Yankees Mag: Oh, It’s Such a Perfect Day

It’s a nice problem to consider what it would be like if your perfect game hadn’t happened. Certainly better than the alternative. For David Cone, who achieved baseball immortality 25 years ago on a hot July day in the summer of 1999, it’s a fun exercise, harmless and victimless.

“You have to respect the random variance of baseball,” the former pitcher and current YES Network and ESPN broadcaster said this spring. “You just have to. It will humble you if you don’t. That’s why you come up with cliches like, ‘I guess it wasn’t meant to be …’”

For Cone, like David Wells in 1998, it was meant to be. A 36-year-old still dealing with some of the effects of a scary aneurysm in 1996 that affected the circulation in his hand, the pitcher had been an emotional and on-field leader during the late-’90s Yankees dynasty. It was a perfect time to be a Yankee, sometimes especially so.

The 1999 season will always occupy a strange place within that era. It didn’t have the newness of 1996, the all-out, world-beating dominance of 1998, or the Subway Series excitement of 2000. What it was, simply, was a championship season. All championship seasons, though, are perfect. For Cone, who added the ultimate personal achievement to a shocking stretch of team success, 1999 will never be an also-ran.

He spoke with Yankees Magazine deputy editor Jon Schwartz about the joys of that season, the unique history in the Bronx, and that remarkable game. An extended version of this interview can be heard this July in an episode of the New York Yankees Official Podcast. Be sure to subscribe at yankees.com/podcast, or the podcast app of your choice.

Yankees Magazine: I think the ultimate first-world problem for a baseball player is to have all of your championship years run together. When you look at the totality of 1996 to 2000, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

David Cone: The further removed I get from those years, the more I appreciate how special they were. Whatever way you want to look at it, or slice it and dice it, it just felt like the stars were aligned for us. We caught a lot of breaks along the way, but we played very well. We had the right personnel. It was the perfect storm of the right people in the right place doing the right thing.

YM: There’s no such thing as a ho-hum World Series championship. And yet, as we look at the 25th anniversary of 1999, it feels to me like it’s the closest thing to it. Just your average, boring, World Series sweep of the Braves. I’m guessing that’s not the experience of having lived it, though.

DC: No, it really wasn’t because we knew that the Braves had such great pitching. They had three Hall of Fame pitchers on their staff that, at any given time or on any given night, could win the game all by themselves. They could shut you down and win a 1-0 game. So, we didn’t take anything lightly.

YM: I have to think that there was so much pressure going into that year, coming off of 1998. How do you all manage that? You know that great teams don’t always win, even if that’s demanded in New York …

DC: There’s random variance, “the baseball gods,” whatever you believe in, whatever you want to call it. There’s that second force field of baseball that is completely out of your control. Whether it’s just a break, the luck of some sort of sequencing that goes in your favor, an umpire’s call. It could be any number of things that tilt the balance your way, that really have nothing to do with skill. Sometimes it just has to do with being in the right place at the right time.

YM: An umpire’s call … I think some 1998 Padres might have a thought about that one.

DC: Yes!

YM: Before we get to your own perfect game, you watched David Wells throw one in 1998. As a teammate, as a friend, as a competitor, what are you seeing as you watch that happen to someone else?

DC: You’re witnessing history. When I was watching David Wells’ perfect game, I knew exactly what it meant for him, his career, his legacy. I knew it would change the arc of his career and his life. And it really has -- it’s changed his life. It made him a much more confident pitcher; it cemented his legacy. And for David Wells, that was everything, because he’s a baseball historian. He has one of the biggest memorabilia collections of anybody. He’s a true fan of the game, a true fan of Babe Ruth. He has Babe Ruth’s cashmere coat that he wore in his last speech at Yankee Stadium, that beautiful white cashmere coat. David Wells has that coat on a mannequin in the basement of his house. And even though he was stunned -- I don’t think he fully realized it -- he does now. Because there’s not a day that goes by, I’m sure, that he doesn’t think about it or talk about it or parlay it into raising money for charity, using that celebrity status.

