40-36

We’ve been counting down The Stud 400 for about three years now and we’re getting to the point where the game’s immortals make their final appearance in the countdown.

In today’s installment of The Stud 400, we come across Sandy Koufax for the last time as his perfect game takes residence safely inside the top 40.

Koufax appeared earlier in the countdown at number 125 for his abrupt retirement and sitting out Game 1 of the 1965 World Series only to return to dominate Games 5 and 7, which came in at number 159.

We could add any or all of his no-hitters, but we’re going with his fourth and final one, which also happened to be a perfect game and perhaps the greatest game pitched in baseball history.

Koufax figured things out in 1961 and once 1962 hit, thus began the best five-year stretch any pitcher has ever had in the game. Koufax fired his first no-hitter in 1962 and followed that each subsequent season through 1964. Besides Koufax, only Nolan Ryan has as many as four no-hitters in his career and Koufax is the only one to have pitched a no-hitter in four straight seasons.

His first no-hitter came against the hapless 1962 Mets and the only real surprise there is that he didn’t no-hit them in his other two starts against them that season.

In 1963, Koufax moved up in class and no-hit a Giants team that was stocked with Hall of Famers and All-Stars. He carried a perfect game into the eighth inning but walked one batter in each of the eighth and ninth innings. He erased one of them on a double play, so he faced only one batter over the minimum.

Moving on to 1964, Koufax would twirl his record-tying third no-no against a very good Phillies team that won 92 games that season. Again, Koufax was a breath away from a perfect game. The only batter to reach base was Hall of Famer Dick Allen, who battled the lefty for a seven-pitch at bat that results in a walk on a 3-2 count in the fourth. Allen was promptly caught stealing to end the inning. Nobody else reached base and Koufax faced the minimum.

Going into the 1964 season, only Koufax, Cy Young and Bob Feller had thrown three no-hitters in the modern era. It had gotten to the point that anytime Koufax took the mound, the possibility of a no-hitter was on the table.

Koufax actually came close to his fourth no-hitter on June 20 that season in a start against the Mets, but a Jim Hickman solo home run in the fifth inning ended up being the only hit in a one-hit masterpiece in which he also had 12 strikeouts.

After that close call, he fired off multiple low-hit gems before finally sealing the deal on his record breaking fourth no-hitter, a perfect game, in the final month of the season. That’s where find ourselves today in The Stud 400.

Before we move on to this week’s edition of The Stud 400, here’s a look at the last five entries as we count down the 400 greatest moments in Major League Baseball history:

45: Interleague play begins (1997)

44: Mike Piazza 9/11 home run (2001)

43 :Cubs break the curse (2016)

42: Sammy Sosa vs. Mark McGwire (1998)

41: Ichiro sets single season hits record (2004)

And now, here’s Episode LXXIX of The Stud 400.

40. Pitcher’s mound lowered (1969)

Just about any conversation about Bob Gibson ultimately leads to the statement, “He was so good in 1968 that it forced baseball to lower the pitcher’s mound!”

While Gibson’s dominance played a role—and possibly a large role—in that adjustment, it wasn’t the only reason the mound was lowered. There was a bevy of alarming statistics related to offense in the 1968 season and amplified an underlying trend that plagued baseball in the mid-1960s. Once baseball found its footing post-World War II, league-wide OPS generally lingered around .380. Even as late as 1962, OPS across both leagues was north of .390 and batting average was .258, which was consistent with where it had been over the past 15 years. By 1968, league-wide OPS plummeted to .340 and batting average sunk to .237, a mark that still remains the worst in baseball history. The only other seasons where batting average across baseball dipped below .240 came in 1888 and 1908 when they were basically using a rolled-up pair of socks for a ball.

In 1968, there were seven starters who had a sub-2.00 ERA, the most since 1917. The Yankees as a team hit .214. Even this year’s Rockies, who may end up the worst team in baseball history are hitting .219. The resulting moves were to lower the mound from 15 to 10 inches and to shrink the strike zone and it bore the desired effect. Batting average jumped .011 points in just one season and OPS hopped up by .029 points. Things stabilized from there, so the long-term effects of the move played out as planned as well. Bob Gibson may not be the only reason the mound was lowered, but he is certainly the face of the movement!

