The Perfect Game (Pete Rose .org)

 

Every baseball game is a perfect game! You’re outdoors, you’re wearing your team jersey, you have a beer in one hand and a hotdog in the other and you’re with your friends at the ballpark cheering on your home team!

 

What else do you need to make it more perfect than it already is?

 

Not a thing! But Major League Baseball doesn’t look at it quite that way. For them and for those who play professional baseball, it’s a different thing entirely.

 

Major League Baseball defines a “perfect game” as “a game in which a pitcher (or combination of pitchers) pitches a victory that lasts a minimum of nine innings and in which no opposing player reaches base. Thus, the pitcher (or pitchers) cannot allow any hits, walks, hit batsmen or any opposing player to reach base safely for any other reason.”

 

So there you have it! That’s the definition of a perfect game from those who know! But let’s break it down – by its very definition, it’s also a game which is a no-hitter and a shutout. No pitcher can control errors made by his teammates so it therefore follows that he must have strong and solid fielding to pitch his perfect game. And a fielding error, such as a mis-played foul ball which does not result in a base runner cannot spoil a perfect game.

 

Baseball games which are cut short by bad weather, during which a team has no base runners and those games in which a team reaches first base only in extra innings do not qualify as official perfect games under the present definition. And although it is possible for more than one pitcher to combine their efforts for a perfect game (nine occasions at MLB level for a no-hitter), to date, every major league perfect game has been thrown by a single pitcher. So there are a number of rules which dictate what a perfect game is – and what it isn’t!

 

1908 was the year when the first MLB description and use of the term "perfect game" appeared and the current, official definition of the term was formalized only twenty years ago - in 1991.

 

It seems that it’s a rare thing for a pitcher to pitch a perfect game. What does he have to do to make it happen? How many pitchers have done it so far – and who are they?

 

Good questions – all! Let’s take a look at the history of the Perfect Game and see how many pitchers have achieved it and how!

 

The long and illustrious history of Major League Baseball takes us back in time – one hundred and thirty-five years - back to 1876! And since that long-ago date, there have been fewer perfect games pitched than there have been Moon-orbiting astronauts! And nobody in MLB history has ever thrown more than one of them. According to present-day definition, only twenty perfect games have ever been thrown!

 

The first two major league perfect games were pitched in 1880, just five days apart. They took place according to rules that differed in many important respects from those of today's game; only underhand pitching from a flat, marked-out box just forty-five feet from home plate was permitted. It took eight balls to draw a walk and a batter was not awarded first base if hit by a pitch.

 

The first perfect game was pitched one hundred and thirty one years ago, by a left-handed, curve-ball pitcher named Lee Richmond. He was twenty-three years old and played for the Worcester Ruby Legs. His historic feat took place on June 12, 1880 in Worcester, Massachusetts and today, there is a granite post commemorating his achievement on the Becker College Campus. He struck out five batters, allowed just three balls to be hit out of the infield and one of his outs was when the right fielder threw the batter out at first base.

 

Lee Richmond played pro baseball for just six years, using it to finance his medical education. He went on to become a doctor and died in 1929 aged seventy-two. His name is forever recorded as a part of baseball history.

 

John (Monte) Ward was the second pitcher to throw a perfect game, just five days later, on June 17, 1880. In 1878, at the age of eighteen, Monte had contracted to play for the Providence Grays in the new National League which had started its operations just two years earlier. He started out as a pitcher and one year later, also played the outfield and third base. He pitched almost 600 innings in both 1879, leading his team to a first-place finish - and in 1880, he became player/manager for thirty-two games, winning eighteen and finishing in second place. It was during that year that Monte Ward pitched his perfect game – the second in baseball history, against the Buffalo Bisons, winning 5 – 0.

 

There would not be another perfect game pitched for almost quarter of a century!

 

In 1882, Monte Ward pitched the first longest complete game shutout in history, wiping out the Detroit Wolverines 5-0 and followed it in 1883, by moving to the New York Gothams, later the New York Giants.  He had injured his throwing arm which ended his pitching career, so he trained himself to throw with his right arm so that he could play centre field and in 1885, he played shortstop.

