This time, the Dodgers had won Games 1 and 2 at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. This included the Game 2 start of the Yankees' Don Larsen, who didn't get out of the 2nd inning, but also didn't end up as the losing pitcher, since the Yankees came back to retake the lead, and then lost it again. The Yankees took Games 3 and 4 at Yankee Stadium.
For Game 5, Yankee manager Casey Stengel took a chance on Larsen, who'd had only 3 days rest (in those days, when it was an All-New York "Subway Series," there were no travel days), but had pitched less than 2 full innings. He also had a "no-windup delivery," which was easier on his arm.
A 27-year-old righthanded pitcher born in Michigan City, Indiana, who grew up in San Diego, Donald James Larsen was unremarkable for most of his career. Indeed, like the only man ever to pitch back-to-back no-hitters, Johnny Vander Meer of the 1938 Cincinnati Reds, he had a losing won-lost record for his career: 81-91. Much of that was due to his 3-21 performance for the 1954 Baltimore Orioles, although he did go 11-5 for the Yankees in the 1956 regular season.
Starting for the Dodgers was Sal Maglie, the former ace of the New York Giants and one of the most hated opponents in Brooklyn history, but who had come to the Dodgers in midseason and pitched a no-hitter of his own -- something he hadn't done for the Giants. It is still the last no-hitter pitched by a player for a National League team in New York -- unless you believe that Carlos Beltran’s line drive really was foul, thus giving Johan Santana a no-hitter for the Mets in 2012.
Maglie was a proven veteran, Larsen a journeyman. And Game 6 would be at Ebbets Field. If necessary, so would Game 7.
It wasn't looking good for the Bronx Bombers.
Here was the Dodgers' starting lineup:
2B 19 Jim "Junior" Gilliam
SS 1 Harold "Pee Wee" Reese
CF 4 Edwin "Duke" Snider
3B 42 Jackie Robinson
1B 14 Gil Hodges
LF 15 Edmundo "Sandy" Amoros
RF 6 Carl "The Reading Rifle" Furillo
C 39 Roy Campanella
P 35 Sal "The Barber" Maglie
Granted, Walter Alston was the manager of the defending World Champions, but what was he thinking? Robinson, an ideal leadoff man but not with much home run power, batting 4th? Furillo, a former batting champion, 7th? Campy, a terrific power hitter, 8th?!?
And for the Yankees:
RF 9 Hank Bauer
1B 15 Joe Collins
CF 7 Mickey Mantle
C 8 Lawrence "Yogi" Berra
LF 17 Enos Slaughter
2B 1 Billy Martin
SS 12 Gil McDougald
3B 6 Andy Carey
P 18 Don Larsen
The umpires were:
* At home plate, Ralph "Babe" Pinelli, a former 3rd baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, who was calling his last games before retiring after 22 seasons as a National League umpire.
* At 1st base, an American League ump who had been a two-way back for the football New York Giants, appearing in 5 NFL Championship Games, winning in 1938.
* At 2nd base, Lynton "Dusty" Boggess, an NL ump and a former St. Louis Cardinal farmhand.
* At 3rd base, an AL ump, a Brooklyn native, and a former minor league catcher, who would be the 1st base umpire for Catfish Hunter's perfect game in 1968.
* In left field, Tom Gorman, a Manhattan native who pitched 4 games for the Giants in 1939 before becoming an NL ump.
* And, in right field, Ed Runge, an AL ump whose son Paul and grandson Brian also became major league umps.
At 1:02 PM, Eastern Time, Pinelli yelled, "Play ball!" and a crowd of 64,519 was ready to go. Larsen began the game by striking Gilliam out. He got to 3 balls on Reese, but struck him out. He would not get to 3 balls on another batter that day. He got Snider to line out to right. In the Yankee half of the 1st, Bauer popped to short, Collins was unable to beat out a bunt to 3rd, and Mantle flew to left.
The closest call came leading off the top of the 2nd inning, when Robinson hit a sharp grounder off Carey's glove. McDougald, who moved from 3rd to short in the Yankee lineup after Phil Rizzuto was released a few weeks earlier, took it, and just barely threw Robinson out. Larsen then struck Hodges out, and got Amoros to pop to 2nd. For the Yankees, Berra popped to short, Slaughter flew to left, and Martin struck out.
In the 3rd, Larsen got Furillo to fly to right, struck Campanella out, and got Maglie to line out to Mantle. McDougald grounded to 3rd, Carey popped up behind the plate where the ball was caught by Campanella, and Larsen did the same.
