Mythological Pitching: Cy Young's Perfect Game

On May fifth, nineteen oh four, the legend Cy Young pitches the very first modern perfect game. Why do we call it the perfect game? And why was is just the first modern one. We'll get into all of that today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. Now, if you don't know, in baseball, a perfect game is when a pitcher does not allow any hits, walks, hit batsman, uncaught third strikes, catch your interference, field for obstructions, or fielding errors. So even though we attribute a perfect game to a pitcher, it is really a team effort overall, because a pitcher does not control errors. And you may have heard term no hitter, which if you throw a perfect game, you actually throw a no hitter as well. A no hitter is when no one gets a hit on you. So they may be walked, they may get hit by the batter, they may be errors. No hitters are more common in baseball, but perfect games are very rare, and the chances of a pitcher throwing a perfect game is point zero zero zero nine eight three percent, a lot less than one percent, and it's only been done twenty times in the modern history of baseball. Now, the term perfect game actually didn't come from when Cy Young pitched his game. It came four years later when the Chicago Tribune, who wrote an article after Andy Jose pitched a perfect game for the White Sox, saying, and their quote was an absolute perfect game without run, without hit, and without an opponent reaching first base by hook, crook, on hit, walk, or error in nine innings. Luckily, they shortened that to a perfect game and it was actually introduced into the Baseball Cyclopedia in nineteen twenty two, giving it even more validity, and Major League Baseball didn't formally recognize the term perfect game until nineteen ninety one, when they gave it the rules. Now, Cy Young had the very first modern perfect game, but there were two previous perfect games before this, both in eighteen eighty with Lee Richmond pitching the first one for the Worcester Worcesters versus the Cleveland Blues. Then five days later, John Montgomery Ward of the Providence Grays pitched a perfect game versus the Buffalo Bisons. Now, the reason why these aren't considered modern is that they didn't formalize the rules. There was no strike zone. The pitchers mound was ten feet closer and you had eight strikes to get an out, so different kind of circumstances, whereas Cy Young when he was pitching in nineteen oh four had the more modern rules of three strikes and you're out, and there was a strike zone. Now Cy Young deserves his own entire episode, and we're going to focus on mainly his perfect game today, but to give you a brief overview, Cy Young started his career with the Cleveland Spiders in nineteen ninety and was with them for eight years before making his way to the Saint Louis Cardinals for two years in eighteen ninety nine nineteen hundred and then in nineteen oh one, the American League was upstarting and they were citing all the national players they could, and they gave cy Young one of the richest contracts for thirty five thousand dollars a year roughly one hundred and twenty three thousand dollars today, And by this point he was one of the best pitchers in the world, not only having some speed but really focusing on his control which allowed him to pitch for many many years. And back then pitchers were more workhorses, as they would pitch back to back games or go extended innings, and they didn't have as many relief pitchers back then as well, and they didn't have an intense training regiment, as he never warmed up very much before games, actually only using about three or four minutes to loosen up his arm before going to pitch an entire game. And by nineteen oh four he was already thirty seven years old, which in today's baseball is very old for a pitcher or any player. What happened was a few days earlier, on April twenty fifth, they played the Athletics and pitcher rue Walden was able to beat the Boston Americans and had a one hitter, meaning he only gave up one hit the entire game, and then he started to taunt Young, saying he couldn't best his performance. It was so good that no one could do better than that. So in the next game they had against the Athletics on May fifth, Cy Young took Waddell's trash talk to heart and went out and pitched arguably his best game of his career, retiring batter after batter, getting great help from his defense as well as he was not striking out every single batter, as he only had eight total strikeouts in the game and for the twenty seven batters that he came up against. That means he had to really focus on getting the hitters to hit fieldable balls for his teammates, and by the sixth inning, his team had realized that he had not allowed any hits and that he was matching Waldell's challenge, and they didn't want to mess anything up, so nobody talked to him for the remainder of the game, which is now something that happens whenever a pitcher has a perfect game or no hitter, they will not talk to the pitcher for the rest of the game until that's either broken or the game is over, a tradition that still lives on to this day and quite poetically, cy Young had gotten twenty six batters out in the entire game, and then by the ninth inning he was facing Rube Waddell for the final out of the game. So Waddell had the chance to break up though no hitter and the perfect game, but cy Young made sure that would not happen and struck him out with the final pitch of the perfect game, and after getting Waddell out Young shouted at him, how do you like that, you hay seed, which was a common put down at the time, comparing someone to dirt dirt grass, and the game ended lasting only one hour in twenty three minutes. But this wasn't all that cy Young was doing. See, this was the beginning of his forty seven scoreless innings pitched, which is still a record that he holds to this day, well over one hundred years later. And he also during this time he had the record of having seventy six hitless batters, which wasn't broken till years later by Oral Hersheizer in the nineteen seventies, and the second perfect game didn't happen again until four years later when we got the name for the perfect game by the Chicago White Sox Andy Jose And the very last perfect game ever pitched at the time of this podcast was in twenty twenty three by Domingo Germaine of the New York Yankees, who did so with only ninety nine pitches. Cy Young continued his great dominance in pitching, and in nineteen oh eight he would pitch another no hitter and finish his career with an astonishing five hundred and eleven wins with a career two point six y three ERA and having two eight hundred and three strikeouts when he passed away. Is when they developed the award called the Cy Young Award for the best pitcher in the league. And it's hard to argue with another pitcher being as great deserving that award. And this goes to show you that even though cy Young was dominant, motivation could come from anywhere, and we always have to stay motivated if we want to achieve something. If Waddell had not challenged Cy Young, would he have ever pitched a perfect game? We may never know, but what we do know is that he was innovated to put that hay seed into his place and put his name in the record book. And for our record books, we would love to see you leave a rate and review wherever you are. It brightens my day every time I see someone that loves our show. Let us know and come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports history.