On October 8, 1956, in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, Don Larsen of the New York Yankees threw a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was Monday so Larsen deiced to rock the world and carved his name into the American sports by pitching the first perfect game in postseason history.
Photo by Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
In the long-drawn, history of professional baseball, amidst tens of thousands of games, there have been fewer than 300 no-hitters (In baseball, a no-hitter is a game in which a team was not able to record a single hit. Major League Baseball (MLB) officially defines a no-hitter as a completed game in which a team that batted in at least nine innings recorded no hits.)
Don Larsen’s Perfect games, in which no hit even touches first base, are even rarer: fewer than two dozen in the past 100 years. Moreover, with the privilege of one man, the Yankees’ Don Larsen, no one has ever yielded a no-hitter in a World Series game. Here, on the anniversary of that victory—a feat made all the more remarkable in light of Larsen’s otherwise unspectacular career.