HARVEY HADDIX stepped onto the rain-softened mound and exhaled. It was May 26, 1959, nearing 10 o'clock on a muggy night in half-empty Milwaukee County Municipal Stadium. Dark clouds loomed overhead in the windswept sky, lightning flickered in the distance. There were two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Pittsburgh Pirates lefthander tugged at the bill of his black cap, glared at his catcher from underneath and nodded. Not one player on the field had said anything to him that even hinted at what he was on the verge of accomplishing. Later, when Haddix stepped up to bat, Milwaukee Braves catcher Del Crandall would break the silence and state the obvious: "Hey, you're pitching a pretty good game."
All night long Haddix's head had been foggy from a nasty cold and all the lozenges he'd been popping in between innings, but he was well aware he had a no-hitter going—he couldn't ignore all the white zeros on the scoreboard below the COME TO MARLBORO COUNTRY sign beyond right centerfield. Haddix thought he had walked a batter earlier in the game, but he hadn't. Facing one of the National League's most feared lineups, the 33-year-old was one out away from pitching the seventh perfect game in major league history. By now radio stations across the country, as far west as Los Angeles, as far east as North Carolina, had picked up the broadcast of KDKA in Pittsburgh. Just outside Springfield, Ohio, Haddix's wife, Marcia, sat in the family car in her mother's driveway and listened to static-filled radio play-by-play.
Haddix reared back and put everything he had into his 78th pitch of the game. All night he'd been blessed with impeccable control—"I could have put a cup on either corner of the plate and hit it," he would later say—and this pitch was a heater that blew by the flailing swing of his counterpart, Milwaukee pitcher Lew Burdette. Inside the press box overlooking home plate, a button popped off the plaid sports coat of KDKA announcer Bob Prince as he screamed, "Harvey Haddix pitches a perfect no-hit, no-run, nine-inning game!" Pirates players swarmed to the dugout steps to congratulate their pitcher, who stepped off the mound without as much as a fist-pump. For the first time that night the 19,194 fans in the stands rose to their feet, and a roar for Haddix echoed across the ballpark.
But the game wasn't over. The scoreboard read 0--0. Everyone in the ballpark knew they were watching history being made. But what they didn't know was that there were still four innings to be played. They didn't know that Haddix would exceed recorded pitching perfection—and still lose. They didn't know that they were witnessing the greatest game ever pitched. "People ask me all the time what the most memorable game I've ever played in was," says Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski, who would hit his legendary World Series--winning home run against the New York Yankees a year later. "Half the time I tell them it was Game 7 of the '60 Series. The other half of the time I tell them it was the night Harvey Haddix threw the finest game in the history of baseball. Then they'll look at me and say, 'Harvey who?'". . .