 

Monte Wad graduated from Columbia Law School in 1885 and led his team mates in forming the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players – this was the first sports labour union. He and the other players had been subject to the owners’ “reserve clause” which permitted owners to sign players to one-year contracts and upon their expiry, refusing to allow them to negotiate with other teams. Initially, the Bortherhood was fairly successful in its efforts to deal with other teams, especially when the owners asked them to absorb a cut in pay.

 

In 1888, the Giants finished first in the National League and won a series of playoff games, known today as the World Series. Monte and his team mates set off on a world tour while the team owners convened a winter meeting, at which they created a classification system which was designed to determine a player’s salary. Under their system, the maximum amount a player could earn in professional baseball was ,500 per year.

 

During his world tour, Monte Ward was sold to the Washington Nationals for ,000 – an enormous amount of money in those days! He abandoned the tour and returned home, insisting on a meeting with e left Hethe owners. He told them that he would not play for the Washington Nationals unless he received part of his record purchase price. The Washington Nationals refused to pay him and the deal was off. He and his Players’ Union fought to get these issues resolved and got nowhere - but this did not stop them from roaring to their second World Series in 1889!

 

Ward knew that his ongoing battles with the team owners were futile! He threatened the owners with a Players’ League, which was ignored by the owners. But they did not realize that Monte  Ward had friends and connections in the business world which helped him launch the new League. It had no reserve clause or classification system and it included a profit sharing plan for the players.

 

In 1890, the new Players’ League season started with more than half of the old National League players having joined it. It did well at the box-office, but because of the players’ profit-sharing plan, the owners became worried and quietly began selling their teams to the National League which caused the newly minted Players’ League to crash and burn!

 

Monte Ward refused to give up and decided to put his law degree to some use. He entered the legal profession in 1894, but still remained as an active participant in the fortunes of baseball. Several rules in baseball had changed in 1893 and most of them are in force today, such as the number of balls needed for a walk was reduced to four and the pitcher’s mound was moved back to sixty feet from home plate, where it remains today. As a lawyer, Monte Ward successfully represented players against the National League and later became a part-owner of the Boston Braves. In 1914, he acted as the business manager of the Brooklyn Tip-Tops, a team which was part of the brief life of the Federal League, from 1914 to 1915.

 

John Montgomery Ward’s contributions to baseball were legion – and are still recognized today. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown by the Veterans’ Committee in 1964, almost forty years after his death in 1925. His perfect game in baseball would not be matched until 1904, when the immortal Cy Young became the third pitcher in baseball history to achieve that rare distinction, against the Philadelphia A’s.

 

Cy Young was the first of the new century to pitch a perfect game.

 

As a child and then as a young man, his love was for baseball and his first appearance as a professional was in August, 1890, with the Cleveland Spiders of the National League. He quickly established his reputation as a fastball pitcher. His catcher, Chief Zimmer was said to have put a piece of beefsteak inside his catcher’s glove to protect his catching hand from Cy’s fastball. His team mates nicknamed him “Cyclone” because ballpark fences looked as if a tornado had ripped through them by the time Cy was done with hurling his fastballs!

 

It is said that one of the main reasons for moving the pitcher’s mound from forty-five feet to over sixty feet from home was because of Cy’s devastating fastballs. He pitched a three-hit shutout in his first Major League game and, on the final day of the season, he won both games of a doubleheader against Philadelphia.

 

Five years later, Cy led his team to three victories in its 4-1 games triumph against McGraw's rowdy Orioles in the 1895 Temple Cup, a precursor of the modern-day World Series. By now, CyYoung was "the premier pitcher in baseball” having completed yet another season which baseball historians regard as the best of his career. It was around this time that Cy added what he called a "slow ball" to his pitching inventory in order to reduce the stress on his pitching arm. The pitch today is called a changeup. During that memorable year, Cy Young won thirty-five games! He had won ninety-five games over the previous three years!

