By Jeff Ginn
Baseball is a game of statistics. Baseball fans love them. They chart everything — batting percentage, home runs, strike outs, and the list goes on.
From this mountain of statistics, we learn that certain achievements are rare. For example, it is rare when a team executes a triple play. It is rare when a batter hits for the “cycle” in a game. Those feats are roundly celebrated. But among the rarest of achievements in America’s pastime is when a pitcher throws a “perfect game.” This is when a pitcher is able to get every batter out in a nine-inning game. He faces 27 batters and sits them all down with no hits, no walks, and no errors.
Baseball has been played professionally for about 145 seasons. There have been over 217,000 games contested. Of those, only 23 have been “perfect.” If my calculations are correct, that is 0.0001 percent of the time.
“Perfection” in baseball is rare. Perfection in life is rarer still. Of the billions of people who’ve lived on earth, only one has been perfect.
The amazing thing is that the Perfect One — the Lord Jesus — sees all our errors and loves us still. He is willing to go to the record book and blot out our errors and credit his stats to us. Now that is something to celebrate!
Jeff Ginn is senior pastor of Istrouma Baptist Church in Baton Rouge. This editorial first appeared on his Facebook page.
