David Cone, Yogi Berra, Don Larsen and a perfect Yankees game

“That day definitely woke me up and made me think about those kinds of things,” Cone said in an interview last week. “I ended up with 88 pitches on Yogi Berra Day and there’s a big number 8 painted behind home plate,” to commemorate the Hall of Fame catcher’s jersey number. “That makes you think, too. It was just an incredible day, and the further away I get from it, the more I appreciate it.”

Pitcher Curt Schilling once joked about the Yankees’ “mystique” and “aura” as the names of nightclub dancers, but it was hard to deny that something was in the air on July 18, 1999. As the team’s shortstop, Derek Jeter, said in “It Ain’t Over,” a documentary about Berra:

“I’ve always said there are ghosts in Yankee Stadium, because it seems like weird things happen all the time. And there’s a perfect game on Yogi Berra Day? That doesn’t make any sense — you know what I mean? But I think some things happen for a reason, and this was one of them.”

The unlikely outcome had a New York City background. Angry over owner George Steinbrenner’s firing of him after just 16 games as manager in 1985 — and the job of GM Clyde King — Berra stayed away from the ballpark for 14 years. But Yankees broadcast analyst Suzyn Waldman negotiated a rapprochement in which Steinbrenner apologized, clearing the way for Berra’s summer tribute.

While warming up in the bullpen, Cone watched Berra and his wife, Carmen, drive around in a convertible before the game.

“I remember being carefree and not even thinking about my warm-up or who I was going to be in front of or what I was going to do,” he said. “I was a complete blank page. I was just enjoying the moment.”

Larsen, 69, was there to throw the first pitch to Berra, 74, his catcher in the World Series perfect game. Cone stood next to Larsen and told him, “You’re going to run out there, jump into his arms.”

But Larsen corrected him.

“He said, ‘Boy, you’ve got it backwards. It’s the other way around. He jumped into my arms,'” Cone recalled. “I felt a little embarrassed that I got the story wrong, but it was definitely a lighthearted and funny moment, especially with Don’s roaring, deep voice coming back.”

In a front-page article in the October 9, 1956, Washington Post, Shirley Povich wrote:

The million-to-one opportunity came. Hell froze over. A month of Sundays on the calendar. Don Larsen threw a no-hit, no-run, no-man-reach-first game in a World Series today.

Much had changed in baseball since then, and the 1999 season marked only the third year of interleague play, with this matchup pitting franchises from different leagues against each other in opposite directions. The Yankees were in the midst of a late-’90s dynasty, en route to their second of three straight World Series titles from 1998 to 2000. The Expos, meanwhile, were en route to their third straight fourth-place finish in their division in one of their final seasons in Montreal before moving to Washington in 2005.

Offense was on the rise in 1999, which made Cone’s pitching performance even more impressive. The MLB batting average was .271, compared to .243 this year. Cone played against a Montreal lineup that featured future Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero, one of four Expos hitters with an OPS above .800. Rondell White and José Vidro entered the game batting .321 and .317, respectively. But it was also a free-swinging crew that was on Cone’s slider all afternoon.

After Larsen threw the first pitch, he and Berra sat in the players’ box.

“Usually I’m gone after three or four innings,” Larsen said in the Berra documentary. “… But as time went on, they let us stay. We both stayed and watched him give his great performance.”

It was 98 degrees in the Bronx that afternoon. The heat didn’t bother Cone.

“I actually thrived in warm weather,” said Cone, who now works as an analyst for ESPN Sunday Night Baseball and YES Network Yankees games. “I was 36 years old at the time, and the heat helped keep my arm loose, with all the wear and tear and miles on my arm.”

If it hadn’t been for a superb play from right fielder Paul O’Neill early in the game, Cone’s perfect moment would have been gone early. The game’s second batter, Terry Jones, hit a fly ball into the right-center field gap, and O’Neill chased it down with a diving catch, capped off with a somersault.

Cone mowed through the Montreal lineup, interrupted only by a 33-minute rain delay in the third inning. As he piled up the perfect innings, the Yankees began giving Cone the silent treatment in the dugout — a classic baseball tradition.

After Cone retired the leadoff batter in the seventh inning, Fox 5 commentator Tim McCarver asked his broadcast partner Waldman, “That can’t happen, Suzyn?”

Waldman: “No, that’s not possible.”

McCarver: “No way. Come on!”

McCarver: “That would be the ultimate coincidence.”

Then he added in his characteristic high, disbelieving tone, “I mean my God!”

