* Perfect *

[Frayed Knot]

A 1-hour program currently making the rounds on ESPN (under their 'E-60' program) examining all the perfect games in MLB history - or at least the ones that exist on film.
Kind of cool. The pitchers talk about what they were doing, what they were thinking, and so on. Showed also a couple of the near misses (Mussina, Pedro, Gallaraga)

There have been 23 in total.
2 were in the 1800s and 3 more happened by 1922
But then there were none after 1922 until Larsen's in the '56 WS
Of the 18 in the era starting with Larsen, every living author of a PG (only Catfish is no longer around) appeared on the show ... with the exception of the always ghost-like Sandy Koufax and the always surly Kenny Rogers. Helps of course that so many of them were recent.

Don Larsen - 1956 WS
Jim Bunning - 1964
Sandy Koufax - 1965
Catfish Hunter - 1968
Len Barker - 1981
Mike Witt - 1984
Tom Browning - 1988
Dennis Martinez - 1991
Kenny Rogers - 1994
David Wells - 1998
David Cone - 1999
Randy Johnson - 2004
Mark Buehrle - 2009
Dallas Braden - 2010
Roy Halladay - 2010
Philip Humber - 2012
Matt Cain - 2012
Felix Hernandez - 2012

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Saw that the other night -- quite good.

So many of them gave great interviews, especially Len Barker, Mussina, Johnson, Burhle and Humber. And Dallas Braden.

[Edgy MD]

Who was the guy who threw a rain-shortened five-inning perfect game for Montreal? He knew it looked kind of bogus even though it counted, so he went out and threw four more perfect innings against the Mets in his next outing.

Years later, the rules changed, and his perfecto got tossed.

[ashie62]

Dallas Braden retired this off season in what would have been his prime if not for arm woes..

[G-Fafif]

I believe it was Charlie Lea with the five-inning deal.

Don't think we heard from Rogers or Koufax, but neither was much missed. Program really got the tension of one of these things across. Found myself rooting for results to occur that I already knew happened.

Except for the MFY pitchers, of course.

[Edgy MD]

G-Fafif wrote: I believe it was Charlie Lea with the five-inning deal.

David Palmer, it turns out. I was thinking of him, but I couldn't not conflate him with Len Barker.

On April 21, 1984, Palmer made an unusual kind of baseball history when he threw a five-inning perfect game in the second game of a doubleheader at Busch Stadium against the St. Louis Cardinals. Officials called the game on account of rain, and major-league baseball officials later struck the game from baseball's official list of perfect games since it only lasted five innings

April 21, 1984.

And four days later against the Mets, he didn't go the first four in order, as I remembered, but got through 3 1/3. The 1984 Mets won anyhow, of course.

[G-Fafif]

Lea pitched a no-hitter in 1981, same week Barker pitched his perfecto, same year that the season was shortened and thus I decided 33 years later the no-hitter was shortened. The conflation express rides again!