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I read somewhere that the recent explosion of Perfect Games (and by extension, No Hitters) aren't as unexpected as once thought.
Go back to when 16 Major League teams playing 154 games.
Now there are 30 teams playing 162 games. Nearly twice as many teams playing more games.
In addition, there are twice as many playoff games thanks to Divisional play. Twice as many opportunities for a random event to happen.
And like most statistical models, there is rarely a uniform distribution of seemingly random events. Numbers tend to clump together.
Regardless, they're still exciting. I was at David Cone's perfect game against the Expos, it wasn't even a sold out game and I thought we'd bring the stadium down with the cheering. We even booed the home team when they started a rally in the 8th -- "get the heck off the field and let Coney finish this thing!" I can only imagine what it was like when Halladay threw one in the playoffs.
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