Other North American Professional Sports Leagues
In North America’s three other major professional sports leagues (Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League) it is almost impossible for a team to play a “perfect” season, primarily because there are substantially more games in the regular season (82 in the NBA and NHL, and 162 in Major League Baseball). The Women’s National Basketball Association’s season has been between 28 and 34 games long, and it too has never produced a perfect season.
It is possible for a baseball pitcher to achieve a perfect season, taking at least one win and any number of no-decisions throughout the year. This has happened 1813 times in baseball’s history, though the majority (1171) were 1–0 seasons, mostly by relief pitchers. The best perfect season belongs to Tom Zachary of the 1929 New York Yankees, who posted a 12–0 record in 119.2 innings. No pitcher has ever achieved a perfect season while qualifying for the ERA title.
In the NBA, the 1985–86 Boston Celtics played a nearly perfect home season. During the regular season they were 40–1 (.976) in front of their home crowd, their only regular-season home loss occurred on December 6, 1985, to the Portland Trail Blazers, by the score of 121–103. The Celtics would also win all 10 of their home games in the postseason, to finish 50-1 at home.
Read more about this topic: Perfect Season
Famous quotes containing the words north, american, professional, sports and/or leagues:
“Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”
—Philip Guedalla (18891944)
“I have fallen in love with American names,”
—Stephen Vincent Benét (18981943)
“... all professional ideologies are high-minded. Hunters, for instance, would not dream of calling themselves the butchers of the woods.”
—Robert Musil (18801942)
“Reading about ethics is about as likely to improve ones behavior as reading about sports is to make one into an athlete.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)