39. 1994-1995 strike (1994)

There have been many strikes and lockouts in Major League Baseball history, but perhaps none was more damaging than the 1994 strike. We talk about the 1998 home run race as the event that “saved baseball” and the fact that baseball still needed saving four years after the strike says a lot about how devastating it was.

For starters, it was the longest strike in baseball history, lasting seven months and three weeks. The strike began on August 12, 1994 and lingered into the start of the 1995 season. The World Series, which had been played through both World Wars and the Great Depression, was cancelled for the first time. The strike got so nasty that the league moved forward with replacement players in spring training of 1995. Players like Kevin Millar, Brain Daubach, Ken Oberkfell and Oil Can Boyd were among the dozens of former or future Major Leaguers who crossed the picket line.

When the strike was finally settled and play resumed, fans were pissed.

Attendance sank dramatically, as did television ratings. The league-wide attendance drop from 1994 to 1995 was 20%. When fans did return, there were plenty of protests in the stands and on the field. Fans threw objects on the field, ran onto the field to throw money at players and held up scores of greed-related signs. The sentiments of fans weren’t concentrated on one group over the other. They were furious at both the owners and players for shutting down the game they loved. In fact, one person even paid for a plane to fly over Riverfront Stadium holding a banner that said, “Owners & Players: To hell with all of you!” The player’s strike of 1994 was so damaging to the product, that strikes and lockouts became less common and lengthy among the four major sports.

38. Reggie Jackson’s three HR World Series game (1977)

When you’re talking about the all-time postseason performances in baseball history, if you don’t start the conversation with Reggie Jackson, you better get to his 1977 World Series Game 6 pretty damn quickly.

The season before, the Yankees were swept in the World Series by the Big Red Machine and were still looking for their first World Series title in the post-Mickey Mantle era. To try to get them over the hump, the Yankees signed Reggie Jackson to headline a flurry of offseason moves. The Yanks got past the Royals in the ALCS to set up a matchup against the Dodgers. The classic matchup between the Yankees and Dodgers harkened back to the Boys of Summer era, especially considering how star-studded both teams were. The teams split the first two games in Yankee Stadium and then the Yanks took two of three in Los Angeles, setting up a potential clincher in Game 6 when the series shifted back to the Bronx. The Stadium may have been ready to boil over, but Reggie had plans to have it come crashing down.

With the Dodgers up 3-2 in the third, Jackson came up with Thurman Munson on base and cracked a first-pitch homer to deep right field to give the Yankees a lead they would not relinquish. Jackson’s next at bat came in the fifth and with the Yankees holding a slim 5-3 lead, Jackson gave them breathing room with another two-run home run on the first pitch he saw, this time victimizing Elias Sosa. With the Yankees still holding a 7-3 lead and fans just about able to taste the victory champagne, Jackson led off the eighth against knuckleballer Charlie Hough. If I have to tell you what happened on the first pitch yet again, what are you even doing here? This was the longest of Jackson’s three home runs, an absolute bombzilla to dead centerfield. From Jackson’s historic third home run through the final out in the ninth, the Stadium was in a frenzy having just witnessed the first three-homer World Series game since Babe Ruth turned the trick in 1928. Overall, there have been five three-homer World Series games. Ruth did it twice (1928, 1926), Albert Pujols (2011) and Pablo Sandoval (2012) have the others.

An interesting side note, Jackson also homered on his final swing of Game 5 in 1977, so that made four consecutive swings in which Mr. October homered. He also homered in his first postseason game in 1978 and his first World Series game in 1978 as well. Between 1977 and 1978, Jackson had a four World Series game stretch in which he went 12-15 with six home runs, nine runs scored and eight RBIs. Pure insanity.

37. Willie Mays: The Catch (1954)

If you’re one of those dopes who prays at the altar of catch probability, you’ll probably scoff at this ranking and tell us that Pete Crow-Armstrong makes this catch on a daily basis while juggling alligators and riding a unicycle.

