SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio -- There is an ebb and flow to the tides of drama and tension in a baseball game. Any game, whether it is a Little League contest with nervous combatants in ill-fitting baseball pants or a college twin bill on a windy afternoon in April, with a postseason berth on the line. And then there is the ebb and flow in the Major League game -- in innings, in games, over series, and throughout weeks and months as the season meanders from spring into summer and from summer to fall.
And once in a while, the game provides its participants and fans with a tension that builds and recedes, inning-by-inning, out-by-out, pitch-by-pitch and seemingly beat-by-beat in their hearts. For a man now in his 50s and passing along his craft as an assistant coach for Notre Dame Baseball, May 15, 1981, was one of those times. He was on the mound hurling a gem for the Cleveland Indians on a chilly night at Cleveland Stadium when #Len Barker# and his powerful right arm controlled the ebb and flow of seemingly every moment for two hours and nine minutes …
… in a perfect game which still resonates in the memories of Tribe fans and fuels the excitement of a new generation of players.
Barker, 25 years old at the time and coming into his fifth start of the season with a nifty 1.67 ERA and two complete games under his belt, pitched the 10th perfect game in the history of Major League Baseball that night. Pitching with an early 2-0 lead against the Toronto Blue Jays, Barker cruised through the game, baffling Blue Jay batters with an array of fastballs and wicked curves. The 6-foot-5 right-hander never went to a three-ball count, and he piled up 11 strikeouts while his Indians teammates began sitting further and further away from him in the dugout in the bottom half of each inning.
“They were all piled up at the other end of the dugout at one point,” said Barker. “But as that game went on I felt stronger and stronger. I ended up with all 11 strikeouts coming in the final 17 outs, so there weren't a lot of balls in play the last few innings.”
The last inning in particular -- a foul fly out to third by Rick Bosetti, a strikeout of Al Woods and a routine fly to center fielder Rick Manning off the bat of Ernie Whitt -- gets replayed over and over in the mind of Barker and in the memories of Tribe fans, some of whom were present at the stadium that, many more of whom now claim to have been.
And earlier this spring, that inning (and the eight frames of perfection that preceded it) was played on the Falcons team bus on a road trip.
“Guys who weren't yet born when I did that were able to see the game as it happened,” said Barker, who returned to Northeast Ohio with his wife, Eva, in 1997. “We talked to the pitchers about the control and fundamentals on display throughout the game. The pitchers and really, all the guys on this team are able to benefit from that perfect game and from other experiences I had in the game.”
Barker's control and fundamentals were certainly on display that night 30 years ago, when Indians fans, the whole city of Cleveland and the entire baseball world applauded his perfect game. Since then he's added many new skills to his repertoire.
And he's now passing on those skills -- on and off the field -- every time he dons the blue and white threads of NDC Baseball.
Media Coverage of Anniversary
