I was looking through an email advertisment from Ebbet's Field Flannels that I receive through their mailing list. This one concerned a sale on Pacific Coast League (PCL) team shirts, etc. That is not really the interesting part. What was so fascinating was the sidebar of the page displaying a "This Date in Baseball History" factoid. For May 28th, 1925: "Oakland Oaks pitcher George Boehler pitched 9 1/2 innings of no-hit ball, but lost to Sacramento on two hits and an error in the tenth." Baseball is certainly the only sport, and probably one of the very few realms of life, in which we celebrate tragedy in such a sense. Regardless of if we were rooting for one team or the other, what is most important is that true appreciators of the sport recognize the beauty in such an historical fact and tragedy. Boehler came close to an act of perfection, purity, godliness and immortality. Well, in a sense he's achieved the immortality part a bit, because 85 years later, people he never knew and wasn't related to are talking about him. Nonetheless, he came that close and still is pegged a failure. Icarus would've lit on fucking fire descending that quickly.
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