"Pitcher the only perfect game in the World Series and was the winning pitcher in the National League pennant-clinching victory in 1962."
So here's Don Larsen again. All this from someone with an 81-91 career W-L record. But how about a little background?
Larsen was a 17-game winner for Aberdeen at the "C" level in 1948. Would you believe he never came close to winning that at the big league level. Don spent eight years in the St. Louis Browns / Baltimore Orioles organization from 1947 to 1954. And for all that he pitched just one season with St. Louis (7-12 in 12 in 1953) and one season with Baltimore (3-21 following the Browns' move there after the '53 season). So he was a combined 10-33 after two years in the major leagues.
Hardly the stuff you could imagine would lead to perfection in October. However, a big trade was made in November of 1954 that sent not only Larsen to the New York Yankees, but also Bob pitcher Bob Turley. Bob himself had seasons of 0-1, 2-6, and 14-15 during his time in St. Louis / Baltimore. Wins were hard to come by for those two pitchers. But a change in scenery made a huge difference.
Larsen didn't become the ace of the Yankee staff. That title belonged to Whitey Ford. Turley eventually won 21 games in 1958. Larsen's best year in New York was in 1956 when he went 11-5 with an ERA of 3.26. The following year, Don upped his winning percentage to .714 when he went 10-4.
Then, there was the World Series. In addition to his 11 wins in the regular season in '56, he won game 5 of the Fall Classic. That, of course, was Larsen's perfect game. Just to show you how out of the ordinary that was, Don had lasted just 1 2/3 innings in his game 2 start. Overall, however, Larsen was clutch in the World Series, posting a lifetime W-L record of 4-2 with a 2.75 ERA. So he upped the ante in the postseason.
That 4-2 record does not include a win in game three of a playoff series series against the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1962. It's seemingly been forgotten as the winners (Giants) and losers (Dodgers) had been through the same drill in 1951. You know, the one that ended with Bobby Thompson's 3-run walk-off against Ralph Branca?
The difference eleven years later was more than no walk-off. The '51 affair had both teams in New York. Don Larsen had no-hit Brooklyn in 1956. The New York Giants lost the 1951 World Series against a New York Yankee team that had Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra.
So the Giants and Dodgers moved out west after the 1957 season. Larsen's Yankees beat the Dodgers in seven games in 1956, and that had been the final Fall Classic appearance of Brooklyn.
But the Dodgers didn't stop winning out west. In 1959, they boasted a starting staff that included Roger Craig, Johhny Podres, and two kids named Drysdale and Koufax. They won it all over the Chicago White Sox that year. Larsen, ironically enough, pitched for the Pale Hose two seasons later.
Where was Don the next season you ask? Why, in San Francisco with Willie Mays and the Giants. It all came down to the wire in the pennant race in 1962. When the smoke cleared after 1962 games, the Giants and Dodgers had 101 wins and 61 losses to their names. A best-of-three showdown would decide who met the New York Yankees in the World Series! This Los Angeles team was going to be tough to beat! Let me explain!
That Koufax guy could really pitch for LA. So could Drysdale. Sandy Koufax has really put it all together in 1961, while another Don, Drysdale, had been something else for the Dodgers since 1956, when they were still in Brooklyn.
Sandy though...Seemed like out of this world. In 1961, he was 18-13 with a 3.52 ERA (Seventh best in the NL) with 269 K's in just 255 2/3 IP. Scary thing was, you hadn't seen anything yet!
Drysdale? He'd been good...But never was he better than in '62! 25 wins. 2.83 ERA. 232 K's. Koufax though, had some troubles that year. Sure, he'd no-hit the New York Mets. He'd been experiencing numbness in his pitching arm since April. Didn't show in the results. He'd beaten the Giants 8-1 in May on a 5-hitter. Then Sandy was even better on July 8th. He shut 'em out 2-0.
