Scroll Down to Read Today’s Essay
Subscribe to Baseball History Comes Alive for automatic updates. As a Free Bonus, you’ll get instant access to my Special Report: Gary’s Handy Dandy World Series Reference Guide!
Perfect Game Photo Gallery
Click on any image below to see photos in full size and to start Photo Gallery:
A Perfect Game Rarity!
What Are The Odds?? Who Can Do The Math??
As some of you may recall, I enjoy writing about baseball’s rarities. In addition to writing about Perfect Games – one of baseball’s most rare occurrences – I’ve had fun writing about unassisted triple plays, four home runs in one game, reverse cycles, and I even had a post on reverse natural cycles!
I just finished reading a great book by Lee Lowenfish, Baseball’s Endangered Species: Inside the Craft of Scouting By Those Who Lived It. A detailed review of the book will follow in short order. I have to comment on one extremely interesting item I found while reading the book. Since it has to do with something of historical note, naturally my “baseball history alarm bells” went off immediately. As your friendly Baseball History Comes Alive editor, I’d be remiss in my duties if I failed to bring it to your attention!
But before I tell you what it is I’m all excited about, here’s a little background information about Perfect Games to put this discovery into proper context:
In doing a little research…
I found that since the founding of the National League in 1876, 148 years ago, there have been 238,277 major league games. Over this time, there have been a grand total of 24 perfect games, the first thrown by Lee Richmond in 1880, and the last by Domingo German earlier this year, June 28, 2023. Dividing 24 into 238,277, we get the result of 9,928, meaning that a Perfect Game occurs once in every 9,928 games. Turning this into a percentage, we find that a given game has about a .01% chance of becoming a Perfect Game (24/238,277=.0001). For you non-math types out there, that’s one one-hundredth of one percent!
Those are pretty long odds themselves, but what really threw me for a loop was that Lee Lowenfish mentioned in his book that only one player in the long history of major league baseball has played in — are you ready for this? — not one…not two…but three of those 24 Perfect Games!
Now I’ve always been pretty good in math, but I’ll have to defer to someone else above my pay grade to figure out what are the odds of one player participating three times in a certain event that only occurs once in every 9,928 chances. If you can do this calculation — or if you know of someone who can — please let me know! The odds have to be astronomical!
Now before I tell you who this player is — and to hopefully keep you in suspense! — here’s some interesting information about Perfect Games. But don’t worry…I’ll reveal the player’s name at the end of the essay.
The First Perfect Game
You’re probably wondering who the skinny guy with the weird baseball uniform in the photo below is…and why is he being featured, anyway?
He’s none other than the aforementioned Lee Richmond, who threw major league baseball’s first officially recognized Perfect Game in 1880 while playing for the National League’s Worcester Ruby Legs.
The game was vastly different back in 1880. For example, only underhand pitching from a flat, marked-out box 45 feet from home plate was allowed. Also, it took eight balls to draw a walk, and a batter was not awarded first base if hit by a pitch. So should the two Perfect Games from the pre-modern era even be counted? If we eliminate them, then only 22 Perfect Games have been thrown in the modern era. For the featured photo above, I chose the great Cy Young, who threw the first post-1900 Perfect Game on March 5, 1904 (a list of the 24 Perfect Game pitchers is at the bottom of the post).
Some interesting Perfect Game trivia
- Lee Richmond played professional baseball for only six years and pitched full-time for only three, finishing with a losing record. After the 1883 season, he established a medical practice and later became a high school teacher.
- The second perfect game was thrown by John Montgomery Ward for the Providence Grays. Remarkably, it came only five days after Richmond’s. They are the only two of the pre-modern era.
- No pitcher has ever thrown more than one Perfect Game.
- The Perfect Game thrown by Don Larsen in Game Five of the 1956 World Series is the only World Series Perfect Game in major league history.
- There were three Perfect Games in 2012, with no other year ever having more than two.
- There have been spans of 23 and 33 consecutive seasons in which not a single Perfect Game was thrown.
- Seven Perfect Game pitchers are in the Hall of Fame: Cy Young, Addie Joss, Jim Bunning, Sandy Koufax, Catfish Hunter, Randy Johnson, and R0y Halladay.
- Four Perfect Game throwers, Dennis Martínez, Kenny Rogers, David Wells and Mark Buehrle, each won over 200 major league games.
- Most Perfect Games were thrown by accomplished major leaguers: In addition to the HOFers mentioned above, David Cone won the Cy Young once; Matt Cain is a three-time All-Star and three-time World Series champion; Félix Hernández is a Cy Young Award winner and a six-time All-Star; Mike Witt and Tom Browning were solid major league pitchers.
- Four from the modern era were journeyman pitchers who finished their careers with losing records: Don Larsen, Charlie Robertson, Len Barker and Dallas Braden.
- Philip Humber had never before thrown so much as a complete game prior to his Perfect Game, with only 16 career wins, by far the lowest of any Perfect Game pitcher.
Pitchers Who Have Thrown Perfect Games:
- Lee Richmond June 12, 1880
- John Montgomery-Ward June 17, 1880
- Cy Young March 5, 1904
- Addie Joss October 2, 1908
- Charlie Robertson April 22, 1922
- Don Larson October 8, 1956
- Jim Bunning June 21, 1964
- Sandy Koufax September 8. 1965
- Catfish Hunter May 8, 1968
- Len Barker May 15, 1981
- Mike Witt September 30, 1984
- Tom Browning September 16, 1988
- Dennis Martinez July 28, 1991
- Kenny Rogers July 28, 1994
- David Wells May 17, 1998
- David Cone July 18, 1999
- Randy Johnson May 18, 2004
- Mark Buehrle July 23, 2009
- Dallas Braden May 9, 2010
- Roy Halladay May 29, 2010
- Philip Humber April 21, 2012
- Matt Cain June 13, 2012
- Felix Hernandez August 15, 2012
- Domingo German June 28, 2023
Only Major Leaguer Who Has Played In Three Perfect Games Is…
And now for the big news: the only player in major league history to have participated in three Perfect Games is Paul O’Neill. As a member of the Reds, he was in the lineup for Tom Browning’s Perfect Game on September 16, 1988. Then as a Yankee, he was in right field for David Well’s Perfecto on May 17, 1998, and then again for David Cone’s on July 18, 1999.
In another baseball oddity, there were six Yankees who also played in both the Wells and Cone Perfect Games. Besides O’Neill, the others were Chuck Knoblauch, Derek Jeter, Tino Martinez, Bernie Williams, and Scott Brosius. As far as I can tell, there are no others who played in more than one Perfect Game.
That’s what I love about baseball history: You learn something new almost every day!
Gary Livacari
Subscribe to our website, Baseball History Comes Alive with over 1400 fully categorized baseball essays and photo galleries, now surpassing the one million hits mark with 1,128,000 hits and over 950 subscribers: https://wp.me/P7a04E-2he
Information: Stats from Baseball-Reference.com