On This Date: Don Larsen Throws the Only Perfect Game in World Series History (Oct. 8, 1956)

On Oct. 8, 1956, at Yankee Stadium, Don Larsen of the New York Yankees faced 27 Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5 of the World Series and got all 27 of them out. The Yankees won 2-0. It was the first perfect game in the major leagues in 34 years, and 70 years later it is still the only perfect game ever thrown in the World Series, or in any postseason.

3 days earlier, he hadn't made it out of the 2nd inning.

The worst record in the league, 2 years earlier

Larsen was not supposed to be the guy. In 1954 he pitched for the Baltimore Orioles and went 3-21. The Yankees took him anyway in a 17-player trade that winter, and in 1956 he went 11-5. Late that season he started pitching without a windup, just a short step and a throw, and it worked.

In Game 2, at Ebbets Field, Casey Stengel gave him the start and the Yankees gave him a 6-0 lead. He didn't get out of the 2nd inning. He walked 4 men, an error behind him kept the inning going, Brooklyn scored 6, and the Dodgers won 13-8.

Stengel gave him the ball again for Game 5, with the Series tied 2-2. Larsen found out the way Yankee starters did when nobody had announced one: coach Frank Crosetti left the warm-up ball in his shoe. The night before, he'd told a writer, Arthur Richman, "I'm just liable to pitch a no-hitter."

He had other things on his mind, too. There were court papers in his locker that day. His estranged wife, Vivian, was trying to have his World Series share seized over $420 in missed support payments.

The lineup he faced

The Dodgers were the defending champions. Their lineup that afternoon: Jim Gilliam, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, Sandy Amoros, Carl Furillo, Roy Campanella and the pitcher, Sal Maglie. 5 of those men are in the Hall of Fame.

Maglie was nearly as good as Larsen. He gave up 2 runs on 5 hits and lost.

27 up, 27 down

Only 1 Dodger all day got to a 3-ball count: Reese, in the 1st inning, who ran it full and then struck out. No Dodger reached base on a hit, a walk, a hit batter or an error.

Larsen needed help 4 times, and he got it every time:

• 2nd inning: Robinson lined a ball off third baseman Andy Carey's glove. It bounced to shortstop Gil McDougald, who threw Robinson out by a step.
• 5th inning: Hodges drove one deep to left-center. Mickey Mantle ran it down and caught it backhanded on the run. Mantle later called it "the best catch I ever made."
• 5th inning, next batter: Amoros hit a drive into the right-field seats that hooked foul. The Daily News called it a "foul homer" that "missed being fair by inches."
• 8th inning: Hodges hit a low liner toward third, and Carey caught it just off the ground.

Mantle had already put the Yankees ahead with a home run off Maglie in the 4th. It was the 1st hit of the game for either team. In the 6th, Hank Bauer singled home Carey to make it 2-0.

By the late innings, nobody in the Yankee dugout would talk to Larsen. That's baseball superstition: you don't mention a no-hitter while it's happening. His teammates, Larsen said, "avoided me like the plague." As he told it later, he nudged Mantle around the 7th inning and pointed at the scoreboard, and Mantle walked off without a word.

The last out

In the 9th, Furillo flied out and Campanella grounded out. That left the pitcher's spot, and Dodgers manager Walter Alston sent up Dale Mitchell to pinch-hit. Mitchell was a .312 career hitter who almost never struck out: 119 times in 3,984 at-bats, about once every 33.

The count went to 1-2. Larsen's 97th pitch was a fastball, Mitchell started to swing and held up, and home plate umpire Babe Pinelli rang him up. Mitchell said for the rest of his life that it was a ball. Pinelli said it was "just high enough." It didn't matter. Yogi Berra ran out from behind the plate and jumped into Larsen's arms, and a photographer got the picture that's been in every baseball book since.

It was Pinelli's last game behind the plate. He worked the bases in Games 6 and 7 and then retired.

"The imperfect man"

The New York Daily News' story the next morning opened with one of the best leads in sportswriting: "The imperfect man pitched a perfect game yesterday." It ran under Joe Trimble's byline. By most accounts his colleague Dick Young came up with the line.

The rest of the 1st paragraph had the details: 97 pitches, 3 balls to only 1 batter, 7 strikeouts. The crowd was 64,519. The story called Larsen "a free soul who loves the gay life," an "affable, nerveless man who laughs his way through life," and said that was the reason he was the calmest man in the ballpark.

The News' cartoonist, Leo O'Mealia, drew Larsen as a shell-game operator, the "hit" hidden behind his back, with the Brooklyn Bum yelling, "Youse can't win ag'inst dat kindova pitch!"

Game 7

Brooklyn won Game 6 at Ebbets Field 1-0 in 10 innings. The Yankees won Game 7 there the next day, 9-0. Johnny Kucks threw a 3-hitter, Berra hit 2 home runs, and Bill Skowron hit a grand slam. Larsen was named the Series MVP and won a Corvette from Sport magazine. The court case didn't last long. Right after Game 5, he sent the $420 to his wife's lawyer, who still told reporters Larsen "is still no hero."

What happened next

Larsen pitched 14 years in the majors and finished 81-91. He never won more than 11 games in a season. In 2012 he sold the uniform he wore on Oct. 8, 1956, for $756,000, to help pay for his grandchildren's college.

On July 18, 1999, the Yankees held Yogi Berra Day at Yankee Stadium. Larsen threw the ceremonial first pitch to Berra. Then David Cone went out and threw a perfect game.

Larsen died on Jan. 1, 2020. He was 90.

70 years later

Pitchers have thrown more than a dozen perfect games in the regular season since 1956. Roy Halladay threw a no-hitter in the 2010 playoffs, and 4 Astros pitchers combined on one in the 2022 World Series. Nobody else has thrown a perfect game in October. The only one belongs to a pitcher who'd lost 21 games 2 years earlier and been knocked out of the same Series 3 days before.

Where were you, or your parents, when Larsen threw it? Tell us in the comments.