Perfect Yankee : Don Larsen Celebrates Anniversary of ‘Nothing’ 40 Autumn Classics Ago

By his own admission, Don Larsen was a most unlikely candidate for pitching the best game in World Series history.

And yet on one brilliant autumn afternoon 40 years ago Tuesday, baseball’s version of everyman topped the October performances of Mathewson and Young, Johnson and Gibson, Koufax and Ford.

No runs, no hits, no errors.

No nothing.

This was not just the only no-hitter in World Series history. This was a no-hitter with an exclamation point: A Perfect Game!

Today, Larsen chuckles at the irony of it. He was just a journeyman pitcher, a gangly guy his Yankees teammates called Gooney Bird. He lost more games than he won in an undistinguished major league career that stretched from 1953 and the lowly St. Louis Browns to 1967 and the lowly Chicago Cubs.

So how could an ordinary, nondescript guy like that pitch a perfecto--27 batters up, 27 batters down--in the glare of a World Series game at Yankee Stadium?

Larsen, whose account of his masterpiece, “The Perfect Yankee,” was published this month, has no answer.

“Later on, I wondered how this happened to me,” he said. “I guess everybody is entitled to their day. The old man upstairs picked a good one for me.”

Actually, Larsen wasn’t sure he’d ever get a chance to do it. He had lasted four innings in his only World Series start in 1955 and in the 1956 World Series rematch with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Yankees manager Casey Stengel lifted him in the second inning of Game 2.

“I was lousy in my first start,” he said. “I was ahead 6-0 when I started walking people. Casey didn’t like that. He took me out in the second and I didn’t think I’d start another game.”

Still, nobody ever knew what Stengel, the master manipulator, might pull. There was always the possibility that Larsen would get the ball again. So on the night before Game 5, Larsen jokingly told a reporter that he’d probably throw a no-hitter the next day.

He didn’t mention a perfect game.

Known for enjoying New York’s nightlife, Larsen dispels the myth that he was out partying before Game 5.

“I low-keyed it the night before that game,” he said. “I was in my hotel by 11.”

The next day, when he arrived at the ballpark, he found a ball in his shoe, placed there by coach Frank Crosetti. In those days, that was the way Yankees pitchers learned they were to start games.

“It’s a wonder I didn’t faint,” Larsen said.

“Nobody said anything, not even ‘hello.’ Hank Bauer and Bill Skowron were in the locker room. They said I took a couple of deep breaths and gulped. I thought to myself, ‘I hope I don’t screw it up like Game 2.’ I went out and warmed up, wondering ‘Why me?’ ”

There were no meetings, no going over the hitters. Larsen knew what he was up against. Brooklyn’s lineup was loaded: Jim Gilliam, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, Sandy Amoros, Carl Furillo, Roy Campanella. Four future Hall of Famers and four other tough outs.

The architect of the perfect game would be Yankees catcher Yogi Berra.

“You rely on the catcher more than anyone,” Larsen said. “He knows if you’ve got your good stuff, if the ball is moving. All I did was keep trying to put the ball into Yogi’s glove, wherever he put it. I just tried to get the ball where Yogi wanted it and hoped for the best.”

Larsen remembers the game going quickly. There was no gamesmanship by the Dodgers, no stepping out of the batter’s box, no bunts.

“I had great control,” he said. “I never had that kind of control in my life. We got in a flow and that made it easier.”

There were a couple of close calls. In the second inning, Robinson lined a ball that deflected from third baseman Andy Carey to shortstop Gil McDougald, who threw the runner out. Robinson was in his last season. The younger, faster version might have beaten the ball.

In the fifth, Hodges drove a 2-2 pitch to deep left center, where Mantle ran the ball down and made a one-handed catch.

There was a long foul by Amoros and another by Snider, and nothing else. Each inning, the Dodgers went out 1-2-3 and by the seventh, Larsen began thinking about the scoreboard and all those zeroes.

“You expect a hit to happen,” he said. “Every pitcher does.”

Baseball tradition dictates that talking about no-hitters just jinxes them. So after seven innings, the Yankee dugout was like a morgue.

“It was not very jovial,” noted Larsen, a jovial fellow.

So he tried to lighten the atmosphere.

“I went in for a cigarette and bumped into Mantle,” he said. “I said ‘Mick, look at the scoreboard. Two more innings.’ He walked away. Nobody would talk to me.

“I wanted to find somebody to say hello to but they were all trying to avoid me. Casey was going around, trying to look busy. I was never so alone.”

One out followed another, and soon Larsen was facing the 27th batter, pinch hitter Dale Mitchell. Larsen’s personal scouting report was accurate: “Mitchell was a good hitter who never struck out and was still a good runner.”

Larsen stepped off the mound to collect himself.

“My legs were shaking,” he said. “I thought, ‘Just get me through one more.’ To get that close and mess it up, they’d run me out of the ballpark.”

Throwing mostly fastballs--”I put everything I had left behind every pitch,” Larsen said--he ran the count to 1-2.

He threw one more fastball, his 97th pitch of the day. Mitchell started after it, then checked his swing.

“It was a good pitch, up and over the plate,” Larsen said. “I’m glad he didn’t swing.”

Umpire Babe Pinelli, working his final game behind home plate, called it strike three.

Mitchell turned to argue, but there was no one there for him to talk to. Yankee Stadium was bedlam. Larsen, with Berra in his arms, was mobbed by the rest of the Yankees.

With 14 future Hall of Famers in Yankee Stadium that day, Larsen was probably the least likely guy to have made it a game to remember.

He grinned at that.

“You know, “ he said, “it doesn’t bother me a bit.”