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Larsen's perfect game remains gold standard 
World Series gem 50 years ago could be greatest American sports feat

By Bill Chuck
MSNBC contributor

Prior to this October there have been:

291 World Series games, 174 American League Championship Series games, 184 National League Championship Series games, 100 American League Division Series games, 92 National League Division Series games, for a grand total of 841 postseason games.

But it is so much easier to think of it as 50 years since Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in the postseason. A feat that is the greatest pitched game in the history of major league baseball and arguably the greatest single feat by an American athlete. 

While Don Larsen will tell you that records are made to be broken, he also adds, “this one can only be tied.” In baseball, the term “perfect” is an absolute and therefore cannot be modified. One pitcher cannot be “more perfect” than another, nor can a pitcher throw a “relatively perfect game;” the game is either “perfect” or it is not. There have been only 16 other perfect games in baseball’s history and while none is more perfect than the other, Don Larsen threw his perfect game at the most prominent time and against the highest level of competition.

The setting was Yankee Stadium. In those days early October meant the World Series and by Oct. 8, 1956 it was already Game 5. The Yankees were tied in the Series two games apiece against the defending World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers. In the Fall Classic the prior year the Dodgers defeated the Yankees to win their only championship in Brooklyn.

These were two immensely talented teams.

The Yankees were led by Mickey Mantle, the 1956 Triple Crown winner. Yogi Berra was behind the plate. Joe Collins was at first, Billy Martin was at second, Andy Carey was at third, Gil McDougald was the shortstop and joining the Mick in the outfield were Hank Bauer and Enos Slaughter.

The Dodgers were comprised of the players we have all read about – Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella, Carl Furillo, Sandy Amoros, Junior Gilliam … these were the Boys of Summer. 

The Series began at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and the Dodgers looked every bit like World Champs. Sal Maglie defeated Whitey Ford in the opener, 6-3. Mantle, Robinson and Hodges all homered.

In the second game the Yankees put together a 6-0 lead thanks in part to Berra's grand slam off Don Newcombe. But on that day Don Larsen’s no-wind-up delivery was not a factor. He couldn’t get the ball over the plate; he walked four in just an inning and a third and got a quick hook from Casey Stengel. The Dodgers came back to win 13-8 and Brooklyn was up in games, 2-0.

The Subway Series moved to Yankee Stadium.

Whitey Ford came back on three days rest while Walter Alston threw Roger Craig. The Dodgers led 2-1, but Enos Slaughter hit a three-run homer and the Yankees got their first win of the series, 5-3.

Game 4, saw Tom Sturdivant, behind homers from Mantle and Bauer, top Carl Erskine and, 6-2. 

The Series was tied, 2-2.

Yankees pitching coach Jim Turner and Stengel were mum (a miracle in itself) as to who would pitch Game 5.

The stories about how Don Larsen spent the night before Game 5 has become a cottage industry. Larsen long had a reputation as a partier. Larsen doesn’t deny that the reputation was deserved, and when I spent the day with him in his beautiful Idaho home he enjoyed a “sip” throughout the day. Time Magazine of 10/22/56 described Larsen as “a lighthearted playboy noted most for spectacular achievements such as wrapping his car around a Florida telephone pole during spring training.”

As Mantle wrote in, “My Favorite Summer, 1956,” “It makes a better story to say Larsen was out all night the night before he pitched, partying, and drinking, and falling down drunk.” It simply wasn’t true. Larsen had a couple of drinks and a pizza with his friend, the newspaperman Artie Richman, and went to bed before midnight. Richman and Larsen were friends from back in the days when Larsen pitched for the St. Louis Browns (Larsen was the last active Brownie to play in the majors and the first year after the Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles in 1954, Larsen went 3-21).

Richman reportedly had been told by Stengel that Larsen would pitch the next day and said to Larsen, "We can't have too much to drink because you're pitching tomorrow." Richman recounted that Larsen did say that if he did pitch tomorrow, he might throw a no-hitter.

When Larsen entered the clubhouse the next day he found that Frank Crosetti, the Yankees’ third base coach, had placed the warm-up ball for that day's game in Larsen’s spikes in his locker, signifying that he was the starting pitcher.