YM: Are you suggesting that you don’t own any of Babe Ruth’s articles of clothing?

DC: I do not. I’m sort of the opposite of Wells. I didn’t keep anything. I’m kicking myself now. He’s smart. He knew what he was doing as far as that goes. I didn’t save anything, and I really wish I would have.

YM: Is there a part of you saying, “I want to do that. That looks fun.”

DC: There’s always a part of you that does that. That’s the beauty of a pitching staff: You feed off each other. And you learn through osmosis, so to speak, where you watch somebody dealing out there, a pitcher really on top of his game, and you watch how he goes about it and the confidence in his mannerisms and the way they handle themselves. That rubs off on you. Of course it does! It makes you want to go and actually match that. You want to be that guy, as well.

YM: So, let’s get to the point: July 18, 1999. Yogi Berra Day at the Stadium. Don Larsen is there to throw the first pitch to Yogi. This story is made for a Hollywood sound stage, not a regular-season baseball game.

DC: When I tell the story to people who maybe just became a fan or are younger, they can’t believe it. Yogi Berra using Joe Girardi’s glove, sort of blessing the catcher’s mitt and handing it back to Girardi. Larsen throwing out the first pitch. I said something to Don about, “Are you going to go jump in Yogi’s arms again?” And he said, “You got it wrong kid, he jumped into my arms.” And I felt about that tall, because I got the whole history part wrong. I threw 88 pitches. There’s a big 8 painted behind home plate in honor of Yogi’s No. 8. So, I threw 88 pitches on Yogi Berra Day.

YM: When we watch Aaron Judge chase the home run record or Derek Jeter go after 3,000 hits, you show up knowing it could happen. A perfect game has to catch you by surprise. But it’s baseball, right? Anything can happen on any day …

DC: You see it every year, too, it seems. Something that you’ve never seen before happens. It’s why people say, Hold on to your ticket stub.

YM: Ticket stubs? You’re dating yourself, man …

DC: Exactly. David Wells found out that there’s a backup ticket printing that would happen at Yankee Stadium. So, he was able to go and actually purchase all of those ticket stubs and use them for charity items and sign them and whatnot. That’s why you keep your program, you keep your ticket stub -- if there are ticket stubs anymore, which a lot of times there’s not. But you’re right, especially when it happens at Yankee Stadium, because of the history there. It connects the dots to generations, and that’s the thing that David and I talked about a lot. A lot of the perfect-game pitchers, when we’ve gotten together for memorabilia shows, we’ve talked about that a lot. It’s about the families, the grandfather sharing that experience with his grandson. The grandson never forgets that day at Yankee Stadium when something happened. That’s what keeps the generations going, the pass-on. And you get that at Yankee Stadium more than anywhere else.

YM: Those moments are so tied in with what Yankee Stadium represents. Even that day: Larsen throws the first pitch. Joe Torre is managing, and he was at the World Series perfect game. You have three generations connected just in the Yankees' dugout before the game.

DC: People ask me about my Yankee career, what do I remember, what are the signature moments, other than the World Series championships. The weekend when Joe DiMaggio died, and Paul Simon trots out to center field with his guitar and plays a tribute to Joe DiMaggio, I’m warming up in the outfield, and I sat down with my back against the outfield wall and just watched what seemed like a private concert for me as the starting pitcher. But he was looking back at the entire stadium. And just to see, sitting behind Paul Simon that day, was one of those signature moments you never forget. And I remember, too, when Mickey Mantle died, we put No. 7 on our jersey. Those kinds of tributes, when those kinds of things happen in the history of the Yankees, it’s just like nowhere else. It makes you feel like you’re part of something much bigger than yourself. It’s overwhelming.

YM: Back to the game. You have a 33-minute rain delay. It’s funny to think about that with today’s brain. What are the chances they let you keep going after that?