The problem was, that arm injury just got worse and worse and Koufax had continued to pitch, with all that numbness. It just didn't go away. On July the 12th of that year, he again handcuffed the Mets. Zero runs over seven innings. Another win. 14-4. But that ended up being Sandy's last win of the season. His ERA at the time was just 2.06.
Koufax lost his next start, then didn't pitch again for two months and Larsen and company caught up to them in the pennant race. Don Larsen was by now just pitching out of the bullpen. Quite effective, too. He even got to experience being the closer, collecting 10 saves to go along with 5 wins that year.
He helped during that September rally. His ERA was 5.24 on August 20th. For the rest of the season, it was a microscopic 1.40 as batters hit .152 off Larsen. This includes the big game, as you will see later.
Don Drysdale had done his best with his team faltering. 6-0 with a save in July. Though only 3-3 in August, September was a great month. He won his first three decisions, and dropped his ERA from 3.07 on August 24th to 2.76 on September via a pair of shutouts that last month of summer.
Sadly, Drysdale lost his last two decisions, including a 2-0 heart-breaker to the St. Louis Cardinals on September 29th. When they postseason started, he watched as Sandy Koufax just didn't have it in the opener as San Francisco won easily, 8-0. The Giants starting pitching was probably as good as the Dodgers at this point with Koufax below par. Billy Pierce, a lefty like Koufax, spun a 3-hit shutout. San Francisco had Jack Sandford, a 24-game winner. They had Billy O'Dell, a 19-game winner. They had Juan Marichal, an 18-game winner. Pierce was the fourth best starter despite 16 wins.
Drysdale didn't have it either in game two. The Dodgers were behind 5-0 after 5 1/2. Then, LA's bats got hot. Seven runs in the bottom of the frame gave 'em a 7-5 lead! But they couldn't hold it. San Francisco tied it via two runs in the top of the eighth. It was Ron Fairly who played hero for the Dodgers in the last of the ninth. They walked it off as Fairly lined out, scoring speedster Maury Wills.
Los Angeles appeared to build off that as they charged ahead 6-4 after eight innings at Dodger Stadium in the winner-take-all game three. Alas, just like eleven years later, the Giants had other ideas.
Don Larsen had stopped the Dodgers from running away with this thing. Juan Marichal had walked Tommy Davis on just four pitches to start the last of the eighth. Larsen was summoned. It wasn't easy, but he was clutch, again!
Fairly, looking to help the cause again, bunted Alou to second. Big Frank Howard was up, but Larsen got him on strikes for the second out. But Davis wasn't slow, and took advantage of Larsen being so preoccupied with Howard. He swiped third. So, Don had to walk the next two batters, Johhny Roseboro and Willie Davis, the centre fielder. Ed Roebuck, the pitcher, batted for himself (An odd decision, although he batted .214 that year and .204 overall for his career) and grounded out to third. Inning over.
So Willie Mays, who'd been with the Giants eleven years earlier when they were still in New York, came up with the bases loaded and one out in the top of the ninth. Two outs away from defeat. A double play and it's all over. Ed Roebuck was still pitching. Mays singled! Harvey Kuenn scored! 6-5.
Stan Williams came in to pitch for the Dodgers, but Orlando Cepeda tagged him with a sac fly to tie the game! There were now two away, however. Williams promptly came unglued. Felipe Alou was at third. Mays was still at first. Stan threw a wild pitch to Ed Bailey. While Alou held, it moved the lightning-fast Mays into scoring position and removed any force play. That prompted the Dodgers to put Bailey on and put the force right back in effect. The bases were loaded again.
And that was the problem. Trying to hit the strike zone was the problem for Williams. He forced the go-ahead run in by walking Jim Davenport. 6-5 San Fran, Larsen the pitcher of record for the win now! Ron Perranoski came in to hold the Giants at bay. He got a grounder off the bat of Jose Pagan. But alas, it just wasn't the Dodgers day as Larry Burright couldn't come up with it at second. An insurance run! 6-4.
