Being Perfect Is Hard, But You Get Over It
Friday, July 24th, 2009Mark Buehrle’s perfect game yesterday against the Tampa Bay Rays brought me back to my youth and the days I was a mega-fan. I was glued to my radio, listening as my idol, Sandy Koufax, threw a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs and needed to - since the Dodgers only scored one run, making the win just as nailbiting as whether Sandy was going to get his fourth no-no in four years, his first of the 27 up, 27 down variety.
Nearly a decade earlier, I remember agonizing with my beloved Dodgers as they were on the receiving end of a perfect game against the hated Yankees. It wasn’t even thrown by one of their top pitchers. And not only did Don Larsen stifle my guys, but he did it in the World Series! Pretty traumatic for an eight-year-old. The difference between the two games was one was performed by a one-hit (actually, no-hit) wonder while the other gem was by a first ballot Hall-of-Famer.
The one “perfect game” I saw in which I truly felt sorry for the competitor was when the 14-year-old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci scored a perfect 10 on the uneven bars. It was on the world’s biggest stage, the 1976 Olympics. She followed that with six additional 10’s. At the time, I was 28 and the first thought I had was, “She’s 14 . . . and she’s perfect! Where can she possibly go from here? What does she have to look forward to? What goal is there for her to aspire to now that she’s achieved perfection? What, do it again? Then what?Â
I wondered if it was too much, too soon. Then again, how was I to judge? The closest I ever came to being perfect was going 5-5, with two home runs, a triple, a walk and six runs scored in a summer rec league baseball game. It’s recorded - somewhere - but that feat never quite rose to the popularity of Nadia’s achievement - nor was there ever composed a song called “Jack’s Theme.”Â
Comaneci continued with her gymnastics career, earning two golds (one of those was a tie for first) and a silver medal in the 1980 Olympic Games. Such a disappointing showing undoubtedly led to her retirement the following year at the ripe old age of nineteen.  It was then she must have heeded American best selling author and journalist Anna Quindlen’s advice:
“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”Â