M. Roberts Media VP of Technology Bret Jacomet, left, with Philip Humber, the former Major League Baseball pitcher who threw a perfect game for the White Sox. Humber will be the Best Preps speaker for the Longview New-Journal live broadcast in May, honoring the best student-athletes in East Texas.

Wednesday was interesting at the newspaper. As I flipped on the computer, checked my emails and took that first sip of coffee, one of the “on this day in history” alerts came up on social media.

It said on this date in 2012, Philip Humber threw a perfect game for the Chicago White Sox. Tyler Morning Telegraph Publisher Justin Wilcox has talked about Humber being the guest speaker for our Best Preps and this year he is able to do it.

So I sent Justin an email to let him know it was the anniversary, and maybe a good day to remind our readers we will have the Best Preps show live on our website in May, highlighting the top student-athletes in East Texas.

A few minutes later, Humber was not only in the office, but sitting in my office.

I have to admit, I went down a rabbit hole earlier in the morning watching Major League Baseball videos and fan videos on YouTube of the last out of the perfect game. Then, another video had all 27 outs condensed into one, three-minute clip.

“Research,” I thought, as I started on that second cup of coffee and watched each incredible out.

In a story on our front page Thursday, Humber talked about his life and speaking to the student-athletes and our viewers during Best Preps. But we also talked baseball.

Baseball is a superstitious game. Players won’t step on the chalk foul lines, they have rituals. And during a no-hitter or perfect game, they don’t talk to the pitcher, they think they will jinx him.

In case you don’t know, Humber grew up in Carthage. He went to Rice University and won a national championship. He was a No. 3 draft pick by the Mets. After his career, he lived in Tyler and is back in Carthage.

I wanted to know what was going on in the dugout during the perfect game. It turns out, he broke tradition and talked to his teammates. Humber was fortunate to have Mark Buehrle as a teammate for a few years. Buehrle had thrown a no-hitter in 2007 AND a perfect game in 2009. He stayed loose by joking and talking to teammates.

So Humber did the same. As a result, there was no pressure.

Until the ninth inning.

“You think too much. I knew I had a perfect game going. But I didn’t feel the pressure until the ninth inning,” Humber said. “We are in Seattle, we (the Chicago White Sox) are the visiting team, and all of the sudden, the home fans are cheering for me.”

Humber let out a loud, “Whew.” Suddenly, my morning “research” was coming to life right before my eyes. I felt like I was at the game in 2012.

“This is a moment right here. Up to that moment it was like, ‘Another inning, another inning.’ But now, you start feeling the pressure of ‘don’t blow it, you are so close,’” Humber said. “I didn’t put pressure on myself until the last inning.”

“I went three balls on the first batter … I went 3-0 and came back and got him,” Humber said, describing a perfect 3-2 curveball for his eighth strikeout of the game. “The next guy I got on three pitches (yes you did, he flew out to right on an 0-2 pitch).”

The Mariners sent up sixth-year veteran Brendan Ryan to pinch hit. Ryan hit close to .300 and was a tough out. He started off 1-0 but dropped in an 83 mile per hour curve for a strike. Then a high curve for 2-2. He missed outside with a slider to run the count 3-2.

With everything he had left, he threw a 93 mile per hour fastball Ryan fouled back. That’s when Humber changed his thought process which fascinated me.

“The fastball. He fouls it off. So I’m thinking slider because if I don’t get a perfect game, that’s fine, but I’m going to get a no-hitter. I threw it a little more outside than I would’ve liked,” Humber said.

Give up the chance at a perfect game? Well, he threw the slider. Might have been his worst pitch of the game. But Ryan was committed to swinging at another fastball, and the off-speed pitch fooled him. His check swing was in front of the plate. The ball went flying past the catcher to the backstop. The ump called it a swing. The catcher, A.J. Pierzynski, made a perfect throw to first to end the game.

How rare was this? After the game, sportswriter Wendy Thurm figured the chance at a perfect game, studying over 15 million at bats over the years, was 0.000983 percent!

This is rare air.

“Then I’m on Letterman, it’s all over the news, President Obama calls me, they are passing out T-shirts at our next home game,” Humber said.

The game had it all. Future Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki had 4,367 hits between Japan and the majors (he had over 3,000 in America). Humber struck him out and struck out the side in the second with that slider away. In the sixth, a player tried to bunt for a base hit but Humber made the play. He finished with nine strikeouts in nine innings during the 4-0 win.

Over the years, Humber has talked about how that game ruined his career. He had a career record over .500 record before the perfect game then finished his career 16-23.

“In some ways I kind of look back on it and think, ‘Would I have been better off had I not thrown a perfect game?’ As crazy as that is to say, would my career have been better off had I not done that? Because it was such a jump in expectation and exposure,” Humber said.

Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports famously does pizza reviews all over the country. He has never and will never give a perfect 10 score to a pizza. You can’t. What if you score a pizza a 10 and you taste a better one? You keep chasing perfection.

Humber reached perfection. It all made sense. The pressure a pitcher will put on themselves is intense. Humber wanted to duplicate that effort. The fans wanted it, his coaches wanted it.

He walked away from the game with hate.

I took a sip of my third cup of coffee. I didn’t see Philip Humber, the Major League Baseball player in my office. He was no different at this moment than any player I’ve coached. When I bump into kids I coached, sure we talk about the glory days, but you always want to know what they are up to. Then you smile at their successes.

Humber is a success. If you met him today, you would know him as a commercial real estate agent, a husband and a father. He is great at all three. And oh by the way, you can visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York and see his swag on display form his perfect game.

The hate is gone from Humber. And it has to do with his son, John. He gets to watch him play with other kids under the age of 10 and have fun. Working together to learn the game. Then he remembers his perfect game.

In that amazing performance, only 9-of-27 players struck out. As a result, 18 outs had to be made by his teammates. Something else rare happened. Every single player who was on the field was responsible for at least one out.

Humber is just as proud of that as he is his accomplishment. A team player from East Texas who was given up on during his career and never quit, eventually throwing a perfect game.

As we turned off the lights and called it a night at the newspaper, it finally sunk in. Justin Wilcox picked a great speaker for Best Preps.

And he doesn’t have to be perfect.

(John Anderson is the editor of the Tyler Morning Telegraph. He can be reached at janderson@tylerpaper.com)