Of all of the Dodgers, Junior Gilliam and Furillo were touted as the “smartest” hitters on the club. Known as a contact hitter who sprayed the ball to all fields, I remembered that Furillo liked the ball down and preferably on the inside part of the plate.

All day long, Yogi Berra had led me through the maze of Dodger hitters. This time he placed his mitt toward the high outside corner. I knew that he wanted me to keep the ball up to avoid Furillo’s sweet-spot.

While I was paying attention, I’m sure if Yogi would have positioned the mitt ten feet outside the plate or over the batter’s head, I would have tried to throw the ball there. I intended to follow Yogi’s instructions all the way.

Carl Furillo was 5 for 17 in the Series. Once again I wanted to establish myself with a good first pitch that would let him and the Dodger hitters know I was still on track. While most reporters wrote that I threw a curve or two in the ninth, the truth is that they were all hard sliders. I think Yogi believed that my fast balls were my best pitches, and that we’d go with them until the Dodgers showed us otherwise.

I threw that first slider a bit lower than I wanted to, and I have no doubt that it would have been a ball. But Furillo was an aggressive hitter, and had decided he wasn’t about to let the first pitch go by if it was close. My ability to throw several first-pitch strikes in the seventh and eighth innings no doubt contributed to his decision.

I think Carl could have handled the pitch, but he was a bit late on it, and fouled it away for strike one. My second pitch was another slider and it headed straight for Berra’s mitt on the outside part of the plate. Furillo decided to try his luck on this one and fouled it off to bring the count to no balls and two strikes.

Once again, I was in the driver’s seat. Should I waste a pitch or go right after Furillo? I think my brain may have told me to throw one away, but my arm was almost on remote and I was just throwing as hard as I could to somewhere near the center of the plate. If I got too cute, I’d make a mistake. Yogi had confidence in the hard slider and so did I. Give ‘em your best and make them hit it, was my creed.

I threw the pitch, but it was high from ten feet out. Pinelli called it a ball, and Furillo backed away for a few seconds. The fact that it was high might have been a blessing. Calling that slider a curve was a misnomer, because it certainly didn’t move much.

Yogi’s signal for the fourth pitch to Furillo was a fast ball. It had a chance to be a called strike-three, but just at the last moment, Furillo fouled it off.

A good hard slider followed, but Furillo fouled it off as well. With the count now one ball and two strikes and the tension mounting with every pitch, I threw yet another slider. It was a tumbling pitch that moved across the lower part of the outside corner. Furillo liked what he saw and swung away. It was almost as if his bat was in slow motion, and I turned to see the ball sailing toward Hank Bauer in right field.

All of the fielders after the game told me how they felt as the game progressed toward the ninth. On the one hand they wanted the ball to be hit to them because they had confidence that they could handle it. On the other, they were scared shitless they’d screw up.

None of that crossed my mind as I watched the ball float in the blue afternoon sky. Would it fall for a base hit? Would Bauer catch it? Misplay it?

Judging the distance the ball would travel was difficult for me to do. The sound of bat to ball wasn’t distinguishable because of the crowd noise. To my relief, it ended up being a routine play that anyone could have made. Hank Bauer was rock-solid steady as he coolly and calmly collected the fly ball into his glove for out number one.

The pitch of the crowd noise went up an octave. I saw arms waving and people grabbing each other. The fans were going crazy. Twenty-five consecutive outs on pitch number 89 had left me with two more batters to face to gain the no-hitter.

While I was a nervous wreck, the fans were delirious. In the ballpark that day was my boyhood chum Joe Medina.

We sat behind home plate. Our mutual friends Charlie Graham and Clark Higgins were with me.

The last two innings were really something . . . crowd on their feet . . . everyone knew Don had a perfect game. I kept score until the last two innings . . . then I got too excited.

You keep thinking it’s not going to happen . . . then each pitch . . . each out . . . it gets closer, more exciting. I could tell Don was a nervous wreck . . . You could see the pressure was really something.

My buddy Charlie Graham almost cost himself a bundle of money. He kept telling the beer vendor to stand by because if Larsen pitched a no-hitter, he wanted to buy everyone in the house . . . all sixty thousand of them . . . a drink!