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 often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they dont brag about it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not dieat least not in the actand yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. Whats the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“Struck in the wet mire
Four thousand leagues from the ninth buried city
I thought of Troy, what we had built her for.”
—Allen Tate (18991979)