Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made it Happen

"Perfect captures our hearts as it carries us back to the golden age of baseball and the more innocent world of the 1950s."--Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning Author of The Bully Pulpit. On October 8, 1956, New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen took the mound at Yankee Stadium for game five of the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. In an improbable performance that the New York Times called "the greatest moment in the history of the Fall Classic," Larsen, an otherwise mediocre journeyman pitcher, retired twenty-seven consecutive Dodger batters without allowing any Dodger to reach base. It was the first perfect game pitched in any kind of league play since 1922, and it remains the only no-hitter ever pitched in more than 100 years of World Series competition. Relying on meticulous research, including dozens of interviews with players on both teams, family members of players who passed on, and sportswriters, Lew Paper not only delivers a masterful account of the game; he also provides riveting profiles of the nineteen players who played in the game--seven of whom (like Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Jackie Robinson) would later be inducted into the Hall of Fame. And so Perfect is much more than the story of a single game. It is a window into baseball's glorious past.