In baseball, there is one and only one pinnacle of excellence. It is not the home run, a world series win, nor even a perfect shutout three-game sweep of the Phillies by the NY Mets on May 28, 2010.
No, the greatest event in baseball is a PERFECT GAME.
No runs. No hits. No walks. In one hundred and forty years of Major League baseball, there have been only twenty-four perfect games. That is twenty-four out of twenty-four thousand games. .001 percent!
During a game that appears to be going perfect no one can mention the fact. Not the announcers, the coaches, nor the players on either team. It is considered bad luck and bad form to do so.
When we bottle beer, we always lose a few bottles. They fall. They are broken in the bottling machine. I drop a case.
The machine also always misses a beat. A hose breaks. Caps fly. Beer is sent everywhere but the bottles. Each event means 20 minutes of clean up and resetting the line.
Yesterday none of this was happening!!
One hour in I noticed our luck and tapped wood. After three hours I caught an errant bottle midair and thought, “wow we have had no mistakes”. I also thought," wow my old butt just caught a bottle midair".
As case after case came through the line with no mistakes, I got very excited.
With just two cases left I took a chance and painted a bottle gold. This one was to be the last one. Our crowning achievement. Our PERFECT GAME!
As the last bottle, the gold one went onto the line Corey, the brewer, took notice. His eyes went wide. He knocked wood. He scolded me. He too knew what was happening, but he also remembered the rules. Don’t jinx it. Never mention the perfect game while in the perfect game.
The line moved forward. The filling hoses topped off. The capper came down with a mighty crash… and out came our gold bottle. Out came a perfectly filled and capped beer.
We had achieved a perfect day on the line. January 23rd, 2019.
It is not work if you’re having fun.
