25 years ago today, NPR's Scott Detrow went to a perfect baseball game

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Twenty-five years ago today, I was one of 42,000 fans crowded into the old Yankee Stadium on a steamy Sunday afternoon.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Larsen will throw out the first pitch of this game in commemoration of 1956, when Larsen pitched his perfect game - the only one ever pitched in World Series history.

DETROW: Fourteen-year-old me had taken the bus into the Bronx from the New Jersey suburbs to catch it all from the right-field stands. Yankee pitcher David Cone took the mound. He appeared to be in trouble early on when the Montreal Expos' second batter hit a liner to right field.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Lofted out into right field. Long run thrown in, and he'll get there. What a play by Paul O'Neill.

DETROW: I kept score that day and remember writing a nine and circling it with my pencil - fly ball out to the right fielder - and drawing a little star right next to it because the play was so good. Expo after Expo kept coming to the plate. David Cone got every single one of them out.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: Twenty-four in a row by David Cone.

DETROW: A game that had started with the re-creation of the rarest of baseball events - a perfect game - was veering toward another one. Cone got two outs in the ninth, and then...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUCNER #2: Popped up and playable. Brosious. A perfect...

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Yay.

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUCNER #2: ...Game by David Cone.

DETROW: Baseball perfection 25 years ago today - of course, I do still have that scorecard.

(SOUNDBITE OF JACK NORWORTH AND ALBERT VON TILZER SONG, "TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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