The tension in the Metrodome thickened in the bottom of the sixth inning Tuesday night. And after Carlos Gomez fouled out and Nick Punto grounded out, the home crowd murmured uncomfortably, because Mark Buehrle was doing it again. He was just 10 outs away from doing something nobody in the history of baseball had ever done: a second perfect game, and, more incredibly, a second consecutive perfect game.
He had retired the first 17 Twins he faced with the same frantic pace, and just as the Rays never seemed to get good swings against Buehrle last week, the Minnesota hitters appeared off-balance and confused. Buehrle doesn't throw hard and he doesn't have some devastating Sutter-like off-speed pitch, but the Twins looked absolutely helpless, and, somewhere in Chicago, you can bet folks were calling friends and summoning them to turn on their televisions, because something beyond special was happening.
Within baseball circles, that's what was already happening. "I'm watching," a general manager e-mailed. "He [Buehrle] is one of my favorites."
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Buster Olney
