Friday Flashback: The First Perfect Game

By Karl Klockars in Miscellaneous on Jul 24, 2009 7:00PM

For the Cubs fans among us, if you're already getting tired of the wall-to-wall Buehrle front page coverage in the wake of yesterday's perfect game, cast your gaze backwards to 1922. After a perfect outing hurled by Charlie Robertson on April 30th, the Chicago Daily Tribune rates the accomplishment as deserving only a single column, despite "Robby" being carried off the field in celebration - while on the road.

After poking LexisNexis with a stick, we uncover that Irving Vaughn, reporting for the Chicago Daily Tribune, dances back and forth between calling the opposing team both the "Tygers" as well as the normal spelling, and that other than the sparkling pitching from Robertson, the game was otherwise "not particularly spectacular."

What made Robby the pitcher he was today, was control. He shot fast ones, slow ones and hooks right through the spots where the other fellows didn’t like ‘em. As a sample of his effectiveness, it might be mentioned that only seven balls were hit on the ground. Fourteen were slammed into the air, and six of the twenty-seven batters took their medicine in the form of strikeouts.

Drama that would keep the Sportscenter tongues wagging for a full news cycle after the game only rates a short mention and a post-game followup by the paper: Was the ball doctored?

Just what caused the Tygers to break out with their protests against the young pitcher is a mystery. Nothing was said during the first four innings, but in the fifth Harry Heilmann, while batting, called for the ball and tried to show Umpire Nallin that it had been soiled by some foreign substance. Nallin found nothing wrong…Once [Ty] Cobb even went out to first base to see whether [Earl] Sheely’s glove did not conceal coloring matter. It didn’t.

Later the irrepressible Tyrus inspected all parts of Robertson’s uniform. He was foiled again, but even after it was all over, he still insisted there was something wrong. To a non-partisan spectator it sounded like the squawk of a trimmed sucker.

A day later, Tigers president Frank Navin denied that they would protest the perfect game, despite Navin's statement that "there must have been something wrong with the balls." Not to take anything away from Mark Buerhle and his performance yesterday, but the most astonishing part of Robinson's perfect game 77 years ago - it was just his 4th start.

Charlie Robertson and 1922 Sox logo from baseball-reference.com.