Glenwood Player Tosses Perfect Game
By Information Officer
From The Columbian, April 13, 2010
A perfect day for local Little Leaguer
Paul Danzer: Community sports
Little League season is less than a week old, but one area player has already experienced the game of a lifetime.
I am hesitant to highlight individual efforts from youth sports. As a general policy, we at The Columbian don’t write about youth sports events until the locals are competing at a state-level or higher. But Michael Guenther’s first game of this baseball season is worthy of an exception.
The 12-year-old struck out all 18 batters he faced in pitching a perfect game in the Glenwood Mets’ season opener on April 7.
Little League games last only six innings. That’s 18 outs. Sixteen of the batters Michael pitched to last Wednesday went down swinging. Two were called out on strikes.
“My two-seam fastball was working,” Michael said.
Michael said he didn’t realize what he was doing until after the fourth inning. “He knew what was going on,” Mets manager Mike Hellman said. “He kept saying, ‘Let me keep pitching. Let me keep pitching.’ ”
The plan, as is often the case in Little league, was to have several players pitch. But Hellman wasn’t going to deny Michael a shot at perfection. “It was pretty neat to watch,” Hellman said. Only twice did the count reach three balls. In the fifth inning,
Michael’s first three pitches to one batter were balls. But he recovered for the strikeout.
In fact, the biggest threat to Michael’s 18-strikeout day was his own team’s offense. In the fifth inning, the Mets were threatening to add to their 9-0 lead, which would have ended the game under Little League’s mercy rule.
Little League rules limit pitchers to 85 pitches in a game. Michael needed only 73 to set down 18 opponents — and then was dogpiled by teammates.