DC: Sometimes it helps to be older because they let you go a little bit!

YM: They don’t care about you as much.

DC: Exactly! They’re like, “Yeah, you go ahead. We’re going to ride you as long as we can.”

YM: You were just pounding the strike zone that day, something that was sometimes a problem for you, especially at that point in your career. What were you doing right?

DC: I think it was that Montreal had a younger lineup. Even though there were a couple of really good players -- Vladimir Guerrero was in that lineup, José Vidro was an All-Star second baseman -- they were free swingers. And for a veteran pitcher who could exploit the strike zone, who could throw pitches that look like they’re strikes and then sweep out of the strike zone, that was a blessing for me that day. I kept throwing the sweeper -- before we called it a sweeper -- and they kept swinging at it.

YM: Is there a moment when the mindset switches from “Let’s win this game” to “Let’s be perfect?”

DC: After the fifth inning, you’re looking up and you see the zeros, of course you notice it. The crowd starts to get into it after every pitch in the sixth inning, and then into the seventh inning. And they lead the way because they want to see history as much as anybody. So, I could hear the crowd, with every pitch, every strike, every play from the sixth inning on, really pick it up a notch.

YM: Ninth inning, one out, Ricky Ledée struggles with a popup. He caught it, so it doesn’t matter. But did you guys laugh about that?

DC: He obviously saw it initially because he took the right route to get there, and then lost it for a split second. But his glove just happened to be in the right spot, or his reactions were just quick enough at the end. But anytime you see a ball hit a glove and the glove snaps back like his, you realize that he didn’t see it. He didn’t anticipate the ball hitting his glove. Those kinds of plays happen in perfect games …

YM: Do you think about how you might have reacted if he hadn’t recovered?

DC: You just try to find your perspective at that point. The old cliche of, “I guess it wasn’t meant to be …” There’s some truth in some of those cliches; that’s why they’re still around. You have to respect the random variance of baseball. You just have to. It will humble you if you don’t.

YM: You make it sound a little easier than I think it actually is.

DC: It’s a battle! It’s something you fight with, without a doubt. But that’s the battle you wage.

YM: What do you actually remember about the end, besides the pain of an entire team jumping on you?

DC: I remember a slight panic on the last popup because the sun was setting on that side of Yankee Stadium, and I looked up and I initially got blinded. So that’s why I kind of pointed up, which was an odd thing to do. I’d never done that ever in my career before or after. That’s the only time on a baseball field I actually pointed up in the sky. I remember going down to my knees; I guess it was an homage to a tennis celebration I had seen when I was 12 years old, I think at the U.S. Open. I think it was Manuel Orantes who beat Jimmy Connors. And his reaction was just like that, to his knees. And I remember being impacted by that as a 12-year-old playing tennis. That’s the only thing I can think of for why I reacted that way. It was pure emotion.

YM: How long does it take for your world to calm down after something like that? A day? Three days? Three months?

DC: It’s a great question. Because if I had to do it over again, I would have gone to Joe Torre and said, “Can I skip a start?” Because there was a couple of sleepless nights in there. I got up and did the breakfast circuit, all the morning shows and the media hits that come with it. It was a lot to process. It’s hard to explain, but in some ways, it took me the rest of the year to recover.

YM: You’re one of four Yankees pitchers to have thrown a perfect game. It’s a bit of history that will live forever, much longer than either of us. How meaningful is that?

DC: You’re part of forever. I think Michael Kay coined that phrase, “Derek Jeter is part of forever.” It’s a hard thing to put into perspective when you’re active as a player. And then as you retire, and you get further removed from your career, these sorts of things kind of pop up. Not only am I more thankful now than ever before, and more understanding of the randomness of things like that and the luck factor, but to be a part of baseball history, to be a part of Yankees history, is something that will long outlast me being a part of those great teams.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jon Schwartz is the deputy editor of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the July 2024 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.