On Father’s day, June 21, 1964 a rare piece of Baseball history took place at Shea Stadium in New York.

                                                

Phillies ace Jim Bunning took the mound against Mets pitcher Tracy Stallard in a game that will live on in Baseball history.

                                           

The Phils got off to a 2-0 lead with single runs in the 1st and 2nd innings and scored 4 in the 6th including a solo homer by Johnny Caliison, his 9th in year where he was destined to hit 31 homeruns and win All Star Game MVP honors for blasting a dramatic 3 run homer in the bottom of 9th inning giving the National League a 7-4 victory in the 1964 All Star Game at Shea Stadium.

But all of this was not the big news in this historic game.

27 Mets entered the batter’s box, 27 Mets were retired as Jim Bunning pitched what was the 1st National league perfect game since 1880.  What’s more, Bunning became the first pitcher ever to pitch a no-hitter in both leagues having done so pitching a 3-0 no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox on July 20, 1958.  His battery-mate, catcher Gus Triandos became the first catcher ever to have caught no-hitters in both leagues having caught Baltimore Oriole knuckle-baller Hoyt Wilhelm’s no-hitter on September 20, 1958.

                                

In fact, the only solidly hit ball of Bunning’s masterpiece was a hard line drive right at Phils 2b Tony Taylor for the out.  He struck out 10 Met hitters.

“In the ninth inning, Jim Bunning called his catcher, Gus Triandos, to the mound. What did they talk about? Triandos stated after the game, ‘He said I should tell him a joke, just to get a breather. I couldn’t think of anything. I just laughed at him.’” 

After the game, that same night, Bunning appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

For the record, Bunning threw a total of ninety pitches in the game, of which seventy-nine went for strikes.

                                             

Bunning was to go on and win 19 games for the Phils in 1964, as he did subsequently in 1965 and 1966.  He and Chris Short were the aces of the pitching staff but were overused down the stretch by manager Gene Mauch when he also had Art Mahaffey, Dennis Bennett, Ray Culp and Rick Wise as starting pitchers.  The result was a 10 game choke of a losing streak, a blown lead for the 1964 National League pennant.  The St. Louis Cardinals went on to win the NL Pennant on the last day of the season and to defeat the New York Yankees in the 1964 World Series.

 Baseball Library tells of Bunning’s post-retirement years;

After retiring as a player, Bunning managed in the minors for five years, then entered Kentucky politics. He was elected to the state legislature and ran unsuccessfully for governor. In 1986, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from a heavily Democratic district.

                                        

At 75 years old, Jim Bunning is now a 2 term Senator from the state of Kentucky.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 17th, 2006 at 6:53 pm and is filed under All Time Baseball Highlights, All Time Pitching Highlights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.