Billy Pierce retired the Los Angeles 1-2-3 in the last of the ninth as Giants again had another unlikely pennant at the Dodgers' expense. As was the case in 1951, the Giants would lose the World Series to the New York Yankees.
Don Larsen got the win in the fourth contest, however. But that was merely another unlikely scenario he was in, just like six years earlier when he retired all twenty-seven men to face him in October.
References
Buckley, James Jr. Unhittable: Reliving The Magic And Drama Of Baseballs Best-Pitched Games. Triumph Books, 2004. Print. (DVD included).
Enders, Eric. 100 Years Of The World Series. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 2005. Print.
Fonseca, Lew, director. World Series Of 1956. Major League Baseball Productions, 1956. DVD.
Fonseca, Lew, director. World Series Of 1962. Major League Baseball Productions, 1962. DVD.
Golenbock, Peter. Dynasty: The New York Yankees, 1949-1964. Lincolnwood, IL: Contemporary, 2000. Print.
Mantle, Mickey, and Mickey Herskowitz. All My Octobers: My Memories of Twelve World Series When the Yankees Ruled Baseball. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Print.
Neft, David S., Richard M. Cohen, and Michael L. Neft. The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball, 1992. 12th ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. Print.
Neft, David S., and Richard M. Cohen. The World Series: Complete Play-by-play of Every Game, 1903-1989. 4th ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1990. Print.
Nemec, David et all. 20th Century Baseball Chronicle: A Year-by-year History of Major League Baseball. Collector's Edition. Lincolnwood, Ill: Publications International, 1993. Print.
Paper, Lewis J. Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game And The Men Who Made It Happen. New York, NY: New American Library, 2009. Print.
Seaver, Tom, and Martin Appel. Great Moments in Baseball. New York, NY: Carol Pub. Group, 1992. Print.
So here's Don Larsen again. All this from someone with an 81-91 career W-L record. But how about a little background?
Larsen was a 17-game winner for Aberdeen at the "C" level in 1948. Would you believe he never came close to winning that at the big league level. Don spent eight years in the St. Louis Browns / Baltimore Orioles organization from 1947 to 1954. And for all that he pitched just one season with St. Louis (7-12 in 12 in 1953) and one season with Baltimore (3-21 following the Browns' move there after the '53 season). So he was a combined 10-33 after two years in the major leagues.
Hardly the stuff you could imagine would lead to perfection in October. However, a big trade was made in November of 1954 that sent not only Larsen to the New York Yankees, but also Bob pitcher Bob Turley. Bob himself had seasons of 0-1, 2-6, and 14-15 during his time in St. Louis / Baltimore. Wins were hard to come by for those two pitchers. But a change in scenery made a huge difference.
Larsen didn't become the ace of the Yankee staff. That title belonged to Whitey Ford. Turley eventually won 21 games in 1958. Larsen's best year in New York was in 1956 when he went 11-5 with an ERA of 3.26. The following year, Don upped his winning percentage to .714 when he went 10-4.
Then, there was the World Series. In addition to his 11 wins in the regular season in '56, he won game 5 of the Fall Classic. That, of course, was Larsen's perfect game. Just to show you how out of the ordinary that was, Don had lasted just 1 2/3 innings in his game 2 start. Overall, however, Larsen was clutch in the World Series, posting a lifetime W-L record of 4-2 with a 2.75 ERA. So he upped the ante in the postseason.
That 4-2 record does not include a win in game three of a playoff series series against the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1962. It's seemingly been forgotten as the winners (Giants) and losers (Dodgers) had been through the same drill in 1951. You know, the one that ended with Bobby Thompson's 3-run walk-off against Ralph Branca?
The difference eleven years later was more than no walk-off. The '51 affair had both teams in New York. Don Larsen had no-hit Brooklyn in 1956. The New York Giants lost the 1951 World Series against a New York Yankee team that had Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra.
