A perfect day for a father
Jim Bunning ends his perfect game by striking out John Stephenson
With his wife and one of his daughters in the stands, Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Jim Bunning pitches a perfect game 61 years ago today in beating the New York Mets 6-0 in the first game of a 1964 Father’s Day doubleheader before a crowd of 32,026 at Shea Stadium.
Bunning throws only 90 pitches and strikes out 10, including rookie pinch-hitter John Stephenson to end the game and complete the National League’s first perfect game of the 20th century.
The 32-year-old Bunning also drives in two runs with a sixth-inning double on his way to becoming the first pitcher to throw no-hitters in both the National and American leagues.
Gus Triandos, Bunning’s catcher on this day in 1964, also becomes the first to catch a no-hitter in each league.
Along the way, Bunning reminds both himself and his teammates what may be happening.
Seems one of those unwritten rules of baseball – the one about never talking about no-hitters while one is in progress – has no greater violator on this day than the future Hall of Famer himself.
“The other guys thought I was crazy, but I didn’t want anyone tightening up,” Bunning later says. “Most of all, I didn’t want to tighten up myself.
“I started thinking about it around the fifth inning. By then, you know you have a chance.”
So does everyone else. They just do not want to have Bunning constantly remind them during the game.
“It was the strangest thing,” right fielder Johnny Callison later tells Larry Shenk, the guru of all-things Phillies history. “You don’t talk when you have a no-hitter, right?
“But,” Callison says, “he was going up and down the bench and telling everybody what was going on. Everybody tried to get away from him, but he was so wired that he followed us around.”
In the second game of the doubleheader, an 18-year-old rookie pitcher by the name of Rick Wise wins his first game in the majors, working the first six innings of an 8-2 victory over the last-place Mets.
Wise goes on to win another 187 games, including a no-hitter of his own in 1971, before pitching his last game in 1982.
“I was nervous,” Wise tells the Reading Eagle shortly after he retires, “but sitting in the clubhouse watching on television, I was really engrossed in Bunning’s game.”
Wise hardly is alone there, and he quickly realizes that.
“Finally, when the game was over,” Wise says., “I realized I had to go out and warm up, and I couldn’t find a ball because of the mob of reporters that came in, and the players jumping all over the place. I was trying to find the bullpen catcher.”