The Long Run (One Sixty-Two: Day 22)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Twenty-Two: Dallas Braden, Oakland Athletics

I always thought The Long Run was a pretty good album. It had some neat songs, from “I Can’t Tell You Why” to the title track to my favorite, “Heartache Tonight.” However, I’ve read in an interview with the Eagles that they had viewed the album as a disappointment after its release in 1979.

Their reason: The LP just wasn’t as strong as the band’s previous album, Hotel California. The Eagles felt as though they’d lost something, simply because The Long Run was deemed a very good album rather than a classic.

It’s hard to follow up on greatness. Tonight, Dallas Braden faces the same dilemma. The last time he pitched, Braden threw the 19th perfect game in Major League history. After his 109th and final pitch against the Tampa Bay Rays, Braden had thrown the best baseball game he will ever throw in his life.

So what does he do next? What if he goes six strong innings tonight, en route to a 5-2 win? Is that a failure in comparison? How do you measure everything else up against the moment when all your skills came together to produce the finest work you’ve ever delivered at the office?

As Braden takes the hill against the Los Angeles Angels, he’ll have a game plan in mind. But he also knows that there are simply too many variables to this game to allow for much perfection. A walk, an error, a stolen base, a bloop hit. Suddenly, you’re two runs behind. It doesn’t take much to soil that feeling of perfection you might have coming into the game.

Braden got his Hotel California last weekend, and that’s more than most pitchers ever find in one career. His teammates, I’m sure, are not expecting the same again. They just want a strong lefty pitcher who can help them compete for 162 games. It is, after all, a long run to October.