So the Giants and Dodgers moved out west after the 1957 season. Larsen's Yankees beat the Dodgers in seven games in 1956, and that had been the final Fall Classic appearance of Brooklyn.
But the Dodgers didn't stop winning out west. In 1959, they boasted a starting staff that included Roger Craig, Johhny Podres, and two kids named Drysdale and Koufax. They won it all over the Chicago White Sox that year. Larsen, ironically enough, pitched for the Pale Hose two seasons later.
Where was Don the next season you ask? Why, in San Francisco with Willie Mays and the Giants. It all came down to the wire in the pennant race in 1962. When the smoke cleared after 1962 games, the Giants and Dodgers had 101 wins and 61 losses to their names. A best-of-three showdown would decide who met the New York Yankees in the World Series! This Los Angeles team was going to be tough to beat! Let me explain!
That Koufax guy could really pitch for LA. So could Drysdale. Sandy Koufax has really put it all together in 1961, while another Don, Drysdale, had been something else for the Dodgers since 1956, when they were still in Brooklyn.
Sandy though...Seemed like out of this world. In 1961, he was 18-13 with a 3.52 ERA (Seventh best in the NL) with 269 K's in just 255 2/3 IP. Scary thing was, you hadn't seen anything yet!
Drysdale? He'd been good...But never was he better than in '62! 25 wins. 2.83 ERA. 232 K's. Koufax though, had some troubles that year. Sure, he'd no-hit the New York Mets. He'd been experiencing numbness in his pitching arm since April. Didn't show in the results. He'd beaten the Giants 8-1 in May on a 5-hitter. Then Sandy was even better on July 8th. He shut 'em out 2-0.
The problem was, that arm injury just got worse and worse and Koufax had continued to pitch, with all that numbness. It just didn't go away. On July the 12th of that year, he again handcuffed the Mets. Zero runs over seven innings. Another win. 14-4. But that ended up being Sandy's last win of the season. His ERA at the time was just 2.06.
Koufax lost his next start, then didn't pitch again for two months and Larsen and company caught up to them in the pennant race. Don Larsen was by now just pitching out of the bullpen. Quite effective, too. He even got to experience being the closer, collecting 10 saves to go along with 5 wins that year.
He helped during that September rally. His ERA was 5.24 on August 20th. For the rest of the season, it was a microscopic 1.40 as batters hit .152 off Larsen. This includes the big game, as you will see later.
Don Drysdale had done his best with his team faltering. 6-0 with a save in July. Though only 3-3 in August, September was a great month. He won his first three decisions, and dropped his ERA from 3.07 on August 24th to 2.76 on September via a pair of shutouts that last month of summer.
Sadly, Drysdale lost his last two decisions, including a 2-0 heart-breaker to the St. Louis Cardinals on September 29th. When they postseason started, he watched as Sandy Koufax just didn't have it in the opener as San Francisco won easily, 8-0. The Giants starting pitching was probably as good as the Dodgers at this point with Koufax below par. Billy Pierce, a lefty like Koufax, spun a 3-hit shutout. San Francisco had Jack Sandford, a 24-game winner. They had Billy O'Dell, a 19-game winner. They had Juan Marichal, an 18-game winner. Pierce was the fourth best starter despite 16 wins.
Drysdale didn't have it either in game two. The Dodgers were behind 5-0 after 5 1/2. Then, LA's bats got hot. Seven runs in the bottom of the frame gave 'em a 7-5 lead! But they couldn't hold it. San Francisco tied it via two runs in the top of the eighth. It was Ron Fairly who played hero for the Dodgers in the last of the ninth. They walked it off as Fairly lined out, scoring speedster Maury Wills.
Los Angeles appeared to build off that as they charged ahead 6-4 after eight innings at Dodger Stadium in the winner-take-all game three. Alas, just like eleven years later, the Giants had other ideas.