 

Between 1896 and 1898, Cy won seventy-four games and in 1899, he played for the St. Louis Perfectos, having transferred to that team as the Robison brothers owned both the Cleveland and St. Louis franchises. Several other Cleveland Spiders also made the move, because the ban on Sunday play had resulted in severe financial losses for the team. But St. Louis finished fifth in both 1899 and 1900 and the reorganization of the players had not built the fearsome team they had planned. In addition, the Cleveland Spiders lost 134 games before going out of business.

 

In the St. Louis team, Cy Young had found his catcher, Lou Criger who caught most of Cy’s 511 victories. They remained team mates for over ten years and the best was yet to come!

 

Starting in 1901, the American League began signing up National League players and Cy, along with Lou Criger joined the Boston Americans where they would both remain for almost ten years. Cy led the League in wins, strikeouts and ERA’s, earning the American League pitchers’ Triple Crown. And in 1902, Cy Young, with his sixth-grade education found himself coaching the pitchers at Harvard University!

 

The first World Series was in 1903; the Boston Americans against the Pittsburgh Pirates and Cy Young who opened Game One, was the pitcher who threw the first pitch in the modern-day World Series. He lost that game, but won his next two starts and Boston ended up winning the Series five games to three.

 

In 1904, the Philadelphia Athletics pitcher Rube Waddell one-hit the Boston Americans and challenged Cy Young to face him again, so that he could repeat his achievement. On May 5, 1904, Cy pitched a perfect game against Rube Waddell and the Athletics – the first perfect game in the American League. This was the centerpiece of a pitching streak for Cy - he set major league records for the most consecutive scoreless innings pitched and the most consecutive innings without allowing a hit; the latter record still stands today, at 24.1 innings, or 73 hitless batters.

 

One year later, on July 4, 1905, Rube Waddell beat Cy and his Americans, 4–2, in a 20-inning match-up. Cy pitched thirteen consecutive scoreless innings before he gave up a pair of unearned runs in the final inning. He did not walk a batter and was later quoted as saying "For my part, I think it was the greatest game of ball I ever took part in!" And in 1907, Young and Waddell faced off in a scoreless, nail-biting 13-inning tie!

 

In 1908, Cy Young pitched the third no-hitter of his career. At forty-one, he was the oldest pitcher to record a no-hitter, a record which would remain unbeaten for eighty-two years until 43-year-old Nolan Ryan achieved it. Cy would have pitched a second perfect game except for a walk. After that runner was caught stealing, no other batter reached base. At this time, Cy was the second-oldest player in either league and in another game just before his no-hitter, he allowed just one single while facing twenty-eight batters.

 

On August 13, 1908, the league celebrated "Cy Young Day." There were no American League games played on that day and a group of All-Stars from the League's other teams gathered in Boston to play against Cy Young and the Red Sox.

 

On  September 22, 1911, Cy pitched his last career win. He retired in 1912 but remained active in baseball. Twenty six years later, in 1937 he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

 

Cy Young played baseball across two centuries and retired with 511 career wins, a feat which has never been surpassed. His illustrious career was seen as a bridge between baseball’s earliest days and modern day baseball. And in 1956, one year after his death, the Cy Young Award was created for the best pitcher every season. In 1967, it was split into two awards, one for each of the two Major Leagues. It is baseball’s most prestigious award.

 

On September 23, 1993, a statue dedicated to Cy Young was unveiled by Northeastern University, on the site of the Red Sox's original stadium, the Huntingdon Avenue Grounds. It was here that Cy Young had pitched the first game of the 1903 World Series, as well as the first perfect game in baseball’s modern era.

 

Addie Joss was next; born in 1880, he played his entire baseball pitching career with the Cleveland Bronchos (Naps), whom he joined in 1902, immediately successful as a pitcher. His pitch has been described as a "corkscrew" wind-up motion, “he would completely turn his back toward the batter as he wound up, hiding the ball all the while, and then whip around and fire it!”  He believed that with a few well mastered deliveries he could acquire great control and success with less strain on his throwing arm. And Joss achieved his successes without using any of the now illegal techniques of spitballing, which could alter the ball and its trajectory.

