Dear dimwit on the phone

I'm confused, too. No matter what, the perfect game is gone once the runner reached base, so there's really no argument that should impact the perfect/non-perfect game. If the father didn't want an error called, he presumably wanted it called a hit, so the no-hitter would be out, too.

But I've spent way too long thinking about this one, so I'm out. Maybe I'm completely missing something.

 

Oh crap. You're right. Wasn't thinking that the non-error would then end up as a hit. OOPS! Guess I WAS missing something.

 

No perfect game for that kid, or perfect posts for us in this thread.

 

At least it wasn't a ghost runner put on second base.

 

Glad to hear others are in the same boat. Several times over the weekend, this topic has slipped in and out of my head, and I've been asking myself, what exactly is the issue here?

If the kid reached on an error, then the pitcher still had a no-hitter although the perfect game was gone. Either KySportsWriter or the father was confused on the difference in terminology.

I would hope that it wasn't the sportswriter, and I would like to think KSW's larger point was trying to show that the father was a baseball idiot — something we've all faced at some time in our careers. But that doesn't really explain why KSW went out of his/her way to tweak the father about not mentioning the no-hitter in the story.

Something's missing here.

 

Y'all are correct: The error cost the kid at a shot at a perfect game, not just a no-hitter. It was in the fifth inning too, so he was getting pretty close to finishing it off.

 

The dad wanted you to call it a perfect game even though the a runner safely reached base?

 

Pretty much. Dad still wanted me to call it a perfecto because, as he put it, the batter didn't get on with a base hit.

It was a long weekend and the stuff I was posting about happened 10 or 11 years ago now, so some of the details may have been fudged a bit in my original post.

 

Gotcha. That makes sense no in that what the father wanted makes zero sense. A no hitter is open to interpretation--was it an infield hit or did the fielder muff the play. A perfect game is cut and dry--either a batter gets on base or he doesn't. No wiggle room no matter how much you yell.

 

Dear dimwit who allegedly works for a newspaper,
The reason why I never responded to your email about whether I wanted you to send me info on a local team is because you never sent me an email. You sent the email to the wrong paper. So instead of sending another reporter in my office–again, not me—a nasty gram about how we "apparently are not interested" in the story, how about asking yourself why you are apparently not interested in actually looking up the right email address to get your thing printed. You know, that skill you allegedly learned while working for a newspaper.

 

Why do people feel like they need to ask permission to send in a story tip? Just send it!

Coupled in the wagering with those who call to complain and say, "I talked to the sports editor about this last week," only to find out that a) I'm the sports editor; and b) I've never talked to you before.

 

Exactly. I had a parent contact me about his son, who never made it above backup goalie for the small-school division state runner-up prep hockey team, to ask if he could talk to me about the kid's (and a moderately-talented second-line forward) signing with an NA3HL team (that's three full levels below college, maybe more depending upon your opinion) two time zones away. Then, after directing me to the website, he insisted upon sending me a PDF of the release from the website. I mean, thanks for idiotproofing it for me, but it's not exactly Mike Babcock here. I ended up putting it on one two weeks later on a washout day.