Don Larsen had stopped the Dodgers from running away with this thing. Juan Marichal had walked Tommy Davis on just four pitches to start the last of the eighth. Larsen was summoned. It wasn't easy, but he was clutch, again!
Fairly, looking to help the cause again, bunted Alou to second. Big Frank Howard was up, but Larsen got him on strikes for the second out. But Davis wasn't slow, and took advantage of Larsen being so preoccupied with Howard. He swiped third. So, Don had to walk the next two batters, Johhny Roseboro and Willie Davis, the centre fielder. Ed Roebuck, the pitcher, batted for himself (An odd decision, although he batted .214 that year and .204 overall for his career) and grounded out to third. Inning over.
So Willie Mays, who'd been with the Giants eleven years earlier when they were still in New York, came up with the bases loaded and one out in the top of the ninth. Two outs away from defeat. A double play and it's all over. Ed Roebuck was still pitching. Mays singled! Harvey Kuenn scored! 6-5.
Stan Williams came in to pitch for the Dodgers, but Orlando Cepeda tagged him with a sac fly to tie the game! There were now two away, however. Williams promptly came unglued. Felipe Alou was at third. Mays was still at first. Stan threw a wild pitch to Ed Bailey. While Alou held, it moved the lightning-fast Mays into scoring position and removed any force play. That prompted the Dodgers to put Bailey on and put the force right back in effect. The bases were loaded again.
And that was the problem. Trying to hit the strike zone was the problem for Williams. He forced the go-ahead run in by walking Jim Davenport. 6-5 San Fran, Larsen the pitcher of record for the win now! Ron Perranoski came in to hold the Giants at bay. He got a grounder off the bat of Jose Pagan. But alas, it just wasn't the Dodgers day as Larry Burright couldn't come up with it at second. An insurance run! 6-4.
Billy Pierce retired the Los Angeles 1-2-3 in the last of the ninth as Giants again had another unlikely pennant at the Dodgers' expense. As was the case in 1951, the Giants would lose the World Series to the New York Yankees.
Don Larsen got the win in the fourth contest, however. But that was merely another unlikely scenario he was in, just like six years earlier when he retired all twenty-seven men to face him in October.
References
Buckley, James Jr. Unhittable: Reliving The Magic And Drama Of Baseballs Best-Pitched Games. Triumph Books, 2004. Print. (DVD included).
Enders, Eric. 100 Years Of The World Series. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 2005. Print.
Fonseca, Lew, director. World Series Of 1956. Major League Baseball Productions, 1956. DVD.
Fonseca, Lew, director. World Series Of 1962. Major League Baseball Productions, 1962. DVD.
Golenbock, Peter. Dynasty: The New York Yankees, 1949-1964. Lincolnwood, IL: Contemporary, 2000. Print.
Mantle, Mickey, and Mickey Herskowitz. All My Octobers: My Memories of Twelve World Series When the Yankees Ruled Baseball. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Print.
Neft, David S., Richard M. Cohen, and Michael L. Neft. The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball, 1992. 12th ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. Print.
Neft, David S., and Richard M. Cohen. The World Series: Complete Play-by-play of Every Game, 1903-1989. 4th ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1990. Print.
Nemec, David et all. 20th Century Baseball Chronicle: A Year-by-year History of Major League Baseball. Collector's Edition. Lincolnwood, Ill: Publications International, 1993. Print.
Paper, Lewis J. Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game And The Men Who Made It Happen. New York, NY: New American Library, 2009. Print.
Seaver, Tom, and Martin Appel. Great Moments in Baseball. New York, NY: Carol Pub. Group, 1992. Print.
Sports Reference LLC. Baseball-Reference.com - Major League Statistics and Information. http://www.baseball-reference.com/. Web. 17 May. 2019.
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 17 May. 2019. <https://en.wikipedia.org>.
Youtube. Youtube. Web. 17 May. 2019. <https://www.youtube.com/>.
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