David Cone threw a perfect game on the day Yogi Berra came home
On July 18, 1999, with Don Larsen and Yogi Berra in the ballpark, David Cone pitched the sixteenth perfect game in baseball history. Larsen and Berra, the battery behind the 1956 World Series perfect game, hugged him at his locker afterwards. It was the last shutout of his career.
Cone grew up in Kansas City and attended a Jesuit high school that had no baseball team, so he played quarterback and point guard there and pitched in a summer college league instead. His hometown Royals drafted him in the third round in 1981, and he debuted in June 1986 in relief of Bret Saberhagen. Traded to the Mets before 1987, he broke through in 1988 with a 20–3 record and a 2.22 ERA.
That autumn brought an early lesson in restraint. Writing a playoff column for the New York Daily News, he mocked Dodgers closer Jay Howell as pitching like a high schooler; Los Angeles pounded him for five runs in two innings next time out, and the Dodgers took the series. Better days followed: an immaculate inning, three strikeouts on nine pitches, in August 1991, then 19 strikeouts against the Phillies in the season finale, tying Tom Seaver's club record. His split-finger fastball helped him lead the majors in strikeouts from 1990 to 1992.
Traded to Toronto late in 1992, he won his first ring as the Blue Jays became the first Canadian champions. Back with Kansas City, he took the 1994 American League Cy Young Award in the strike-shortened season, while also representing players in the strike negotiations. The Yankees acquired him in 1995, and in 1996 an aneurysm in his arm sidelined him for most of the year; in his September comeback he held Oakland hitless for seven innings before a pitch limit pulled him.
His 20–7 season in 1998 set a record for the longest gap between 20-win campaigns, his previous one having come in 1988. He collected five World Series titles in all, four in New York, with a 2.12 ERA in the Fall Classic. After 1999 his form collapsed to 4–14 in 2000. He later became a broadcaster, and his autobiography Full Count, written with Jack Curry, reached the New York Times best-seller list in 2019.
Source: David Cone
