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So, How Did Larsen Pitch A Perfect Game?
SI missed the obvious (and the note I gave them). This nice image of the flag being raised during the anthem before Larsen's perfecto also explained why he threw them.
As seen in the detail, that framework just to the left of the flagpole is - as Mel Allen noted early in the TV broadcast - is where the batters' eye ought to be. But the day was so nice and the crowd so crushing that the Yankees had the option to remove it, and sell more bleacher tickets!
Larsen's new "no wind-up delivery" (which we would look at today and say "we just call that a delivery") was odd enough to the batters of 1956. But when Dodger batters tried to pick up the pitch as it left his hand, as background they had only the shifting pattern of fans often wearing white shirts in the distant bleachers. Think about that for awhile, and you realize that the real shock of October 8, 1956 was not that Larsen pitched a Perfect Game, but that Brooklyn's Sal Maglie didn't throw one as well.
(C) Keith Olbermann
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