Almost Perfect: The Heartbreaking Pursuit of Pitching's Holy Grail [Hardcover]

As that baseball fanatic Tolstoy almost wrote, All perfect games resemble one another; each imperfect game is imperfect in its own way. Cox analyzes the 16 games between 1908 and 2015 in which pitchers retired at least the first 26 batters they faced, only to see perfection elude them.Joe Cox deftly conjures up the past, allowing us to fully consider a handful of pitchers who deserved a better fate.Almost Perfect might be narrowly viewed as an examination of the fine line between immortality and forgetability, but credit Joe Cox for leveraging the topic to expose an array of baseball history, utilizing near-misses as a platform from which to launch in-depth looks at the people and eras that have made baseball what it is today. Its a terrific look back at some engaging players and moments we might otherwise have overlooked.Almost Perfect is an entertaining and illuminating book that offers up sixteen, er, perfect examples of why falling short of perfection is often far more interesting than actually attaining it.[M]eticulously researched . . . Cox holds up their brush with perfection as a mirror for the fallible human condition. . . . Cox adds considerable pre- and postgame context to these almost-perfectos to give his subjects and the national pastime depth. . . . The ambitious effort will appeal to hard-core fans.. . . very well researched baseball fun.The rich, poignant tales of major league baseballs most hard-luck fraternitythe pitchers of its Almost-Perfect GamesFrom 1908 to 2015, there have been thirteen pitchers who have begun Major League Baseball games by retiring the first twenty-six opposing batters, but then, one out from completing a perfect game, somehow faltering (or having perfection stolen from them). Three other pitchers did successfully retire twenty-seven batters in a row, but are still not credited with perfect games. While stories of pitching the perfect game have been told and retold, Almost Perfect looks at how baseball, at its core, isl³.