Game 5 was Sal Maglie (13-5, 2.89) versus Don Larsen (11-5, 3.26)
In the top of the 1st, Jim Gilliam led off by striking out and Pee Wee Reese did the same on a 3-2 slider. No one amongst the 64,519 Yankee Stadium fans would have ever imagined that the Reese at bat would be the only time Larsen went to three balls on any batter. Duke Snider then lined out to Hank Bauer and the side was retired.

Maglie quickly disposed of the Yanks 1-2-3 and the game moved to the 2nd inning.

Leading off the 2nd inning was the immortal Jackie Robinson. Robinson would retire after this World Series and the 37 year old star in an article in Look Magazine explained that “my legs are gone and I know it.” Fifty years later these words still resonate as Robinson fouled off a fastball and then hit the second pitch on a line to toward third baseman Andy Carey. The ball caromed off his glove over to shortstop Gil McDougald, who threw Robinson out by a step. 

By the time the game reached the bottom of the 4th inning, neither team had recorded a hit. By the time The Mick stepped to the plate, Larsen had retired 12 in a row, Maglie had retired 11 straight, the combined 23 in a row becoming a record that still stands. Mantle had had a tremendous season hitting .353, slamming 52 homers and knocking in 130 runs to win the Triple Crown. Using a bat he borrowed from Jerry Lumpe, a Yankees reserve who wasn’t on the postseason roster (Mantle usually used Hank Bauer’s bats), Mantle hit his third homer of the Series and Larsen and the Yankees had a 1-0 lead. Later, Mantle said, “This will be the first time a home run by me will not make the headlines.”

The most important inning for a pitcher is the inning after you take the lead and Larsen started the 5th inning by getting Robinson on a fly ball to Bauer. Up stepped Gil Hodges. A reality of pitching is that in every game there will be “mistake” pitches. The winning pitcher is the one who gets away with his “mistakes.” On a 2-2 pitch, Larsen made what Berra referred to as the only mistake he would make all day.

Because Hodges was so strong, Mantle had backed up and moved over a bit to his left. Larsen threw Hodges a slider that “hung.” Hodges swung and hit a tremendous shot to left-center field. Larsen recalls to this day that the shot would have been a home run in any other ballpark, certainly Ebbets Field. But this was Yankee Stadium with its huge center field alleys.

Mantle took off with the crack of the bat and ran full speed. Just when it appeared the ball would hit the ground, Mantle stretched out and made a backhand grab of the ball. Mantle said, “It was the greatest catch I ever made.”

Larsen needed to settle down and with a 1-1 count on the next batter, Sandy Amoros, the fielding star of the 1955 Series, Larsen was still shook. Amoros hit a long drive down the right field line, deep enough to tie the game, but was it fair or foul? World Series games have six umpires instead of the usual four so that outfield calls can be made with greater accuracy. Ed Runge was the ump down the right field line and he was the one who quickly signaled “Foul.” The quickness of the call was not reflective of the closeness of the call, when asked after the game how close the ball had been to being fair, Runge held his fingers four inches apart. After the next pitch, Amoros grounded out to Billy Martin.

In the 6th Larsen easily retired Carl Furillo, Roy Campanella and Sal Maglie, although Maglie stretched him to seven pitches, the most Larsen would throw to any batter this October day. Maglie struck out and Larsen had faced 18 Dodgers and retired them all.

In the bottom of the 6th Andy Carey led off with a single. It was only the second hit of the game for the Yankees. It was only the second hit of the game for anybody. Up stepped Larsen, who was a very good hitting pitcher. Often used as a pinch hitter, Larsen ended his career with a lifetime .242 batting average, 14 homers, 72 RBI and yet only 11 sacrifice bunts in 14 seasons. After failing twice, Larsen laid down a two-strike bunt to move Carey to second. Carey scored on a Hank Bauer single to make it a 2-0 game.

Larsen retired the Dodgers in the 7th on just eight pitches. It was 21 up and 21 down, but as the Yankees came to bat in the bottom of the inning, something happened to Larsen … he looked at the scoreboard.

Larsen will tell you with all sincerity that he had no idea he was pitching a no-hitter, “All I cared about was winning the game. That’s all I was focused on.” If Larsen didn’t know what was going on, he was the last one to notice. Vince Scully was announcing the game for the Dodgers. Mel Allen was calling the game for the Yankees and Bob Wolff was doing radio play-by-play for the independent Mutual Network. Wolff recalls that he didn’t want to jinx Larsen by using the term "no-hitter," instead saying things such as "21 up and 21 down" after seven innings (Larsen insists that he didn’t know it was a perfect game until someone told him after the game in the shower).