For the rest of the real baseball fans out there, this is the most iconic defensive play in the game’s history and The Stud 400 ranks it as such. Baseball at its best is about way more than numbers and you have to take those other factors into account when you’re determining the status of certain moments and how they fit into the tapestry of Major League Baseball history. The fact that it’s the iconic play of perhaps the game’s greatest all-around plays a role. That it came during the eight inning of a World Series game that was tied 2-2 with two runners on base adds to things as well. You’ll also hear many people reference Mays’ throw back to the infield, keeping Al Rosen at first base as a key part of the play as well. That plays into things too, as does Mays’ positioning on the play. Mays played a shallow centerfield against Vic Wertz, which was a risky proposition in the Polo Grounds considering the wall was 483 feet away.

So, knowing all of that, put yourself in the seats at the Polo Grounds on September 29, 1954. It’s Game 1 of the World Series. The pressure is on in a tight 2-2 game. The Indians have first and second with no outs and as you pan the outfield, a 23-year-old Willie Mays is playing shallow centerfield with acres of grass behind him. Vic Wertz blasts a shot clear over Mays’ head for what looks like a devastating two-run triple, if not an inside-the-park home run. Mays puts his head down and does a dead sprint for the centerfield wall. As you follow Mays’ path and the trajectory of the ball, you start to imagine that he might actually run this thing down, which of course he did.

In a vacuum, was it the best defensive play ever made? Probably not. Mays himself said he had made better catches and there are plenty of instances where guys made absolutely superhuman athletic plays. However, Major League Baseball is not played in a vacuum. It’s played by players, with heartbeats and is steeped in decades upon decades of lore. You can choose to live your baseball life on a spreadsheet; I’ll live mine where The Catch is simply the greatest defensive play we’ve ever seen.

36. Sandy Koufax’s perfect game (1965)

If you consider Sandy Koufax to be the perfect pitcher—which he was at his peak—then his performance on September 9, 1965 might just be the exact pinpoint of pitching perfection. It’s not just that Koufax threw a perfect game against a Cubs lineup that featured three Hall of Famers that day, but it was also his-record breaking fourth no-hitter. If you’re apt to use “game score” as a reliable stat, Koufax’s gem registered a 101 and there have only been two games scored higher—Clayton Kershaw’s 2014 no-hitter (102) and Kerry Wood’s 20 strikeout game (105).

Koufax was actually in a mini-slump by his standards coming into the game. He hadn’t won a game in three weeks, but that was all about to change in a dramatic way. Koufax ripped through the Cubs in the first inning on ten pitches, striking out two Cubs in the process. Things continued on that route from there. The only issue was that Bob Hendley, a 26-year old journeyman who served as a swing starter, was incredibly matching Koufax. He dismantled the Dodgers through the first four innings, needing just 30 pitches to get himself to the fifth. He walked Lou Johnson to lead off the bottom of the fifth and Ron Fairly bunted him to second. Johnson stole third and when the throw went into left field, he trotted home with the first run of the game. Incredibly, the game went to the seventh inning with neither team having recorded a hit. Johnson finally got the first hit of the game, a double in the bottom of the seventh, and that would be the only hit recorded by either team in the entire game. To this day, it’s the only game in which just a single hit was recorded. With no margin for error, Koufax ended the game in style, striking out the final six batters of the incredible 1-0 game.

Koufax ended the game with 14 strikeouts, including getting Ernie Banks three times. The iconic lefty threw 113 pitches in the game, 79 of which went for strikes. At the time, it was just the sixth perfect game of the modern era. He was the first lefty to throw a perfecto and this was the first one to be pitched at night. He struck out at least one batter in every inning, the only person to do so in a perfect game, and his 14 strikeouts remain the most ever in a perfect game, although it was matched by Matt Cain in 2014. This was a record-breaking fourth no-hitter by Koufax, topping the mark set by Bob Feller and Cy Young, who tossed three each. Another legend was on top of his game this day too: Vin Scully. Scully’s radio broadcast of the game is often cited as one of the great baseball broadcasts of all time. A 1995 SABR poll selected this game as the greatest game ever pitched, and we’re not arguing with that at The Stud 400.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode of The Stud 400 when we take the time to appreciate a groundbreaking player who doesn’t always get the due he deserves. We’re driving them home with Bad Henry and opening one of the most sacred buildings in sports next week as well. We’ll also be going back-to-back, but not with home runs. Next week’s Stud 400 features “a sad end to a sorry episode;” don’t bet on missing it for anything.