Great Baseball Moments- Don Larsen’s Perfect Game- 1956 Game 5

Don Larsen was far from a great pitcher. During his career he had a losing record 81-91.In 1954 -just two years before his perfect game he had 3 wins and 21 losses with the Baltimore Orioles. His finest season was in 1956 with the mighty Yankees going 11-5 with a 3.26 ERA. The Yankees were facing their usual opponent in the World Series in this era- the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Dodgers had won the first two games in Brooklyn- when the games switched to Yankee Stadium the Yankees won the first two evening the series at 2 games apiece. Game 5 was a big game-and although the Dodgers Sal ‘The Barber’ Maglie pitched a fine game 2 runs on 5 hits- Don Larsen pitched a game for the ages. Larsen faced the minimum amount of batters you can face in a 9 inning game- 27 and all 27 went down. Larsen gave up no hits- the Yankees made no errors. Larsen didn’t walk anyone and struck out 7. The last batter up for the Dodgers was pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell. Below is the final pitch- called by the great Vin Scully.

Note- On the day Larsen pitched his perfect game- his wife Vivian filed for divorce.

Note- A 16 year old Joe Torre was a spectator that day in the left field upper deck. As Yankee manager in the late 90’s he would see the Yankees David Wells and David Cone pitch perfect games- there were three perfect games at Yankee Stadium- Torre was there for all three.