July 19, 1999
In an improbable setting, David Cone performed an improbable feat Sunday. He pitched the Yankees' second perfect game in little more than a year, and he did it playing in front of Don Larsen, who pitched a perfect World Series game for the Yankees in 1956.
Larsen was at Yankee Stadium to help celebrate Yogi Berra Day, and after Larsen threw the ceremonial first pitch to Berra, Cone took command of the mound and retired all 27 Montreal batters he faced as the Yankees clubbed the Expos, 6-0. It was only the 16th perfect game in major league history.
Following David Wells's perfect game against Minnesota by one year, two months and one day, Cone made the Yankees the first team to pitch perfect games in successive seasons and the first to have three perfect games to their credit.
"I probably have a better chance of winning the lottery than this happening today," an exuberant Cone said. "What an honor. All the Yankee legends here. Don Larsen in the park. Yogi Berra Day. It makes you stop and think about the Yankee magic and the mystique of this ball park."
When the foul pop-up lofted by Orlando Cabrera, the ninth batter in the Expos' lineup, on Cone's 88th pitch of the day descended softly into third baseman Scott Brosius' glove for the 27th out, Cone dropped to his knees and grabbed his head, "in disbelief," he said. Joe Girardi, the catcher, was the first to reach him.
"I just put a bearhug on him and took him down," Cone said. "I didn't want to let go. Somebody dragged me off him. I wasn't going to let go. That's how good I felt about Joe Girardi and what he means to me not only professionally but personally."
After hugs and high-fives all around, Girardi, Chuck Knoblauch and Chili Davis hoisted Cone into the air and carried him toward the dugout. Once finished acknowledging the roar of the crowd of 41,930, thrusting first his right hand holding his cap into the air and then his left with his glove still on it, the 36-year-old right-hander reached Manager Joe Torre's office and was handed the telephone.
"Boomer's on the phone," Cone said, meaning Wells, with whom he became close before Wells was traded to Toronto during the off season. "He welcomed me to the club and said he was going to fly in and party with me tonight, so I'm expecting him any minute."
Of the previous 15 perfect games, including Larsen's, the only ever pitched in the World Series, none could have been any crisper than the one that unfolded yesterday in the heat and haze of the Bronx.
Working in 98-degree heat, Cone threw only 20 called balls and increased the velocity of his fastball as the game progressed. He had the Expos lunging at sliders the entire game. Unable to hit his sliders or his fastballs with authority, they struck out 10 times and hit 13 balls into the air, nine to the outfield, four that remained in the infield. The Expos made only four outs on ground balls.
But the fourth grounder was the ball that nearly shattered Cone's brilliant, dominating performance. With one out in the eighth inning, Jose Virdo rapped a grounder up the middle that had every chance to scoot into the outfield for a single.
"I went 2-0 on him," said Cone, who had not thrown two balls with his first two pitches to any other batter. "I said, 'I got to go for it here. I'm just going to challenge him.' I got the better part of the middle of the plate and he hit it hard up the middle and I thought, there it goes."
But second baseman Knoblauch ranged far to his right, speared the ball with a backhanded grab and traveled another four steps on momentum before he stopped, turned, planted his feet deliberately and, unlike many times this season, fired a perfect throw to first for the 23d out.
Brad Fullmer, the next batter, took a strike, fouled off the next pitch with a checked swing, then took strike three for the third out of the eighth inning. The fans roared as Cone walked slowly to the dugout.
The Yankees had scored five runs in the second inning against Javier Vazquez with two monstrous two-run home runs, by Ricky Ledee well up the third tier in right field and by Derek Jeter deep into the Yankees' bullpen in left-center field.
But then they started scoring again in their half of the eighth, and the Expos made a pitching change. The inning threatened to become extended, but Davis grounded into a double play.
"I've never been happier to see a double play hit by one of our guys," said Cone, who sat through a 33-minute rain delay earlier in the game and did not want to sit through a long inning now.
Chris Widger began the Expos' ninth the way Fullmer ended the previous one, striking out on three pitches, though he swung at the third one and missed. Ryan McGuire, a left-handed hitter, then batted for the right-handed Shane Andrews and hit the ninth outfield fly Cone induced.
McGuire's ball popped into left field, and Ledee came running in for it hesitantly.
"I was worried that he might have lost it," Cone said. "There are a lot of white shirts. The sun's in and out, a hazy day. I thought he'd get to it because he has great speed, but I wasn't sure if he picked it up or lost it for a minute."
No need to worry. Ledee caught the ball, even using two hands to make sure the ball stuck in his glove.
With 26 outs from 26 batters, Cone looked around the stadium, soaking in the scene as he prepared to face No. 27, Cabrera. Cabrera, a 24-year-old Colombian, had already done some quick figuring. "If he throws a perfect game," he told some teammates, "I'm going to be the last out."
Cabrera swung and missed, took the second pitch for a ball, then hit yet another ball into the air. "I was glad it went up and not down," Brosius said. "I was glad to see a pop-up and not some kind of weird ground ball." Larsen, Wells and now Cone.
"It's getting to be a habit, huh?" Larsen said as he rode the elevator to get to the clubhouse, where he threw his arms around Cone. Only once before in this century did pitchers for any team throw perfect games in successive seasons, Jim Bunning for Philadelphia in 1964 and Sandy Koufax for Los Angeles in 1965.
Cone said that around the middle of the game he fought the urge to think about what he was accomplishing. But then came the sixth inning.
"I went out in the sixth," he related, "and said the heck with it; I'm going to throw fastballs and try to get through the inning quickly and it happened. Then I'm thinking O.K., here we go, the last three innings. That's when you really pick it up a notch and try to go for it."
In his 13-year career, Cone has won the Cy Young award once and has been a 20-game winner twice, but he has also experienced the down side. His worst time occurred early in the 1996 season, when he was found to have an aneurysm in the upper part of his right arm. Surgery eliminated the problem, but he had no guarantee that he would continue his career or continue to be successful in it.
That September he returned and pitched seven innings against Oakland without allowing a hit. But he was not allowed to try to complete the no-hitter.
"I've wondered if I'd ever get a chance again," Cone said yesterday. "Going into the latter innings today, that was running through my mind, about how many times I've been close and how this might be the last chance I get. My heart was pumping. I could feel it through my uniform."
Throwing quick-biting sliders like he said he used to throw, Cone achieved his quest. He did not surprise Felipe Alou, the manager of a young and inexperienced Expos team. Asked when he thought Cone might do something special, Alou said, "When I wrote the lineup and saw that we didn't have anybody who faced him."
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
