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On this day in New York · July 18, 1999

David Cone Throws a Perfect Game on Yogi Berra Day

The Yankees threw a party to finally make peace with Yogi Berra, and David Cone topped it by retiring every single Montreal Expo he faced.

David Cone Throws a Perfect Game on Yogi Berra Day
Wikimedia Commons / David Cone

The facts

Date
July 18, 1999
Final score
Yankees 6, Expos 0
Pitching line
88 pitches, 68 strikes, 10 strikeouts, no walks, caught by Joe Girardi
Attendance
41,930 at Yankee Stadium

July 18, 1999 was supposed to be about patching things up with Yogi Berra, who had stayed away from Yankee Stadium for years after a falling out with George Steinbrenner. Don Larsen, who threw the only perfect game in World Series history back in 1956 with Berra catching him, came out to throw Berra the ceremonial first pitch. Then David Cone went out and did what Larsen had done 43 years earlier: 27 Montreal Expos up, 27 down, with Joe Girardi catching the sixteenth perfect game in major league history. Cone needed only 88 pitches, struck out 10, and walked nobody in front of 41,930 fans, and afterward found Larsen and Berra waiting to wrap him up at his locker.

In their words

The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.

  1. You probably have a better chance of winning the lottery than this happening

    David Cone, on pitching a perfect game on the same day Don Larsen and Yogi Berra were honored at Yankee Stadium

    Source: Society for American Baseball Research (SABR)

  2. He jumped into my arms.

    Don Larsen, correcting Cone's memory of the embrace after Larsen's own 1956 perfect game

    Source: Society for American Baseball Research (SABR)

Why it still matters

It was the last no-hitter thrown by a Yankee until 2021, and it turned a day meant to heal an old grudge into one of the rarest feats in the sport, played out in front of the two men who'd lived it before.

Sources

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