Larsen remembers the Yankee dugout was as quiet as a morgue. Everybody sat in the same place inning after inning, silently not wanting to whammy Larsen. They would occasionally talk to each other but never to Larsen. At the end of the 7th Larsen was having a smoke in the runway when he looked up and saw nothing but goose eggs following “BKLYN” on the scoreboard. He turned to Mantle and said, “Look at the scoreboard! Wouldn’t that be something? Two more innings to go!” Mantle shook his head, saying nothing and simply walked away to his seat.

Maglie held the Yankees in the 7th and Larsen retired the Dodgers in order in the 8th. By the time Larsen came to the plate in the bottom of the 8th inning, the announcers were running out of words to describe the tension. Wolf recalls, ''I was pitching the game with Larsen.'' While Scully thought to himself: ''Don't make a mistake. Don't say it's a no-hitter.'' 

In the bottom of the 8th, Maglie struck out Bauer, Collins and though greeted by a tremendous roar, Larsen himself. I asked him if he just wanted to strike out and get to the mound and he responded with disdain, “I was trying for a hit, I wanted to win the damn game.”

As Larsen prepared to go to the mound in the 9th, for the first time he was genuinely nervous. “My legs were like rubber when I headed out there,” he recalls, “but I had a game to win.”

Carl Furillo fouled off four pitches before he flied out to right for the first out.

Campy was the second batter and on the second pitch grounded meekly to Billy Martin. Martin was excited during these late innings that on any fly to the outfield, he was running out to make sure it wouldn’t drop.

Now it was time for No. 27 as Larsen refers to the batter with two outs in the 9th. 

It was Maglie’s turn at bat and Larsen knew that the Dodgers had a number of choices on the bench including Charlie Neal, Gino Cimoli, Rube Walker, and Don Zimmer, but the logical one to expect was Dale Mitchell.

Mitchell was a lifetime .312 hitter. He had joined the Dodgers in July of that year after a successful 10-year career with the Cleveland Indians. Perhaps even more impressive than Mitchell’s lifetime average was the fact that in 3,984 at-bats he had struck out only 119 times.

Waiting for Mitchell to be announced and come to the plate also had the effect of freezing Larsen. “I remember my knees shaking. He really scared me," Larsen said of Mitchell. "I knew how much pressure he was under. He must have been paralyzed. That made two of us." But when I asked Larsen who was more nervous him or Mitchell, Larson answered with an unequivocal, “Me!”

“I walked to the back of the mound and looked out to center field and said a little prayer, ‘Old man, get me through one more.’ I was very nervous.”

The first pitch was a fastball low and outside. The next pitch was a slider that Mitchell took for a strike. The count was 1-1.

The umpire behind the plate was Babe Pinelli. Pinelli had been a major league player for eight seasons and a National League umpire for 22 more. He was the umpire for Jackie Robinson’s first major league game and this would be Pinelli’s last game behind the plate; he had already announced his retirement. According to Larsen, Pinelli did not miss one call the entire game.

A swing and miss on a slider made it 1-2.

Larsen looked in for the sign and behind the plate Berra signaled for a fastball. Larsen hadn’t shaken off a sign all day, “Why should I? Yogi was perfect!” Berra has said, "Everything I put down he got over. His breaking ball was good and usually his breaking ball wasn't that good. Hitters probably figured he had a good fastball and slider but his breaking ball was good that day. Anything he threw went over the plate."

Larsen used the no-windup delivery that he adopted late in the season. As the pitch was about to cross the plate, Mitchell swung and fouled it back.

There would be a pitch number 97.

With the count still 1-2, Yogi called for a fastball. 

Two hours and six minutes after the first pitch Don Larsen threw a pitch that was a little high, a little outside but he insists was in the strike zone. Mitchell checked his swing, but Pinelli agreed with Larsen and raised his hand and called strike three. Mitchell turned to complain to Pinelli but as Larsen recalls, “There was no one there.”

