Don Larsen...wow. Could you have picked an unlikelier hero for the Yankees? The one guy to throw a perfect game on the biggest stage? He had been shelled in his previous WS outing, and would be in his next one. Not only that, but according to his SABR bio, he had a court order in his locker for not paying support to his wife and child. The court was looking to seize his WS share to pay his debts to his family. His teammates didn’t even know he had a family, they thought he was a hard-drinking bachelor. Mantle was quoted as saying “Don had a startling capacity for liquor. Larsen was easily the greatest drinker I’ve known and I’ve known some pretty good ones in my time.” He was a below .500 career pitcher, but was 4-2 in the post season, and won the NL tiebreaker game to send the Giants to the 1962 World Series, when he met his old mates. He won Game 4 of that WS, despite only pitching 1/3 of an inning and walking Yogi Berra, whom he was hugging six years earlier in that iconic photo. He got Kubek, and the Giants took the lead, giving him his fourth WS win. Larsen was a bit of an anomaly, who showed us that even those of us who are imperfect, can still have perfect days. Guys like Sully, landing in the Hudson. Who knows, maybe yours is today. Here’s a song for you to listen to, while you scroll through the rest of the board today:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bsYp9q3QNaQ
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