In the top of the 4th, Larsen got Gilliam to ground to 2nd, got Reese to do the same, and struck Snider out. Maglie, whom Dodger fans despised when he was the headhunting ace of their arch-rivals, actually had a perfect game going himself going into the bottom of the 4th. He got Bauer to ground to 2nd, and struck Collins out. But Mickey Mantle broke it up with a home run into the right field seats. It wasn't one of Mantle's famed towering drives, but it wasn't a "short porch" home run, either: It would have been a home run in just about any ballpark. Maglie then got Berra to line to center, but it was 1-0 Yankees.
In the 5th, Robinson hit a long fly to right, but Bauer caught it. Hodges came up, and drove the ball to Yankee Stadium's famed left-center "Death Valley." Mantle made a running, onehanded, backhanded catch. It was about 420 feet from home plate, and was nearly as remarkable as the 440-foot catch Willie Mays had made 2 World Series earlier. Perhaps even more so, since, unlike Willie, Mickey wasn't known as a spectacular fielder (though that may have been because so much fuss was made about his hitting). Larsen got Amoros to ground to 2nd.
Slaughter led off the bottom of the 5th with a walk. Martin tried to bunt him over, but the Dodgers got the lead run. And then McDougald hit a line shot at Reese, who caught it, and threw over to Hodges to double Martin off. End of 5, Yankees 1, Dodgers 0.
Larsen got Furillo to pop up to 2nd, then got Campanella to do the same, and struck Maglie out. With 6 innings gone, people began to talk about the fact that a no-hitter was in progress. But old superstitions die hard. No one wanted to say the word "no-hitter" for fear of jinxing it.
After all, none had ever been itched in the World Series before. The Yankees' Herb Pennock came within 4 outs of a perfect game in 1927. In 1947, the Yankees' Bill Bevens needed 1 more out against the Dodgers, but he had walked 10 batters, and Cookie Lavagetto cost him the game with a 2-RBI double. That was only 9 years earlier, and 1 Yankee from that game was in this one: Berra.
When Larsen sat down in the dugout, everybody near him got up and moved to the other end of the dugout. After the 7th, he purposely sat down next to Mantle, and said, "Hey, Mickey, can you believe I got a no-hitter going?" Mickey jumped up, and said, "Get away from me!"
Equally nervous was Berra, who said, many years later, "I think I woulda thought more about it if we had a 9-0 lead: 'Ooh, he's got a no-hitter goin'.' But, at 2-0, I was just worried about winning the game."
Yogi was right to worry. Snider was that season's NL home run leader and the previous season's RBI leader, and would end up with 407 career home runs. At the time, comparing him to Mantle and Willie Mays among New York's center fielders was no joke. Hodges would end his career with 370 home runs. Campanella had won 3 NL Most Valuable Player awards, and had been the NL RBI leader in 1953. That same year, Furillo had been batting champion. Robinson was batting champion and MVP in 1949. These were dangerous hitters, as Larsen had found out firsthand in Game 2.
Carey led off the bottom of the 6th with a single. Larsen sacrificed him to 2nd. Bauer singled him home. Collins singled, but Mantle grounded into a double play. End of 6: Yankees 2, Dodgers 0.
Top of the 7th: Larsen got Gilliam to ground to short, Reese to fly to center, and Snider to fly to left. Bottom of the 7th: Berra popped to 3rd, Slaughter flew to left, Martin singled to left, McDougald walked, and Carey grounded to short for a force play.
Top of the 8th: Robinson grounded back to Larsen. Hodges lined out to Carey. Amoros flew to center. Bottom of the 8th: Maglie was still pitching strong, and struck out the side: Larsen, Bauer and Collins.
Top of the 9th. A huge audience was watching Mel Allen call the game on NBC-TV, and listening to Bob Wolff on CBS radio. There had never been a no-hitter pitched in 53 years of World Series play. And the term "perfect game" wasn't widely known, either: It had been done by such luminaries as John Montgomery Ward, Cy Young and Addie Joss, but hadn't been done by anyone since another journeyman, Charlie Robertson, did it for the Chicago White Sox in 1922.
Furillo led off, and hit a long drive to right, barely going foul. He flew to right again, but, this time, it was a comparatively easy catch for Bauer. Campanella grounded to 2nd. Just 1 out to go.
Alston sent Dale Mitchell up to pinch-hit for Maglie. As a Cleveland Indian, Mitchell had been in the opposing dugout for Mays' catch, but had always hit well against the Yankees. He was a .312 lifetime hitter, a 2-time All-Star, and a member of the Indians' 1948 World Champions. This would, however, turn out to be the last career at-bat for the 35-year-old lefty-hitting left fielder from Colony, Oklahoma.
Larsen threw a pitch that Pinelli called a ball. Then he threw a pitch that Pinelli called a strike.
Wolff: "I guarantee you that nobody, but nobody, has left this ballpark. And if somebody did, by chance, manage to leave early, man, he is missing the greatest! Here comes the pitch: A swing and a miss, strike 2!"