 

Addie Joss was the fourth Major Leaguer to pitch a perfect game - on October 2, 1908, opposite pitcher Ed Walsh of the Chicago White Sox, with just seventy-four pitches! He pitched a second no-hitter two years later and both no-hitters were against the Chicago White Sox. To this day, Addie Joss is the only pitcher in Major League history to no-hit the same team twice. His baseball career was short – less than ten years. But in that time, his achievements were many and his 1.89 career ERA is ranked as an all-time second. He achieved best career WHIP (.968), ERA champion in 1904 and 1908, American League Wins Champion in 1907 and four 20-win seasons.

 

Addie Joss’s career was cut tragically short when he was diagnosed with tubercular meningitis which resulted in his early death on April 14, 1911. He was thirty-one years old.

 

Just three months later, the first ever All-Star game was played as a benefit for Addie Joss's family on July 24, 1911 against the wishes of League management. Joss’s teammates, however, would not let the issue die. They had almost caused the first-ever strike in baseball history by refusing to play in Detroit on the day of Joss’s funeral, forcing the League to reschedule the contest.

 

Joss’s friends, including manager George Stovall and pitching legend Cy Young, suggested an All-Star game be played on Monday, July 24, a day when most of the League was free from other playing commitments. The idea was met with great enthusiasm by the rest of the League and manager Jimmy McAleer of the Washington Senators was given the task of managing what one newspaper called "the greatest collection of All-Star players who ever appeared on the field in the history of the game." Shoeless Joe Jackson and Tris Speaker were there and even Ty Cobb appeared in a borrowed Cleveland uniform, saying that "Addie Joss has more friends in this city than any other man." The baseball world felt the same way.

 

Most of the All-Star players in that immortal game were later named to the Baseball Hall of Fame and young Addie Joss joined them there on August 16, 1978, nearly seventy years after his death.

 

It took another fourteen years before the next perfect game was pitched! On April 30, 1922, Charlie Robertson of the Chicago White Sox pitched the fifth perfect game in baseball history against the Detroit Tigers and became the first pitcher in baseball history to throw a perfect game on the road. His main pitch throughout his career was a slow curveball, which he liked to throw on the first pitch to a batter on any side of the plate and then he’d hurl a fastball, in the zone.

 

He had pitched in four Major League ball games and on his second start he pitched a perfect game against a team that included players like Harry Heilmann and Ty Cobb. Charlie Robertson achieved instant fame when he did exactly that against the Detroit Tigers who later complained that he had doctored the ball throughout the entire game. Until the day he died, Ty Cobb insisted that Charlie had doctored the ball and after the game, the Detroit Tigers sent several used balls from the game to the American League President Ban Johnson who found no trace of tampering or any foreign substances on any of them.

 

Following his historic feat, Charlie suffered arm troubles for the remainder of his baseball career. He pitched one season for the St Louis Browns and two years with the Boston Braves and retired from baseball in 1928, at the age of thirty-two. He died in 1984 at the age of eighty-eight years. The baseball world would have to wait thirty-four years before another perfect game was pitched!

 

And it was pitched by Don Larsen of the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers – on April 8, 1956 during Game Five of the 1956 World Series – and who wasn’t watching that?

 

Larsen’s perfect game was the only no-hitter of any type, ever pitched in post-season play, until Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies threw a no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds on October 6, 2010, in Game One of the National League Division.

 

Don Larsen’s significant accomplishment was in pitching the only perfect game in the history of the World Series. It came as a complete surprise to him, because in spite of being given a 6–0 lead by the Yankee batters in Game Two, Larsen had lasted less than two innings, allowing four runs on four walks (combined with a critical error by first-baseman Joe Collins). Larsen recalls that he did not even know he was going to start the fifth game of the 1956 World Series until he arrived at Yankee Stadium that morning and discovered a baseball had been placed inside one of his baseball shoes!

