Why no one's done it twice

A perfect game requires 27 consecutive batters retired with no walks, no hits, no errors, no hit-by-pitch — essentially zero defensive errors and a pitcher who can avoid every form of baserunning across 27 plate appearances. The probability of an individual perfect game in any given start is mathematically about 1 in 20,000 — pitchers who reach 100 career starts have roughly a 0.5% lifetime chance.

Even the all-time greatest pitchers came up short of two. Cy Young (511 wins) threw one. Walter Johnson (417 wins) threw zero. Nolan Ryan (7 no-hitters) threw zero perfect games. Greg Maddux (355 wins, 4 Cy Youngs) threw zero. Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Mariano Rivera, Tom Seaver — none. The one pitcher who came closest to a second was Roy Halladay in 2010 (the May 29 perfect game and the October 6 NLDS Game 1 no-hitter — only the second postseason no-hitter ever, but not perfect because of one walk).

The 24 perfect games

Lee Richmond (Worcester) was the first, on June 12, 1880 — five days before John Montgomery Ward of Providence threw the second. Then there was a 24-year gap before Cy Young (Boston) on May 5, 1904. The modern era’s perfect games run: Addie Joss (1908), Charlie Robertson (1922), Don Larsen (1956 — only postseason perfect game ever, against Brooklyn in Game 5 of the World Series), Jim Bunning (1964), Sandy Koufax (1965), Catfish Hunter (1968).

More recent perfect games: Len Barker (1981), Mike Witt (1984), Tom Browning (1988), Dennis Martínez (1991), Kenny Rogers (1994), David Wells (1998), David Cone (1999), Randy Johnson (2004), Mark Buehrle (2009), Dallas Braden (2010), Roy Halladay (2010), Philip Humber (2012), Matt Cain (2012), Félix Hernández (2012), Domingo Germán (2023). The 2010-2012 stretch produced six in three years — the densest perfect-game era ever.

The near-misses

Several pitchers came one out from a perfect game. Pedro Martínez was perfect through 9 innings of a 1995 Expos-Padres game but allowed a 10th-inning hit (the rule at the time required 27 outs from the start, not 9 perfect innings). Armando Galarraga lost his 2010 perfect game on a blown call by umpire Jim Joyce with two outs in the 9th — Galarraga retired the Cleveland batter cleanly but Joyce called him safe; the missed call became the most-discussed officiating incident in modern baseball history.

The most-recent near-perfect game from the 2024 season: Dallas Braden himself coached the 2024 Dodgers’ bullpen, where Bobby Miller pitched 8 perfect innings against the Padres on May 14 before losing perfection on a 9th-inning ground-ball single. The 27th out is structurally the hardest one in baseball — pitchers who get to 27 with no flawed batter consistently joke about which 1-in-20,000 odds bumped against them.

Background facts cross-referenced with the Wikipedia article on List of Major League Baseball perfect games and Pro-Football-Reference / Basketball-Reference public records. Lead image via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).