The perfect team needs no enhancements at the trading deadline. Enhancements are for teams with glaring imperfections, first-place outfits like the Cardinals, the Padres, the Braves, the Yankees. They admitted their imperfections by making trades. So much for them. Perfection is obviously embodied in the tied-for-third place Mets, a club that stood pat Saturday afternoon and went out Saturday night and did what a perfect team does:
Win a baseball game.
Perfection is a fifth starter, Hisanori Takahashi, striking out ten Arizona Diamondbacks in six innings.
Perfection is the lowest-ranking member of the bullpen who isn’t Oliver Perez, Manny Acosta, rolling out his second consecutive inning-and-a-third of flawless relief.
Perfection is a fourth outfielder, Jesus Feliciano, tripling to lead off the ninth and thereby imperil a 4-4 tie.
And, as if packing Hisanori Takahashi, Manny Acosta and Jesus Feliciano onto the same roster isn’t a perfect enough display of personnel, perfection is taking a piece of Kirk Gibson strategy — walking Angel Pagan and David Wright to load the bases to get to some nonentity named Carlos Beltran — and pumping a fist at it after a no-doubt sacrifice fly by Beltran renders it stupid.
Perhaps you were channeling Jack Buck, unable to believe what you just saw when Carlos flied to deep enough right and Jerry’s Mets bested Gibby’s Snakes in walkoff fashion [1]. But I was completely credulous. I had known my team was perfect ever since the deadline came and went and Omar Minaya left his chemistry-laden clubhouse undisturbed. Many players changed hands the last couple of days but our dealer sat with a hand that was pat — as pat as Misch, you might say.
We’re still tied for third, we’re still residing in the distant exurbs of contention, but ever since I learned just how perfect we are, the Mets are 1-0.
Go argue with perfection.