's extraordinary," Obama told Gibbs. "When you're a White Sox fan, and I know the guy who did it, it makes it even more fun."
For the ledger: Buehrle had already authored a no-hitter against Texas on April 18, 2007 -- a 6-0 win in which he walked Sammy Sosa in the fifth and then picked him off, facing the minimum 27 batters. That game took 2 hours 3 minutes. The 2009 perfect game took 2 hours 3 minutes. The man was a metronome.
His perfect game was the second in White Sox franchise history, following Charlie Robertson's 2-0 win over Detroit on April 30, 1922 -- the 5th in MLB history, which Ty Cobb spent loudly arguing was a doctored-ball job. Philip Humber threw the third Sox perfect game on April 21, 2012, against Seattle. It somehow didn't land the same way.
Buehrle finished with 214 wins, a 3.81 ERA, five All-Star selections, four straight Gold Gloves from 2009 to 2012, and 200-plus innings pitched for 14 consecutive seasons -- a durability mark matched by only six Hall of Famers. The White Sox retired his No. 56 in 2017. He's the reference point for what South Side pitching looks like at its best: not overpowering, just correct. Seventeen years later, with the franchise in a rebuild and the number four spot in the rotation still a subject of debate, that standard is worth remembering.
Buehrle said afterward he was more nervous talking to the president than pitching the perfect game. That's a White Sox pitcher for you.