Baseball Memories: Don Larsen's Perfect Game
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by user Niteowl049
Baseball Notebook Extra
Baseball Memories Edition: Don Larsen's Perfect Game
Since too many times I get wrapped up in what is going on this season I am taking time to reflect on some of my baseball memories. Today's subject is Don Larsen and his perfect game on Oct. 8, 1956 and how he pitched on that day and before and after that day.
It is 2007 and 51 years after Larsen pitched his perfect game in 1956 but I still find myself thinking about it often as it is still mentioned today through the media. In 1956 I was almost 12 years old with my birthday just six days away. I was in school that Monday but still can recall the image of Yogi Berra jumping in Larsen's arms at the end of the no-hitter from sports highlights on television.
Dale Mitchell the Dodger who was pinch hitting for Sal Maglie took a called third strike to end the game. Mitchell would never play baseball after appearing last game of that World Series.
Larsen had started his major league career three years earlier with the St. Louis Browns and he had a 7-12 record that year then the next year the Browns had moved to Baltimore and had become the Orioles and he had a 3-21 record with them in 1954.
In the fall of that year he was traded to the Yankees in one of the biggest trades ever. By the time the players to be named later were identified sixteen players had changed teams. Without this trade Larsen wouldn't have even been with the Yankees that fateful day in October of 1956. The players involved in this trade are listed at baseball-reference.com and are listed below:
November 17, 1954: Traded by the Baltimore Orioles with players to be named later, Billy Hunter, and Bob Turley to the New York Yankees for players to be named later, Gene Woodling, Harry Byrd, Jim McDonald, Hal Smith, Gus Triandos, and Willy Miranda. The New York Yankees sent Bill Miller (December 1, 1954), Kal Segrist (December 1, 1954), Don Leppert (December 1, 1954), and Ted Del Guercio (minors) (December 1, 1954) to the Baltimore Orioles to complete the trade. The Baltimore Orioles sent Mike Blyzka (December 1, 1954), Darrell Johnson (December 1, 1954), Jim Fridley (December 1, 1954), and Dick Kryhoski (December 1, 1954) to the New York Yankees to complete the trade.
So after two seasons coming to New York Larsen had a 10-33 record but improved his lifetime record to 19-35 after a 9-2 record with the Yankees in 1955. In 1956 he was 11-5 improving his lifetime mark to 30-40. He would never win as many as ten games the rest of his career which ended after the 1967 season.
Larsen had pitched in the second game of the 1956 World Series pitching one and a third innings allowing one hit and walking four allowed four unearned runs and was removed in second inning as Dodgers eventually won the game 13-8 after the Yankees had blown an early 6-0 lead.
On the day of the perfect game Larsen claims to have come to the park on that fateful day that Game 5 was played not knowing he was going to start until he found the ball in his shoe. It may have been in his favor if that was the case since he didn't have to worry about pitching the next day while sleeping the night before.
Only once in the game did he get to a three ball count on a Yankee batter. Sal Maglie pitched for the Dodgers and pitched well allowing only two runs and five hits but it would take a perfect game to stay in the game with Larsen. The game lasted only two hours and six minutes before a crowd of 64,519 in a game which Larsen needed 97 pitches to pitch the best game in World Series history.
Larsen went on to pitch three more years for Yankees before being traded to Oakland Athletics. In his last three years he was 25-17 with the Yankees. In December of 1959 he was included in the six player trade that brought Roger Maris to the Yankees another player that will live forever in Yankee history after breaking Babe Ruth's single season home run record in 1961. Incidentally I was able to see Maris and Mickey Mantle the following year in a game which they played in Kansas City and both Maris and Mantle homered that day.
Just a short note about Larsen as a batter: He hit 14 homers and drove in 72 runs and had a lifetime average of .242 which is very good for a pitcher. In 1958 with Yankees he hit four homers and drove in 13 runs and hit for a .306 average.
Larsen pitched another six years in majors after leaving Yankees in playing for Athletics, White Sox, Giants, back to the Orioles and ending his career in 1965 with the Cubs. His lifetime record of 81-91 was nothing special but for one day in the autumn of 1956 he was perfect and no pitcher who has ever pitched in a World Series game can make that claim.
Larsen was 27 when he pitched the perfect game but will be 78 in August. Larsen may not have had that great of a lifetime record but nobody can ever take away that one game in which he was perfect.
