Just a few brief weeks into the 2019 Major League Baseball season, incontrovertible evidence has surfaced that computerized balls and strike calls cannot be far away. Before each game begins, the announcers offer their insights into the home plate umpire’s leanings: he’ll allow the low or the high strike. Then throughout the game, with the strike zone superimposed on the screen, the announcers unload, and make critical comments such as last innings strike is now this innings ball. Although baseball purists will bemoan robotics’ arrival, it’s inevitable.
But baseball bugs can be thankful that computers were still a fantasy in 1956 when the New York Yankees’ Don Larsen pitched his perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Replays show that Larsen’s final pitch to pinch hitter Dale Mitchell was high and away. To mark the MLB Network’s 10th anniversary, Bob Costas hosted Larsen and his catcher Yogi Berra for the historic game’s inning-by-inning analysis that led up to home plate umpire Babe Pinelli’s controversial strike three call.
Only two close fielding plays jeopardized Larsen’s perfect game bid. In the second inning, the Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson hit a scorcher that deflected off Yankees third baseman Andy Carey and into shortstop Gil McDougald’s glove. McDougald’s throw to first baseman Joe Collins beat the aging 37-year-old Robinson by a split second. Then, in the fifth, center fielder Mickey Mantle ran down a long Gil Hodges shot that would easily have gotten past slower outfielders. Otherwise, Larsen mowed down the powerful Dodgers’ lineup.