 

Larsen was able to call up all his control, unlike his previous start. He needed ninety-seven pitches to complete the game and only one Dodger batter, Pee Wee Reese was able to get a three-ball count. In 1998, Larsen recalled, "I had great control. I never had that kind of control in my life." And Larsen's immortal catcher Yogi Berra said, "His stuff was good, good, good. Anything I put down, he put over." There is an unforgettable picture of catcher Yogi Berra flying into Don Larsen’s arms upon the completion of that 1956 World Series perfect game.

 

So how was it done? Some great, solid fielding in the early part of the game contributed, confirming once again that the fielding is critical to a no-hitter! The later innings were tense for the players and fans alike and Larsen's team mates remained silent. Baseball custom dictates that players do not speak of the possibility of a no-hitter while it is in play. The two TV announcers were both Hall of Fame sportscasters - Mel Allen, who called the first half of the game and Vin Scully, who called the latter half. They observed baseball’s unwritten rule of never using the words "no-hitter" or "perfect game" on the air and as the tension mounted in the later innings, Scully made reference to the number of Dodgers being consecutively retired and, at the beginning of the ninth inning, stated that "Yankee Stadium is shivering to its concrete foundations."

 

On his ninety-seventh pitch, a called strike, Larsen caught pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell looking for the twenty-seventh and last out. Mitchell complained to home plate umpire Babe Pinelli that the pitch was high and outside. Mickey Mantle later admitted that the pitch looked high from his center-field angle. Dodgers outfielder Duke Snider commented, "I think he (Pinelli) wanted to go out with a no-hitter," adding, "But there were twenty-six outs before that and he got them all. You can't take anything away from him." And Yogi Berra told Larsen that he had performed the baseball equivalent of walking on water!

 

Larsen was named 1956 World Series MVP and also won the Babe Ruth award in that year. 1956 was indeed his year to howl and he pitched one more World Series in 1958, retiring from baseball with a .242 batting average and fourteen home runs. He was used as a pinch-hitter sixty-six times during his career and retired from baseball in 1967.

 

Jim Bunning was the next! His first game as a Major League pitcher was on July 20, 1955, with the Detroit Tigers, having spent some years in the minor leagues. The Tigers described Jim in 1955 as having "an excellent curve ball, a confusing delivery and a sneaky fast ball." e pitched for themHe pitched for them from 1955 to 1963 and joined the Philadelphia Phillies in 1964. But he pitched his first no-hitter on July 20, 1958, for the Tigers, against the Boston Red Sox.

 

Jim Bunning’s second no-hitter came on June 21, 1964 for the Philadelphia Phillies, against the New York Mets – and it was a perfect game! He played in the All-Star Games in 1957, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1966. He is also tenth on the list of pitchers who have hit batsmen during their career.

 

As well as being the seventh pitcher to throw a perfect game, Jim is also remembered in the same year, for the part he played in the Pennant race in 1964.The Phillies had maintained a solid lead in the National League for most of the 1964 season, but ultimately losing the title to the St Louis Cardinals. Manager Gene Mauch had leaned heavily on Bunning and his fellow hurler Chris Short during that season and the two became visibly fatigued as September wore on. The final melt-down of the 1964 Phillies remains one of the most infamous in baseball history. They led with six and a half games as late as September 21 and then lost ten games in a row to finish tied for second place. Jim Bunning’s last appearance for the Phillies was in September, 1971 after which he retired and entered politics.

 

He won his Republican seat in the Kentucky Senate in 1979 and in 1986, won the Republican nomination in Kentucky's 4th District, following the retirement of Gene Snyder. Jim was re-elected five more times without serious opposition in what was considered the most Republican district in Kentucky. After the Republicans gained control of the House in 1995, Bunning served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security until 1999. He entered the US Senate at the age of 67 and following an undistinguished (and combative) Senate career, announced that he would not run for re-election in 2010.

 

Because of his perfect game, the Veterans’ Committee elected Jim Bunning to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996.