It was 3:08 PM. The count was 1-and-2. Larsen threw his 97th pitch of the afternoon. It snuck over the outside corner. Mitchell took the pitch. He died in 1987, still insisting that the pitch was a ball. Well, even if Pinelli had called it as such, the count would have been 2-and-2, and not to Mitchell's advantage.
But Pinelli called, "Strike three!" Ballgame over. Shutout over. No-hitter over. Perfect game over. Yankees win.
Wolff's call: "Two strikes, ball one, here's the pitch: Strike three! A no-hitter, a perfect game for Don Larsen! Yogi Berra leaps on Larsen!"
It remains the greatest pitching performance in baseball history, and it was by an ordinary pitcher who was usually so unserious, his teammates called him Gooney Bird. But he had done what no other pitcher -- not Christy Mathewson, not Walter or Randy Johnson, not Lefty Grove, not Bob Feller, not Whitey Ford, not Sandy Koufax, not Bob Gibson, not Tom Seaver, not Steve Carlton, not Roger Clemens, not Greg Maddux -- has ever done: Pitch a no-hitter in the World Series. And he made it a perfect game. And he did it against the defending World Champions, with only a 2-0 lead, in what was really a must-win game.
That Game 7 would prove calamitous for the Brooks, as Don Newcombe got shelled. Yogi hit 2 homers, Elston Howard added one, and Moose added another, a grand slam. Johnny Kucks pitched a 3-hit shutout, and the Yankees won, 9-0, avenging the previous year's defeat.
The last out was Jackie Robinson. Kucks struck him out, but Berra couldn't handle it. Perhaps remembering Game 4 of the 1941 World Series, where a similar play cost the Dodgers against the Yankees, Robinson ran to 1st. Unlike the ill-fated Mickey Owen in 1941, however, Yogi was able to throw Jackie out.
No one knew it at the time, but that was Jackie's last at-bat. He retired in the off-season. Also not known at the time: That Game 7 was the last World Series game the Brooklyn Dodgers ever played. After 1 more season, they moved to Los Angeles. At the same time, the Giants moved to San Francisco. There would not be another "Subway Series" until 2000, Yankees vs. Mets.
On May 17, 1998, David Wells pitched a perfect game for the Yankees. He went to the same high school as Larsen, Point Loma in San Diego. On July 18, 1999, the Yankees honored Yogi, and had him catch a ceremonial first ball from Larsen. Wells had been traded, so he wasn't there. David Cone pitched a perfect game as Larsen and Berra watched.
Yogi and Don, on an Old-Timers' Day
On September 21, 2008, the last game was played at the old Yankee Stadium. As part of pregame ceremonies, the 3 men who pitched perfect games there, and their catchers, assembled on the mound: Larsen and Berra, Wells and Jorge Posada, and Cone and Joe Girardi.
Left ot right: Girardi, Cone, Larsen, Berra, Wells, Posada
Larsen's gem is no longer the only no-hitter in postseason history -- Roy Halladay turned the trick for the Philadelphia Phillies in 2010 -- but it's still the only perfect game in postseason history, and still the only no-hitter in a game later than the Division Series. (UPDATE: Five Houston Astros pitchers combined to pitch a no-hitter against the Phillies in Game 4 of the 2022 World Series.)
In 1981, baseball historian John Thorn published Baseball's 10 Greatest Games. He included this game as one of them.
UPDATE: Among the Yankees' many traditions is Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. From the 1955-58 team that won 4 straight American League Pennants, including 2 World Series, they have honored center fielder Mickey Mantle with a Monument; and given Plaques to catcher Lawrence "Yogi" Berra, shortstop Phil Rizzuto (who became a broadcaster in 1957), pitcher Edward "Whitey" Ford, left fielder Elston Howard (who switched positions with Yogi in 1960), manager Charles "Casey" Stengel (who managed 1 more Pennant in 1960), public address announcer Bob Sheppard, and broadcaster Mel Allen.
Billy Martin played 2nd base until mid-1957, but that's not why he's in Monument Park, or why his uniform Number 1 is retired. The Yankees have retired the numbers 7 for Mantle, 8 for Berra, 10 for Rizzuto, 16 for Ford, 32 for Howard and 37 for Stengel. Although left fielder Enos Slaughter and general manager George Weiss are in the Baseball Hall of Fame, they are not honored in Monument Park. Neither are team owners Dan Topping and Del Webb, who are also not in the Hall of Fame.
*
October 8, 1956 was a Monday. It was the only baseball game on the day. Basketball and hockey seasons were about to start. And while it was football season, there was, as yet, no Monday Night Football. So the score that made this a historic day was the only score on this historic day.
Actress Stephanie Zimbalist was born, co-star with Pierce Brosnan on the 1980s NBC drama Remington Steele. She was the granddaughter of classical music conductor Efrem Zimbalist Sr. and the daughter of actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
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