I was going to wait until MLB’s All Star break to talk a little baseball, but last week’s perfect game by Yankee pitcher Domingo Germán got me thinking about the whole perfect game business.
In over 235,000 MLB games played throughout the 154 year history of baseball, Germán’s was only the 24th. He was the fourth Yank to do so making them the team with the most perfect games pitched. (The White Sox are second with 3 perfect games.) Bottom line, just as baseball imitates life and vice-versa, being perfect really is very rare.
Don Larsen of course remains the most famous, not only Yankee, but also of any perfect game pitcher. He did it, and remains the only one to have ever done so, in a World Series game.
The second perfect game pitched by a Yankee came in 1998 courtesy of David Wells (click here) (Not sure what they are saying here that Wells was the first to do so at Yankee Stadium when Larsen pitched his in 1956 in Yankee Stadium. Did they mean Wells was the first to do so in a regular season game?) As correctly stated however, Wells was very hung over when he pitched his perfect game (click here.)
Here are some coincidences about the first 3 Yankee perfect games.
- Larsen did his in 1956 and Wells in 1998. Ironically, Wells and Larsen both were alum of the same San Diego High School Point Loma.
- A year after Wells threw his perfect game, his friend and teammate David Cone did likewise on Yogi Berra Day in Yankee Stadium where Don Larsen threw out the first pitch. Check out Yogi and Don talking about this event (3:35 mark) with Bob Costas in this great interview. (Entire 7 minute interview is worth watching also.) After Don notes that it was the first ball game that he had attended in its entirety since retiring, Costas has a good summary when he quips “So basically, if it’s not going to be a perfect game you don’t show up.”
Number 4 perfect game Yankee pitcher Domingo Germán so far does not appear to have anything in common with Don, Yogi nor the two Davids, but I’m laying some odds that somewhere along the line there is a 6 Degree Separation thing going on even if we don’t see it yet. (Wonder if that girl friend/wife Domingo worked over has any connections to any of these fellas? I know, that was a cheap (ie Trumpian) thing to say, but I don’t’ want to ever be accused of having too much Yankee love flying around here on the Buzzyblog.
Huey too has something to say about the pursuit of perfection:
Speaking of perfect, Buzzy’s Country Store is the perfect place for you to sit on a front porch, sip a cool one and watch the world go by. Open today and tomorrow for your perfect pre-4th of July place to be. I’ll leave you with this not-so-perfect joke: Why is nostalgia like grammar? Because we find the present tense and the past perfect.