Being perfect used to mean something

Seeing Halley's Comet, issuing in a new millennium, witnessing a correct call from a World Cup referee -- these things are special because they occur so rarely.

So, too, was the baseball phenomenon known as the perfect game. More people have orbited the moon than have thrown a major-league perfect game, and when was the last time you saw somebody circling the moon?

But something weird and bad is happening in baseball this season. Perfect games, or near perfect games, are becoming common.

Last week, Paul Goydos shot a 59 at the PGA Tour's John Deere Classic and then compared the feat to a perfect game. No. A 59 is still a genuine rarity. It's happened four times in Tour events.

But 27 up and 27 down seems to be happening any given week when a pitcher faces 27 alleged hitters.

Last year, Mark Buehrle of the White Sox threw a perfect game. It was the first one in MLB since Randy Johnson five years earlier, and made sense. Johnson was world-class, and Buehrle has been a quality pitcher for a long time. Five years is about the right gap between perfectos. So Buehrle's day was a nice one for baseball, unless you were batting against him.

But this May 9, Dallas Braden of Oakland was perfect against Tampa Bay. Twenty days later, Roy Halladay of the Phillies was likewise versus the Marlins.

Two perfect games in the same year had never happened before, let alone two in the same month.

Halladay, you can understand. It seems like he's always capable of getting everybody out. He's as good as it gets. But four nights later, Armando Galarraga of Detroit had a perfect game robbed of him by an umpiring blunder.

Repeat: Armando Galarraga. That's the same Armando Galarraga who was the Tigers' fifth starter, who was just sent to the Toldeo Mud Hens to get in some work.

If that didn't prove something was fishy, on Saturday night the Reds and Phillies were playing and Halladay was involved in another near-perfect game. But he wasn't the pitcher throwing it!

Someone named Travis Wood, making his third big-league start, didn't allow a Philadelphia baserunner in the first eight innings. But it was a 0-0 game because Halladay was keeping the Reds at bay.

Travis Wood was pitching for Louisville two weeks ago, and for all we know, may be there two weeks from now. This is how it is in baseball now, where pitchers who flirt with perfect games are shuttled in and out of the International League.

This is a crazy thought, maybe, but does it seem to you like the hitting in baseball hasn't been quite as robust since they started cracking down on the use of performance-enhancing drugs?

But today's hitters could at least start taking the Flintstone vitamins that gave Sammy Sosa all his power.