Yoshinobu Yamamoto retired the first 23 batters and was on pace for a perfect game before Mookie Betts’ error finally gave the White Sox a baserunner with two outs in the eighth. Tristan Peters later ended the no-hit and shutout with a ninth-inning home run, b
On a night when the White Sox were one hop and one swing away from seeing baseball history unfold, Yoshinobu Yamamoto did everything he could to make the perfect game feel inevitable.
Yamamoto retired the first 23 batters, and with the stadium quieting toward the ninth, it looked like Chicago might have to watch a rare achievement happen in real time. Then the game slipped out of that script in the eighth.
With two outs in the eighth. shortstop Mookie Betts mishandled a grounder by Chase Meidroth. giving the Sox their first baserunner. Tristan Peters followed with a homer to lead off the ninth. breaking up the no-hitter and shutout—but it also arrived as too little. too late. The Dodgers won 7-1. and an eight-game home winning streak for the White Sox ended on the same night it came closest to going wrong in the most historic way possible.
The timing mattered. Peters’ homer made it so Yamamoto wasn’t going to write the kind of record that gets etched into baseball’s long memory. Instead, the Sox settled for watching a different mark fall—one they were fortunate not to experience for the first time in more than a century.
Perfect games are so scarce that the Sox had to reach back to Oct. 2, 1908, when Cleveland’s Addie Joss beat them 1-0. The no-hitter and shutout would have been another first with a much more recent echo: the last time the Twins’ Francisco Liriano did it to Chicago was May 3, 2011.
For Betts, the moment was blunt and immediate. He said he knew about the perfect game while the at-bat was happening and didn’t try to soften what went wrong.
‘‘Just a routine ground ball I missed,’’ Betts said. ‘‘Not making any excuses.’’
Dodgers manager Will Venable described what made the day difficult for Chicago even after the inning finally opened. He said Yamamoto’s command was tight from the start.
‘‘One of the best outings we’ve seen from an opponent this year,’’ Venable said. ‘‘The stuff was outstanding. Lived on the edges. We didn’t have a ton to hit. Hit a couple of balls hard, but he was in control the whole day.’’
Yamamoto, the 2025 World Series MVP, struck out seven and kept the Sox from turning contact into damage. When Chicago did make contact, it was often right at the Dodgers’ defenders.
For much of the game. it looked like Yamamoto might become the first Japanese pitcher to throw a perfect game—and the idea hung over the ninth like a question the Sox couldn’t stop answering with every out. The Dodgers star for the night didn’t change the fact that the ace had a stranglehold on the lineup.
On the offensive side, the Dodgers had their own momentum early. Shohei Ohtani returned to the lineup after missing Friday’s game with inflammation in his left knee. He led off Saturday by hitting Sox starter Sean Burke’s second pitch out to right field. Max Muncy added two more home runs.
But it was Yamamoto’s control that made the Sox feel both helpless and close—because even as they couldn’t get enough offense going, the game still flirted with the kind of record that would have made the evening unforgettable in the wrong way.
Tristan Peters’ homer gave the Sox something to hold onto. Even so, it didn’t translate into a real rally. Still, those moments after the ninth inning break have a way of sticking with players.
‘‘In the dugout, it kind of feels like we won that game after that,’’ said Miguel Vargas, the Sox third baseman. ‘‘We really needed it. We were ready for that hit, and we are happy for TP to do that.’’
Vargas also pointed to the personal link behind Yamamoto’s dominance. Vargas played with him on the Dodgers in 2024 before being dealt to the Sox.
‘‘He’s Yamamoto,’’ Vargas said. ‘‘I guess he’s that effective most of the time. We put a lot of good swings out there today, and we [stayed together] as a group. It was his day. and good for him.’’
That sense of being close—close to a perfect game. close to history—was echoed by Peters’ view of the wider arc of what baseball can do in a matter of days. The Sox had pummeled the back-to-back World Series champions 8-2 on Friday. and less than 24 hours later. the sellout crowd of 37. 832 at Rate Field was watching a very different kind of challenge.
‘‘It just shows the ups and downs of baseball that a team can go through and an offense can go through,’’ Peters said. ‘‘I wouldn’t even say we had a bad offensive day, either. I think we put together some good at-bats, and we hit the ball hard. That’s just baseball.’’
So the night ends with a familiar kind of baseball lesson: even when you avoid the most unforgiving kind of record. you still have to survive the pitcher who’s close enough to make every out feel like it could be the last one before history arrives. For the White Sox. that history didn’t happen—but the loss still did. and the streak still snapped at 8-1.
White Sox Los Angeles Dodgers Yoshinobu Yamamoto perfect game no-hitter Mookie Betts Tristan Peters Shohei Ohtani Max Muncy Miguel Vargas Will Venable Rate Field