Felix Hernandez threw a perfect game

I am in awe of creatives. As humans we tend to fetishize what we don't have and the fact remains that I'm just not all that creative. I can play a song if you put music in front of me, or memorize a speech but really whatever I do and say is only as good as the platform I have underneath me. True artists, true genius is the ability to take nothing and pull brilliance from the void.

We will, one day, watch Felix Hernandez pitch a playoff game for the Mariners in Safeco Field. It will be an atmosphere that finally causes the crowds at Seahawks and Sounders games to look south and see an equal. Felix will pitch with all of the barely controlled ferocity he possesses. The King's Court will fill the entire stadium and a national audience will know that Felix is ours and we are his, definitively, once and for all.

But that game will not be Felix's greatest achievement. His greatest achievement came one year ago today. Felix took a meaningless matinee played in front of 22,000 fans and made it art. He took nothing and created something that lasts forever. He created something perfect. I don't have much else to say about it. I'm going to watch the highlights and remember because the Mariners today have the same record as they did on this date a year ago and today we don't have Felix to make amazing from nowhere.

I was at work until the 8th. I walked next door to the Mexican restaurant and ordered a Dos Equis. I had to ask them to change the channel and the poor bartender flailed away for about 5 minutes trying to find ROOT. I may have been the first person who ever asked him to turn on the Mariners. By the time he found it the game was in the 9th. I drank in an empty bar with two other guys speaking Spanish. Felix fired that fastball to Sean Rodriguez and I didn't even wait for the strike call. I screamed, pretty sure I cried. I hugged both the dudes at the bar who were rightfully creeped out. I ran outside. All hail the King.