Dallas Braden admits he was hungover for 2010 perfect game

Former MLB southpaw Dallas Braden made history on May 9, 2010, when he pitched a perfect game on Mother's Day while with the Oakland Athletics.

Braden has now admitted he wasn't at his best for that memorable outing.

While speaking with Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle (h/t Bleacher Report), Braden, who last appeared in the big leagues in 2011 and retired in 2014, said he was hungover when he took the mound to face the Tampa Bay Rays.

"Until that day, I had never treated a start or the day before a start the way I did that day," Braden explained. "It's not like I was telling myself, 'Let's get crushed and tomorrow will be awesome.' It was more like, 'Let's just forget about tomorrow.'"

Braden lost his mother to skin cancer when he was in high school, which explains why he found the night of May 8, 2010, particularly difficult. Despite feeling the effects of the previous evening, Braden notched six strikeouts and allowed zero baserunners en route to completing what Fox Sports reported to be the 19th perfect game in MLB history.

As Jay Jaffe once recalled for Sports Illustrated, David Wells was also in rough shape when he pitched his perfect game with the New York Yankees in May 1998:

In his 2003 autobiography "Perfect, I'm Not," Wells conceded that he pitched his gem "half-drunk, with bloodshot eyes, monster breath, and a raging, skull-rattling hangover," having gone to bed at 5 a.m. and gotten just an hour of sleep.