Embracing the Bygone Times
Larsen, who hurled without a windup, required only 97 pitches to revoke 27 batters. At the bottom of the ninth, including the crowd of 64,519 going insane, he pitched Dodger pinch-hitter, Dale Mitchell, a dominant fastball.
In actuality, most of the players on the battlefield at the time felt that it might have been extremely high. However, home plate umpire Babe Pinelli, running the very last game of an exceptional 21-year career, declared it a strike. Mitchell debated the point—but it was all over. Don Larsen had delivered the first, and still one and the only, no-hitter in the World Series. The Yankees, however, went on to take the series by four games to 3.
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After creating the history, Don Larsen was incredulously murmuring after his perfect game and said: “LAST NIGHT I WAS A BUM, AND TONIGHT EVERYBODY WANTS TO MEET ME.”
However, Larsen had a short, exhilarating brush with subsided fame. Larsen’s career gradually diminished following the 56 series. He also won another Series ring with the Yankees in the year 1958 yet another milestone achieved by Don Larsen.
He retired in the year 1967, and his career win-loss record was a ho-hum 81-91—although his strong World Series record of 4-2 with an ERA of 2.75 insinuates that the cool customer who prattled up his teammates in the dugout throughout his Game 5 perfect game truly savored the big platform. Larsen once claimed on his World Series perfect game that: “They can never break my record, the best they can do is to bind it.”
Moreover, until today, almost after 62 years, baseball is still waiting for someone, anyone, to do just the same. In the meantime, baseball and its real fans are still celebrating Larsen’s improbable masterpiece.