Wise In The Sky And Mark Buehrle's Sublime South Side Perfection

It was 27 Rays up, and 27 Rays stung.

The Cell on the south side of Chicago was rocking on a muggy Thursday afternoon, white and black shirts standing and cheering the pandemonium, black jerseys loitering in the dugout with their caps pulled to their brow and business at the forefront. The business happened to be a bit bigger than Chicago’s 5-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays, though.

If you would have told the thousands of men and women who took a day off work to enjoy some day baseball that they would come to the ballpark and see the White Sox win—a win that would pull them into first place after hearing that the Seattle Mariners toppled the Detroit Tigers only an hour earlier—they would have been ecstatic.

But I wonder what their reaction would have been if you told them they would grab their dogs and sodas and beers and take a seat in U.S. Cellular Field to witness perfection. Would they have believed it?

You might not have believed it as Mark Buehrle climbed atop the mound hoping to simply win his 11th game and send his ball club to Detroit to begin their weekend series with the Tigers on a high note, only because who (besides me) goes to a game daring the baseball gods to give them 27 consecutive outs?

And you might not have believed it as Evan Longoria smashed a line drive in the fourth inning, only for it to find its way into shortstop Alexei Ramirez’s glove. And you probably would have doubted it when Pat Burrell put together one of the game’s toughest at bats in the eighth inning, smashing a pitch down the line that landed inches foul before hitting a line drive off the end of the bat that nestled into Gordon Beckham’s glove at third.

It’s only a matter of time before one of those bleeders finds a comfy patch of outfield grass, right?

But perfection has an odd quality about it, one that wouldn’t agree with a thief in the night.

Perfection makes its presence known before being bestowed upon you. Perfection is Brock Lesnar landing a right hook, begging for you to get up, waiting for you to come to become just coherent enough so you can recognize him, and then finishing the pulverization of your face. Perfection is a bell and you are just another one of Pavlov’s dogs. It’s tangible, it’s scintillating, and it’s polarizing in nature. Perfection doesn’t try to hide.

With eight full innings in the books, the Cell’s Crazies were beginning to believe the magic that was brewing. Do you know who Dewayne Wise is? No? Well now you will. After what Wise did to open up the top of the ninth inning, Chicago didn’t just believe the impossible, they expected it. We all did.

Wise was entered as a defensive replacement in center field to begin the ninth inning, with Scott Podsednik moving over to left field, giving the White Sox their optimal amount of speed in the outfield to secure the final three outs.

Gabe Kapler strolled to the plate to leadoff, and a palpable buzz of energy hovered over the stadium. This wasn’t just about Buehrle. This was about the people. The players were giddy, the fans were hopeful, and Buehrle came out aggressive.

How do you know something special is about to happen? The young men and women who provide in-seat service to certain sections behind home plate stopped working. White Sox employees suddenly became baseball fans, if not the heartbeat of Chicago. Everyone wanted to pull up a chair and experience this.

With Buehrle working at the pace of a steaming sewing machine, the count to Kapler quickly went to 2-2. Buehrle delivered a change up, an 81 mile per hour treat over the heart of the plate and Kapler dropped the barrel on it.

As the ball took a soaring ascent to left center, the breath was vacuumed out of the ballpark. Three outs away, and the ultimate kick in Chicago’s collective groin. I was sitting two time zones away and even I felt the subsequent queasiness in the lower abdomen of such a kick.

But if there was anyone in the vicinity of the moment that was determined not to let it be ruined, it was Wise. Wise dropped his head and took off for the outfield wall. In a full sprint and about 20 feet from the wall, he looked up to locate the ball, found it, then found the wall, and elevated.

The rest will forever be in White Sox history and Buehrle’s memory.

Somehow, someway, by the grace of God or Ozzie Guillen—I’m still not quite sure which —Wise got his elbow to the top of the outfield wall as the ball found the webbing of his glove. The ball almost popped out on the way down after Wise crashed into the wall, but he had the wherewithal to cradle it back in with his bare hand.

“It was kind of crazy, man, because when I jumped, the ball hit my glove at the same time I was hitting the wall,” said Wise after the game, still euphoric. “So I didn’t realize I had caught it until I fell down and the ball was coming out of my glove, so I reached out and grabbed it … it was probably the best catch I’ve ever made because of the circumstances.”

Buehrle followed up Wise’s catch by striking out Hernandez on a yo-yo 3-2 change up and then getting Jason Bartlett to pound a 2-1 change up into the ground to Ramirez at short who scooped it up, darted it over to first base, and that was that. It’s time to party, Chicago.

Buehrle put both his hands on his head as his teammates mobbed him by the first base line. Fireworks exploded in the sky and cameras popped as Buehrle embraced his shaky wife and child. You would expect a guy who already has thrown a no-hitter to know how to handle such a downpour of joy and breathless emotion, but these things never get old. Each one marks a rebirth of a ballplayer.

As teammate Jermaine Dye snuck up behind and rubbed a towel full of shaving cream on his slicked back hair, Buehrle didn’t quite know what to feel. “I don’t know if it’s really sunk in yet,” Buehrle said. “We have a short flight to Detroit. I’m sure it will be a little hectic later.”

Sooner or later it will become real, somewhat at least, that Buehrle was indeed perfect.

So would those people who trekked down to The Cell have believed it if we told them Buehrle would be perfect?

Thanks in part to Dewayne Wise, they have to now.

You can reach Teddy Mitrosilis at [e-mail].