“I knew Yogi would do something if I got the no-hitter I just didn’t know what,” remembers Larsen. Yogi came running out to Larsen, waving the ball in the air, and leapt into Larsen’s arms, creating a picture as vivid in baseball history as Alfred Eisenstaedt's LIFE photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square symbolizing the cathartic joy of V-J Day. Acclaimed author Jerry Crasnick told me, “Fifty years after the fact, Don Larsen's World Series perfect game remains one of the most powerful and enduring achievements in baseball history. And the images -- Larsen's called third strike on Dale Mitchell and celebratory embrace with catcher Yogi Berra -- are as vivid as ever. We might never see anything like it again.”

Vin Scully, in his broadcast that day said, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the greatest pitched game ever pitched in baseball history.”

The next day in the Washington Post, the great baseball writer Shirley Povich led off his column, “The million-to-one shot came in. Hell froze over. A month of Sundays hit the calendar. Don Larsen today pitched a no-hit, no-run, no-man-reach-first game in a World Series.”

Recalling the event Yankees public-address announcer Bob Sheppard said, "If Nolan Ryan had done it, if Sandy Koufax had done it, if Don Drysdale had done it, I would have nodded and said, 'Well, it could happen.' But Don Larsen?" 

Recently, Cleveland Plain-Dealer reporter Paul Hoynes recalled the magnitude of covering this event, “I read a story somewhere about the writers who were covering that game. One writer was overwhelmed by the event. He couldn't get going on his story. Hall of Famer Dick Young was sitting next to him, saw he was in trouble, leaned over and typed one of the deathless leads of our business on the writer's typewriter: "The imperfect man pitched the perfect game. It captures the unlikeliness and greatness of the event perfectly."

It took him 97 pitches to retire 27 Brooklyn Dodgers in front of 64,519 Yankee Stadium fans, 50 years ago. “Fifty is the big one” Larsen told me. Does he worry that someone else will pitch a perfect game? “Records are made to be broken,” Larsen says, “but they can only tie me, they can never beat me.”

Sports reporter Dan LeBatard told me, “(It’s) not humanly possible to be better than perfect ... add the stakes to it, and you have the best game ever pitched ... Jim Edmonds has made 10 catches as good as the one Willie Mays did ... but Mays did it in a World Series ... pressure bursts pipes, so it is pretty hard on the human psyche ... and Larsen, otherwise mediocre, was perfect when pressurized.”

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Ira Berkow on its place in history, “Don Larsen's Perfect Game in a World Series is perhaps the most unbeatable record in all of sports. The feat can be tied, though profoundly improbable, but to be topped someone has to pitch a pair of perfect games in a World Series. I think a million monkeys at typewriters over a million years would produce Hamlet quicker.”

ESPN’s Jayson Stark brilliantly shared with me what Larsen’s feat means for the game itself, “Is there any player -- especially any pitcher, and mega-especially any YANKEES pitcher -- who is more associated with one game than Don Larsen? He's one of the most magical names in baseball history. Yet I doubt most people, even most baseball fans, can tell you ANYTHING else about his career. But they can see Yogi Berra jumping into his arms in the grainy black-and-white replay machine in their heads. They know that no one else in the history of the sport -- not a single Hall of Famer, Cy Young or 20-game winner -- has ever pitched a no-hitter in a postseason game. And they know that says something about the beauty of the sport, even when it comes down to the games that matter most. Anyone can have that game, that moment, that cements his place in the lore of baseball forever. So Don Larsen is more than just a human trivia answer. He embodies what makes baseball great.”

This anniversary is a moment that all who loves baseball must share, but it represents more than just baseball, Larsen represents all of us. His lifetime record was 81-91 over 14 seasons with eight teams proved that any person can have that one moment, that one touch with immortality. There are those who have had 15 minutes of fame, but this fun-loving man and his wonderful wife, Corrine, have been celebrating this achievement for 50 years.

I asked Bill James, the baseball analyst what Larsen’s feat means, “Pitching a perfect game in the World Series is sort of like having the President of the United States call you on your cell phone when you're on a first date with your dream girl. It's a combination of eerily random good fortune and the exact right moment for random good fortune to find you. It's like winning the lottery 10 minutes after you find that perfect house you've spent the last four years looking for although you know you could never afford it. Larsen wasn't that good, really, and anyway, nobody is good enough to throw a perfect game in the World Series. It's random. It's a kiss from God. Don Larsen carries God's lipstick on his collar for the rest of his life.

Happy anniversary, Froggy.