NEW YORK — You’ll have to forgive me for not shouting for joy when Domingo German completed his perfect game Wednesday night in Oakland.
Nothing against him. He had no way knowing, of course, that he had just destroyed a special little niche I had enjoyed for the last two decades as one of the few people who could claim to have been present at Yankee Stadium for all three Yankee perfect games — Don Larsen’s on Oct. 8, 1956, David Wells’ May 17, 1998 and David Cone’s July 18, 1999.
It was after Cone hurled his perfecto, on Yogi Berra Day with a 33-minute rain delay interruption no less, that Joe Torre and Don Zimmer got to talking in the Yankee manager’s office about how both of them had been at all three Yankee perfect games. Torre explained that he had been to Larsen’s as a fan, sitting in the left-field seats, while Zimmer was in the visiting Dodger dugout as an inactive player having suffered a severe beaning back in June that limited him to 17 games that season.
As I listened to the two of them, I couldn’t help but interject that I, too, had been at Larsen’s perfect game, also as a fan, having been taken out of my sixth grade class by my father who had been able to score a couple of ducats in the second row of the left-field upper deck. (I still have my ticket.) We were all there for Wells’ and Cone’s, me as a working scribe for the New York Daily News, Torre as Yankee manager and Zim as his trusty bench coach. But it wasn’t until the next day it was pointed out that one other person was also there for all three Yankee perfectos but in his case in the same capacity. That would be Bob Sheppard the venerable Yankees’ public address announcer from 1951-2007.
Through the years, the four of us would often joke about being the answer to this trivia question. As far as I know no one else ever claimed to be at all three and after all, what were the odds of anyone getting tickets to all three games 42-43 years apart?
It’s funny but I have more vivid memories of Larsen’s perfect game in that warm October sunny hazy afternoon at the Stadium than I have of the Wells and Cone ones. Maybe that’s because it was my first World Series game and as it went into the late innings I never saw my father so animated. In front of us were two African American gentlemen nattily attired in suits and ties with fedoras, sitting stoically throughout. They remained stoic when Mickey Mantle made a sensational running catch off Gil Hodges in deep left-center with one out in the fifth — in retrospect the play of the game — and when Duke Snider lofted a fly ball to left to Enos Slaughter right below us, for the final out of the seventh.
Finally, in his excitement, my father tapped one of the men on the shoulder.
“I’m just curious,” he said. “Why aren’t you two rooting for this guy? He’s making history!” “We’re Dodger fans,” the man replied flatly. “If he gets to two outs in the ninth inning, maybe then we’ll root for him.”
When Larsen retired the veteran pinch hitter Dale Mitchell on a called check-swing strike three to end the game, the two men had disappeared and everyone around us was in a state of delirium. As we left the stadium and walked across the Macombs Dam bridge to our car — which was parked on the street in Washington Heights — my father put his arm around me and exclaimed: “How was that for your first World Series game! We’re all going to be famous now!”
Flash forward 42 years and I’m sitting in the press box at Yankee Stadium as Wells is methodically mowing down a weak-hitting Twins lineup in front of a capacity Beanie Baby Day crowd of 49,820, which gave it the feel of a postseason game. It was the same sort of warm, sunny afternoon as 42 years ago, just minus the billows of cigarette smoke enveloping the Stadium. “I never saw the Stadium crowd so vibrant for a regular-season game,” Bernie Williams said.
Indeed. You could feel the electricity that something special was unfolding, as Wells had nine strikeouts through six innings with nary a hard hit ball by the Twins. When he struck out Paul Molitor on a full count to end the seventh inning, I could feel my father’s presence. “I know you’re here, Dad,” I said to myself. “It’s happening again, isn’t it?”
Wells was so on and in such full command, from start to finish (even though he later wrote he pitched the entire game half drunk and nursing a colossal hangover with just three hours sleep the night before), that there was no doubt in my mind the goofy free-spirit “Boomer” was going to get this done.
It was afterward, when it was revealed that Wells had gone to the same Point Loma High School in San Diego Larsen had attended — and Yankees VP Arthur Richman, who happened to be Larsen’s best friend, was able to get him on the phone to congratulate “Boomer” in front of the media corps — that I thought I was truly in the twilight zone.
There were equally bizarre elements to Cone’s perfecto a year and two months later, which I confess I almost missed. The day was supposed to be all about Yogi and the détente he had reached with George Steinbrenner after a 14-year estrangement. To celebrate his first game back at Yankee Stadium since Steinbrenner had unceremoniously fired him as manager in 1985, Yogi threw out the first pitch — to Don Larsen.
I was not scheduled to work that day and, as such, I watched all the pre-game ceremonies with Yogi and Larsen on TV at home. But then, Cone, who had been roughed up for 12 hits and six runs in seven innings against Detroit in his previous start, came out throwing bullets in the sweltering heat against an equally weak-hitting Montreal Expos lineup, retiring the first nine batters with ease, never falling behind more than 2-0, and striking out the side in the third before a monstrous thunder storm stopped the game for 33 minutes. It was enough time for me to drive from my New Jersey home to the Stadium — just in case Coney had a mind to duplicate Wells’ masterpiece.
Amazingly, the long rain delay had no effect on Cone, who had left with a 5-0 lead. He proceeded to retire six of the next seven Expos batters on fly-ball outs before striking out James Mouton and Rondell White to end the seventh. The eighth and ninth were equally easy with only one Expo able to hit a ball out of the infield (a one-out fly to short left field by Ryan McGuire in the ninth) — and afterward Expos manager Felipe Alou told me: “I had a feeling Cone might pitch a no-hitter today. Not a single batter in my lineup had ever faced him.”
I just knew I was glad I had followed my instincts and interrupted my day off to be on hand for another day of baseball history. As the years went by I couldn’t imagine yet another Yankee pitching a perfect game. But there he was Wednesday night in Oakland, Domingo German, the mercurial Yankee right-hander who had yielded 15 earned runs and 15 hits over 5 1/3 innings in his previous two starts, and been suspended for 10 games for using sticky stuff a month ago, being mobbed by his teammates after hurling a 99-pitch gem against the admittedly horrible A’s. German, I have concluded, is like the proverbial box of chocolates. With each succeeding start you just never know what you’re going to get.
Thursday morning I texted Torre: “Alas, our little corner of unique Yankee perfect game trivia history is no more — unless, of course, you were in Oakland last night. I know I wasn’t.”
