Mark Buehrle still can't believe he just threw a perfect game.

Neither can I.

The crowd at U.S. Cellular Field was hanging on every single pitch he threw from the seventh inning on. People couldn't believe what they were seeing. The usher next to me just kept walking around looking for someone to high-five. Nobody could truly comprehend what was going on. Buehrle was one of them. After Dewayne Wise made an unbelievable catch to save a home run and the perfecto, Buehrle just stood on the mound ... and laughed.

How do you even begin to describe something like that, or two outs later when the entire team was mobbing the Missouri native on the field. The left-hander had a hard time after the game. "I don't know how to explain it," Buehrle admitted. "I said I'd never throw a no-hitter, never thought I'd throw a perfect game, never thought I'd hit a home run. Never say never in this game 'cause crazy stuff can happen."

It did again Thursday afternoon in front of an announced crowd of 28,038. What makes Buehrle's feat even more impressive is that he never seemed to be overcome by the moment. Aside from laughing out on the mound and in the dugout, he actually talked about his perfect game in the dugout, as he did during his no-hitter on April 18, 2007, against the Rangers. "There's plenty of guys on their team, saying he's got a no-hitter, perfect game, and we do whenever someone else has it. The funny thing today is that A.J. [Pierzynski] came over to me [Wednesday] and said, "Hey, you got your personal catcher [in Ramon Castro] catching ya. It's kind of a longtime running joke we've had, and [A.J.'s] like, 'Just go out there and throw a no-hitter,' and I said, 'For what? I already got one of those.' He said, 'Well, throw a perfect game.' This was all before the game even started."

He wasn't the only one who wasn't afraid of the proverbial jinx. Castro had a premonition of his own. "In the seventh inning, I told [Jose] Contreras I think we're gonna do it, and he went, 'Shhhhhhh!'"

Buehrle was just trying to stay relatively calm on the mound. "I was trying to take it one batter at a time, pitch by pitch," he said. "I think if you start thinking about that and telling yourself you got a no-hitter, a perfect game, whatever, you're going to worry about messing up a pitch."

He didn't mess up a single thing Thursday, and in the process, he brought White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and some of his coaches to tears. "I never think when he can't do anything, he always [does something good]," Guillen said. "It's amazing. We're excited ... one thing about [the perfect game] it couldn't happen to a better guy."

That was a sentiment that was evident no matter which one of Buehrle's teammates you spoke with. "Every pitch was working; it was his day," Castro said.

That it certainly was, although even after Buehrle wrapped up his news conference and finished up a call with the president of the United States, it was a quote from a few minutes earlier that stuck with me the most.

"I still don't know what happened," Buehrle admitted during his first news conference.

Me neither, Mark.

As a baseball fan, I'm just glad it did.

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