27 Up, 27 Down: Don Larsen's Perfect Day
On October 8, 1956, Yankees pitcher Don Larsen retired all 27 Brooklyn Dodgers he faced — the only perfect game in World Series history.
Three days earlier he had been knocked out in the second inning. His own right fielder had groaned when he heard who was starting. On October 8, 1956, Don Larsen pitched the greatest game ever thrown on baseball's biggest stage — and nobody, least of all Larsen, saw it coming.
Larsen was, by any honest measure, a journeyman. In four big-league seasons with three teams he had gone 3–21 with the lowly Baltimore Orioles in 1954, and though he had steadied himself with the Yankees, he was nobody's idea of an ace. In Game 2 of the 1956 World Series at Ebbets Field, the Brooklyn Dodgers had chased him in the second inning of a 13–8 loss, walking four men and giving up four runs. Yankees manager Casey Stengel told him he was starting Game 5 the old-fashioned way: Larsen found a fresh baseball sitting in one of his cleats in the locker room.
"Who's pitching today?" right fielder Hank Bauer asked third-base coach Frank Crosetti before the game. "Larsen." "Oh, God. Larsen."
Then the first pitch was thrown, and for two hours and six minutes, perfection. Larsen retired all 27 Brooklyn batters he faced — no hits, no walks, no errors, nobody reaching base at all — on just 97 pitches. He went to a three-ball count on exactly one batter. The Dodgers' lineup was no joke: it featured future Hall of Famers Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson, and Roy Campanella. It did not matter. Mickey Mantle's fourth-inning solo homer off Sal Maglie gave Larsen the only run he would need, and the Yankees added another in the sixth for a 2–0 win.
In the top of the ninth, Larsen got Carl Furillo on a fly ball and Campanella on a grounder. Dodgers manager Walter Alston sent up pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell to bat for Maglie. On a 1–2 pitch, Larsen struck him out — his seventh strikeout of the day — and catcher Yogi Berra sprinted from behind the plate and leapt into his arms. The image of that leap became one of the most famous photographs in sports.
"I was so happy. I felt like crying," Larsen told reporters afterward. "I wanted to win this one for Casey Stengel. After what I did in Brooklyn, he could have forgotten about me and who would blame him? But he gave me another chance and I'm grateful."
The Yankees won the Series in seven games, and Larsen was named World Series MVP. He pitched ten more seasons, never winning more than 11 games in a year, and finished his career at 81–91 — a losing record, and the only man in history who can say that and still own the single most untouchable achievement in postseason baseball. No one has thrown a perfect game in the World Series since; the closest anyone has come was a combined no-hitter by four Houston pitchers in 2022.
Editor's note: no public-domain image could be verified for this story, so none is included.