Cone said he could still remember the tension on his teammates’ faces in the final innings, saying, “it was palpable, you could feel it.” If there was one player who seemed the best candidate to ruin a perfect play, it was second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, who famously developed a case of the “yips” when he struggled to throw the ball to first base. He would make 26 errors that season. So when he made a beautiful backhand play on Vidro’s hard groundball up the middle with one out in the eighth, Cone feared Knoblauch would throw him out.

“I think the whole stadium was,” Cone said. But the second baseman braced himself in the outfield grass and threw a rocket to first to hit Vidro. “And that was probably the loudest cry of the day, other than the last out,” Cone said.

After Cone retired Brad Fullmer for the final out of the eighth inning, he went to the clubhouse bathroom to give himself a pep talk.

“It was probably a reaction to the superstition of everyone staying away from me and a need to blow off a little bit of steam to get things out,” he said. “And I ended up talking to myself out loud, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. It was pretty simple stuff, like, ‘This is probably your last chance to do something like this.'”

Cone noted that he had come close to a no-hitter a few times in his career, most notably in 1996, when he made a dramatic comeback from surgery by throwing seven no-hit innings against the Oakland A’s. But manager Joe Torre pulled him, worried that going too long would be too much for his surgically repaired shoulder. Closer Mariano Rivera gave up a hit in the ninth inning.

Three years later, with a chance at the much more important — and rarer — perfect game, Cone said to himself, “You can do it, you can do it, you’re great.” But he also had doubts: “How are you going to react if you screw up?”

“It’s been going back and forth in my head,” he noted. “It’s good cop, bad cop, whatever you want to call it. It wasn’t really anything deep, but it was more like psyching myself up and talking myself into it and kind of setting the stage.”

The Yankees added another run in the eighth inning, making it 6-0. Cone returned to the field in the ninth inning to face the trailing Expos.

“The adrenaline rush was so extreme,” he said. “It was something I’d never felt before. When I went into the ninth inning, my head was on fire. I used to say I felt my hair growing. You feel like your whole body is electric.”

Cone threw out the first batter, Chris Widger. Then it was Ryan McGuire who pinch-hit Shane Andrews; McGuire hit a fly ball into left field. Left fielder Ricky Ledée fumbled after the ball in the sun-drenched outfield, and the 42,000 or so fans in the stands held their breath. Cone wondered if Ledée had lost it in the sun. The left fielder kept his glove up until the last second, then threw it down to make a two-handed, “look what I found” basket catch.

“Oh boy!” McCarver exclaimed during the Yankees broadcast. “Oh boy!”

Cone needed just one more zero.

“Orlando Cabrera. 0-for-2 this afternoon,” McCarver announced, adding sarcastically, “No joke.”

On a 1-1 pitch, Cabrera threw the ball straight up and third baseman Scott Brosius hit the ball the wrong way, just past the third base line.

“At first I wasn’t sure it was going to make it because when I looked up I was blinded by the sun,” Cone said, pointing up into the sky, adding that it was the first time he’d done that on an infield pop-up. “I couldn’t really see the ball, and when I saw that Brosius had it measured, I knew this was going to happen.”

After Brosius caught the ball, Yankees catcher Joe Girardi rushed the mound, embraced Cone, and pulled him to the grass, almost like a linebacker tackling a quarterback — albeit with much more tenderness — and their teammates joined in. The TV broadcast focused on Larsen in the owner’s suite, clapping and laughing.

“I remember laying there for a while and thinking, ‘OK, that’s enough. Let’s get up,'” Cone said. “It felt like we were going to be there forever.” His teammates carried him off the field like a bunch of Little Leaguers, as Cone raised his arm in celebration. The scoreboard flashed: “IT’S DEJÀ VU EVERYWHERE AGAIN…”

Cone, echoing Povich, told reporters, “I probably have a better chance of winning the lottery than this happening today.” He noted Larsen’s presence at Yogi Berra Day, adding, “It makes you stop and think about the Yankee magic and the mystique of this stadium.”

Torre, who was celebrating his 59th birthday, had been at Larsen’s perfect game as a 16-year-old. After the game, Cone went to his office and someone was on the phone. No, not then-President Bill Clinton. It was Toronto Blue Jays pitcher David Wells, who had thrown a perfect game for the Yankees the season before being traded in the offseason.

“Boomer’s on the phone,” said Cone, using Wells’ nickname. “He welcomed me to the club and said he was coming to party with me tonight, so I’m expecting him any minute.”

A little later, Cone encountered Larsen in the tunnel between the dugout and the clubhouse.

“At that point, Don and I didn’t know each other that well,” he recalled, “but I remember seeing him and the look on his face after the game and I just ran up to him and gave him a bearhug, gave him a big hug for a long time, and I think he appreciated that and he understood what I was going through. And just the way he received me, it was almost fatherly.”