1,993 Attempts Later, This Guy Finally Got His Perfect Game in MVP Baseball 2005
Jay Lucarelli spent a week on TikTok trying to throw a perfect game in MVP Baseball 2005 using Roy Oswalt. Nearly two thousand attempts. He got it on try number 1,993. And somehow MLB itself noticed.
The Game That Started It All
MVP Baseball 2005 is twenty years old. EA made it, gave it a 9.2 from IGN, and then killed the franchise entirely. That was the last MLB sim EA ever released. So the game has this weird legendary status now, partly because it's genuinely great and partly because it's a tombstone. A dedicated PC community has kept it updated all this time, which is why people are still playing it in 2026.
It's a good enough game that someone decided it was worth obsessing over for a week straight. That tracks.
What Actually Happened
Lucarelli was going for a perfect game, which means 27 batters up, 27 batters down. No hits, no walks, no errors. The hardest thing you can do in baseball, real or simulated.
He did it 1,992 times and failed. On attempt 1,993 he got through it. The ninth inning almost fell apart immediately. He went 3-0 on the leadoff batter before getting a lineout to third. That's the kind of moment that ends runs. Getting out of a 3-0 count with your perfect game intact and then recording the out anyway is the whole story compressed into one pitch sequence.
The final batter was Doug Mirabelli, Red Sox catcher, pinch-hitting. Lucarelli threw a down-and-in slider. Mirabelli hit a line drive right back to the mound. Oswalt caught it. Perfect game.
Oswalt's Response is Perfect
MLB acknowledged this whole thing, which is already strange and great. But the real payoff is that Roy Oswalt himself commented on it to MLB.com: "I only wish I could have pitched 2,000 games in MLB. Good luck!"
Oswalt threw about 300 actual MLB starts in his career. Lucarelli ran virtual Oswalt out there 1,993 times in one week trying to be perfect. The real Oswalt being good-humored about it is a nice ending to a weird story.
Why This Matters Beyond the Stunt
Look, streaming "I'm going to do X until I succeed" content is not new. But there's something different about doing it in a 20-year-old baseball sim that EA abandoned. The fact that MVP Baseball 2005 still has an active PC community updating it means there are people who care about this game deeply enough to keep it alive for two decades. Lucarelli doing 1,993 attempts in a game that technically shouldn't still exist, and then getting MLB and the actual pitcher involved, is a weird convergence of things.
Perfect games in real baseball are rare enough that we remember every pitcher who's thrown one. In a sim, the math is different but the execution pressure is the same. 3-0 count in the ninth on the leadoff batter. I would have quit at attempt 50. Probably attempt 20.
The Real Question
Is he done? Or does he try again with a worse pitcher?
If I had to guess: he's not done with this game. Nobody who spends a week on a single attempt in a 2005 baseball sim is done. That's a specific kind of brain that doesn't stop.
Source: Ign