To understand the height of the mountain David Cone climbed with his perfect game Sunday, you have to understand how low he felt in September, 1995, when he left much of himself on that Seattle mound with his 147-pitch effort that couldn’t quite get the Yankees past the Mariners.
To understand how much Sunday’s perfect game meant to him, you’d have to understand how much his near-perfect misses pained him, from his three one-hitters to his seven-innings of no-hit ball against Oakland the next year, having to sacrifice for the team and leave the game with his no-no intact to preserve his recently operated arm for another crack at the playoffs.
Or imagine Cone lying in bed at Columbia Presbyterian, recovering from an aneurysm in that arm, listening to teammate Doc Gooden pitching a no-hitter and wondering if he’d ever be able to play again at all.
Imagine that, and the bones spurs in his shoulder and the busted knee in the minors and even the dog bite on his hand last season. And then, maybe, we can begin to understand what Cone was feeling as he covered his beet-red face Sunday with his hands and slumped to the ground in disbelief.
“I don’t think I could pick someone who I’d want it to happen for any more than him,” Joe Torre said yesterday before the Yanks’ 6-4 loss to the Expos.
“Just since I’ve been here, what he’s had to go through, physically, emotionally, anywhere from the aneurysm to the dog bite. He’s run the gamut.
“Guys love him because of what he represents, and how he goes out there and battles his [butt] off. He’s a blue-collar guy, and everybody loves him for that.”
His feat was amazing on so many levels. Historically, a man has the same odds of throwing one as walking on the moon. Only 16 men have tossed perfectos; a dozen have strode the lunar surface. And medically, it might be even more amazing.
On May 10, 1996, he’d been diagnosed with the aneurysm near his right armpit, an illness some thought might be life threatening. Doctors took a one-inch vein from his left thigh and used it to repair two arteries in his right shoulder. But Sunday he pitched as well as any man ever had, or ever could.
“It sort of signifies I’ve come full circle,” said the 36-year-old Cone (10-4, 2.65 ERA), the second-oldest man to ever throw a perfect game. “Being traded from the Mets, having that arterial bypass and the aneurysm problems, people wondering whether my arm’s going to fall off. I was referred to as a time bomb ticking. That’s what makes this all the more gratifying.”
