A Good Day

Don Larsen died on New Year's Day.  The last day of his life was 01/01/2020, a date on which zeroes dominated the box score.  Seems to me that it was only right that his life's final day have that in common with his life's most famous day, October 8, 1956, which was another date on which zeroes dominated the box score.

Game Five - 1956 World Series

(October 8, 1956) 

Sixty-four Fall Classics (and counting) since Larsen threw the first perfect game in the history of the World Series, baseball waits for the second one.  Will another ever be thrown?  I would not pretend to know.  I know simply that what I love about baseball is that it is a sport in which it is almost impossible to predict the player who will rise far above the statistics on the back of his baseball card to attain perfection, even if ever so briefly, and with it, immortality.  Don Larsen was such a player. 

Larsen pitched in the major leagues for fourteen seasons, breaking in with the St. Louis Browns of the American League in 1953, for whom he pitched to a 7-12 record, and finishing up with the Chicago Cubs of the National League in 1967, for whom he pitched just four innings scattered over three appearances in which he did not earn a decision.  He led the league in which he pitched in an individual statistic just one time.  In 1954, as a member of the Baltimore Orioles, his twenty-one losses led the American League.  His three wins did not. 

He was traded to the Yankees following the 1954 season and he pitched for the Bombers from 1955 through 1959.  In five seasons in New York, he won twenty-one more games than he lost (45-24) and posted a winning season with a sub 4.00 ERA in each of his first four seasons.  Following the 1959 season, in which he pitched to a 6-7 record with a 4.33 ERA, the Yankees traded him to Kansas City, which trade brought Roger Maris to the Bronx.  

In 1956, Don Larsen won a career-best 11 games in the regular season, which did not translate to immediate success in the Series against the Dodgers.  Having lost with Whitey Ford on the mound in Game 1 on October 3, Casey Stengel tapped Larsen to start Game 2 at Ebbetts Field on October 5.  Although staked to a 6-0 lead through an inning and a half, Larsen could not get out of the second inning.  Brooklyn scored four runs against him, all of which were unearned, in a game the Dodgers won 13-8. 

The Yankees got off the mat when the Series moved from Brooklyn to the Bronx, winning Game 3 behind Ford on October 6 and Game 4 behind Tom Sturdivant's complete-game six-hit performance on October 7.  Casey Stengel had not announced his starting pitcher for the fifth game on October 8. Larsen learned that he was starting Game 5 when he arrived at the Stadium for the game and found the baseball that third-base coach Frank Crosetti had placed inside of one of his shoes. 

The rest, as Vin Scully said, is history...

Vince Lombardi may indeed have been right.  We relentlessly chase and pursue perfection, not because we expect to attain it, but because in the process of our pursuit, we attain excellence.  Yet, every now and again, even if it is just for a single day or a single moment, either we pursue so quickly or perfection slows down just enough to allow us to grab hold of it.  In an eye blink, or in a sun rise, the moment passes and the pursuit resumes anew.  

Our inability to hold tight to it forever does not make us a failure.  It merely makes us human.  Don Larsen never forgot that, remarking on the 45th anniversary of his accomplishment, "My belief is, you work hard enough and something good is bound to happen.  Everyone is entitled to some good days." 

Perfect. 

-AK