Oakland's Dallas Braden joined one of baseball's most exclusive clubs Sunday, throwing a perfect game against Tampa Bay.

Baseball and bowling are the only sports that have perfect games. Perfection is an odd concept in any sport that puts one side in opposition to another. Is a rout in tennis or football or basketball the result of greatness on one side or wretchedness on the other? The answer, usually, is a mix of both.

The closest football comes to recognizing perfection is a passer rating of 158.3, a number that mocks the very ideal it measures. (And that maximum rating doesn't require perfection, since you can achieve it with a 77.5 completion percentage.)

A 300 game in bowling is too common to be treated with awe at the highest levels of the game - impressive, yes, but hardly a phenomenon. But a perfect game in major-league baseball - 27 up, 27 down - has happened just 19 times in 135 years.

The set of perfect games contains a host of oddities and surprises. Of the 19 games, including Don Larsen's 1956 World Series effort, 14 were pitched at home and only five on the road.

Nine were thrown in baseball's first 100 years and 10 in the last 30. Of the 10 pitched since 1980, seven came in games utilizing the DH. Six of the 19 pitchers are in the Hall of Fame, and one is in the U.S. Senate. The Cooperstown total will reach seven when Randy Johnson's five-year waiting period is over.

Only three pitchers have pitched perfect games and won Cy Young Awards: Sandy Koufax, Catfish Hunter and Johnson. Only Koufax did both in the same year. The 17 who have finished their careers averaged 186 wins (166 if you ignore Cy Young's 511). Four wound up with career records under .500 (Lee Richmond, Charlie Robertson, Larsen and Len Barker).

The best record held by any team when a perfect game was thrown against it was 22-8 (.733) by Tampa Bay on Sunday, giving Braden an instant entry in the perfect-game record book by a wide margin. The previous best had been 95-63 (.601) by the 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers, including their four World Series games before Larsen beat them. For two pitchers - David Cone and Mark Buehrle - the perfectos were their only shutouts of the season.

Any perfect game is memorable, but some are more noteworthy than others:

Lee Richmond, June 12, 1880: The first one recorded, in the National League's fifth season, contained something no other perfect game has had: an outfield assist. Lon Knight, Worcester's right fielder, threw out a slow-running Cleveland hitter at first base. Five days after Richmond's gem, John Montgomery Ward threw a perfect game of his own for the National League's second. The third wouldn't come for another 84 years.

Addie Joss, Oct. 2, 1908: Six games were left in the season when Cleveland's Joss faced off against Chicago's Ed Walsh. Cleveland was a half-game out of first place, with Chicago even in the loss column and one game further back. Walsh pitched a great game, striking out 15 in eight innings. But under pennant-race pressure, Joss retired all 27 hitters. Detroit wound up winning the pennant. Joss pitched two more years, then died of tubercular meningitis in April 1911. A team of All-Stars played a benefit game against Cleveland that July, raising nearly $13,000 for his widow and family.

Charlie Robertson, April 30, 1922: There has to be a worst perfect game, and this is probably it. Robertson was making his fourth career start for the White Sox. The Tigers were 4-10, and manager Ty Cobb was batting .111. After achieving baseball immortality, Robertson posted a 49-80 career record for three teams.

Sandy Koufax, Sept. 9, 1965: Koufax's gem against the Chicago Cubs took just an hour and 43 minutes. It helped that the Cubs' Bob Hendley threw a one-hitter of his own. The only man to reach base all day was Lou Johnson, who walked in the fifth, advanced on a sacrifice, stole third and came home on the catcher's wild throw. (This was a typical rally for the mid-1960s Dodgers.) Johnson then broke up the double no-hitter with a double in the seventh.

Len Barker, May 15, 1981: Anyone who saw Len Barker throw a pitch at Fenway Park in 1978 that landed halfway up the screen below the press box had to be shocked when he threw a perfect game against the Blue Jays three years later. He threw just 19 balls in recording the 27 outs. The game is also notable for the Dallas writer who cracked, "How can it be perfect if it happened in Cleveland?"

Mike Witt, Sept. 30, 1984: Teams like to play quick games on the last day of the season, the ultimate getaway day. But the Texas Rangers took this to an extreme against the Angels, failing to reach base all day and hitting the showers after just an hour and 49 minutes. Texas center fielder Mickey Rivers entered the game - the last of his career - needing to avoid going 0-for-4 or worse to end the season with a .300 batting average. As Texas' leadoff hitter, he was 0-for-3 and standing in the on-deck circle when the game and season ended.

David Cone, July 18, 1999: The only regular-season interleague perfect game, which Cone pitched for the Yankees against the Montreal Expos. It was Yogi Berra Day at Yankee Stadium, and Berra caught the ceremonial first pitch from Larsen. It was also the only perfect game that included a rain delay, one that lasted 33 minutes.

A few final random facts:

The 13th perfect game came on July 28, 1991, by Dennis Martinez. The 14th was exactly three years later - July 28, 1994, by Kenny Rogers.

There has never been a perfect game in August.

Tampa Bay is the first team to face two perfect games in less than a year: Mark Buerhle's last July and Braden's on Sunday.

There were no perfect games in the 1910s, ‘30s, ‘40s or ‘70s. There were four in the 1990s, during baseball's steroid era. Some things defy explanation; they simply are.