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Zusatztext 91213861 Informationen zum Autor Lew Paper is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Harvard Law School and holds a master’s degree in law from Georgetown University Law School. He has held a variety of positions in the public and private sectors, including a fellowship with Georgetown University Law School’s Institute of Public Interest Representation, Legislative Counsel to Senator Gaylord Nelson in the United States Senate, and Associate General Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. He is the author of John F. Kennedy: The Promise and The Performance; Brandeis: An Intimate Biography; Empire: William S. Paley and The making of CBS; and Deadly Risks . His articles and book reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic , and The American Scholar . He currently practices law in Washington, DC. Klappentext "Perfect captures our hearts as it carries us back to the golden age of baseball and the more innocent world of the 1950s."-Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning Author of The Bully Pulpit On October 8, 1956, New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen took the mound for game five of the World Series against the rival Brooklyn Dodgers. In an improbable performance that the New York Times called "the greatest moment in the history of the Fall Classic," Larsen, an otherwise mediocre journeyman pitcher, retired twenty-seven straight Dodger batters to clinch a perfect game and, to date, the only World Series no-hitter ever witnessed in major league baseball. Here, Lew Paper delivers a masterful pitch-by-pitch account of that fateful day and the extraordinary lives of the players on the field-seven of whom would later be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Meticulously researched and relying on dozens of interviews, Paper's gripping narrative recreates Larsen's feat in a pitching duel that featured legendary figures such as Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, and Roy Campanella. More than just the story of a single game, Perfect is a window into baseball's glorious past. Prologue The Moment of Truth he tall right-hander peers down at the catcher from his perch on the pitcher’s mound under the fading afternoon sun in the cavernous environs of Yankee Stadium. It is the ?fth game of the 1956 World Series, and the soaring facades of the stadium cast a giant shadow over much of the ?eld while a slight breeze blows against the ?ags in the out?eld. It is a relatively warm day with only a hint of autumn in the air, and a thunderous noise is sweeping through the 64,519 fans in attendance, almost all of whom are now standing in anticipation of witnessing a miracle in baseball history. Yogi Berra, the Yankees’ perennial All-Star catcher, looks up at Don Larsen from his crouch. Larsen’s ears protrude from his cap and explain the nickname that has followed him everywhere: “Gooney Bird.” It seems to ?t Larsen perfectly: an almost pear-shaped body draped on a six-foot-four-inch frame with long, dangling arms. None of that is on Berra’s mind now. His heart is pounding and his eardrums are throbbing with the roar of the crowd as he focuses on the next pitch. He cannot lose his concentration. He has called each pitch that Larsen has already thrown against the Brooklyn Dodgers that day. All ninety-six of them. And no one can have any reason to second-guess the burly catcher. Twenty-six Dodger batters have come to the plate, and twenty-six Dodgers have made an out. Over the course of thousands of major-league baseball games that have been played in the twentieth century up to this point, there have been only four perfect games in which no batter reached base. The last one was pitched by Charlie Robertson for the Chicago White Sox thirty- four years ago in 1922. To be sure, there have been more than one hundred no-hitters marred...
