In 2016, I interviewed Don Larsen for the 60th anniversary of the only World Series perfect game that he pitched. Here is the story.
October 8, 1956. A 27-year-old pitcher born in Michigan City, Indiana, crossed the chalked white line of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York City, and took the mound against the Brooklyn Dodgers in game 5 of the World Series. Larsen was surprised to be there.
“They didn’t tell me [I was going to pitch that day],” Larsen recently told me on the phone. “I didn’t know until I went to the ballpark. That’s when I found out. It was surprising. I just hoped I’d do better than the second game I started.”
In the second game of the World Series, he lasted just 1 2/3 innings before Manager Casey Stengel pulled him from the game. The Yankees lost 13-8 and fell behind in the Series, 0-2. Larsen didn’t know if he’d start again, but Stengel sent him back out there, which turned out to be a wise decision.
Over nine innings, 27 batters stepped into the batter’s box to face Don Larsen and 27 batters returned to the dugout defeated. But it wasn’t easy. “I was nervous,” he said.
To calm his nerves, he tried to get the guys in the dugout to talk to him. In the middle of the 7th inning, he’d already retired 21 straight batters and he chatted up teammate Mickey Mantle. “Look at the scoreboard, Mick,” Larsen told him. “Wouldn’t it be something? Two more innings.” But Mantle didn’t say a word.
“He walked away from me,” Larsen said. “He wouldn’t talk to me. Nobody would talk to me. It was a little uncomfortable. The dugout is nice and fun. But it gets serious sometimes. They wouldn’t talk to me later in the game because everybody’s afraid of jinxes, but I don’t believe in that. It wasn’t easy for me. Too quiet!”
Larsen felt the pressure, but labored on. With Larsen’s 97th pitch, he struck out the final batter. Yogi Berra ran out and leapt into Larsen’s arms, creating one of the most iconic images in baseball history.
“It worked out pretty good actually for everyone,” Larsen said.
The Yankees went on to win the World Series in seven games and Don Larsen received the World Series Most Valuable Player award. It was the first no hitter and the first perfect game in World Series history. Two months later, Michigan City merchants flew Larsen and his family back to Michigan City to honor him at the Spaulding Hotel.
“They had a little dinner for me. My mother and father were there. It was enjoyed, of course a long time between drinks, you might say, but we had a good time. I didn’t need all that help anyway. I’m going to have fun all the time! Why not?”
When I talked to Larsen, he recalled his early days growing up in Michigan City.
“It was a regular neighborhood on the south side. Superior Street. We had fun. It was unpaved. They had the old car barns down in that area. The street car used to come by our place a long time ago. Everybody knew each other. We played baseball. Pickup games.”
Boys from his neighborhood would challenge boys from other parts of town such as the north side kids.
“The fields we picked were just there and it was a little tough because we had no organization, but we had fun. Everybody wanted to play and we didn’t have the best facilities. Bats were broken, full of nails and screws. Anything we could find for a base. And we shared with the gloves and the baseballs. The baseballs always started normal, but they never finished normal size. They were either too small or too big with a lot of tape on them.”
“There wasn’t any organization. There wasn’t any American Legion baseball or anything in those days. We had a CYA—Catholic Youth Organization—later on that was a little better organized. A guy by the name of Joe LaRocco helped us. He was driving a Pepsi-Cola truck and he took a lot of time out to help us kids. He was a pretty good guy with us.”
The lakefront “was the best place to go. They had the zoo out there and everything. It was wonderful. The sand dunes—it was good sand. We did tobogganing and beaching, fishing, and frogging—we did it all. I shoveled snow and picked berries—made enough money to buy comic books and popsicles.”
Larsen attended Jefferson School and started at Elston High School, but then his family moved to San Diego mid-school year when his dad got a job working on military aircraft bomb sights.
“I was a better basketball player than baseball player in school in San Diego,” Larsen said. “I made all-southern California.”
But he made his fame in baseball. To this day, it is the only perfect game and no hitter in World Series history.
Did you ever think your record would last this long, I asked?
“No, it’s surprising. There are a lot of good pitchers out there. Managers don’t let them go that far any more in the Series. They’d rather get that win, which I don’t blame them. They got relievers getting paid a helluva’ lot of money to do what they do. They put them in there and try to get that win.”
Larsen retired from baseball in 1967 with 81 wins and 91 losses. Then he worked in San Jose, California, for a paper company for 25 years. “I did a good job for them. Making a good living and supporting the family,” Larsen said.
And as for his greatest accomplishment in life?
“The perfect game. It’s still hanging in there.”
Some day, another World Series pitcher will retire 27 batters in a row, but Larsen’s feat is secure—someone may tie Don Larsen’s record, but you can’t outdo perfection.
Go here to see more photos of Don Larsen taken in Michigan City, Indiana: https://www.instagram.com/p/B3pQh9gh7vF/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link