May 8, 1968: Oakland’s emerging ace Catfish Hunter fires perfect game against Minnesota

If Catfish Hunter was going to pitch a perfect game, Minnesota Twins manager Cal Ermer was going to make him earn every out.1

Hunter, a 22-year-old right-hander in his fourth season with the Athletics, had retired 24 straight batters going into the top of the ninth inning at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, on May 8, 1968, but Ermer still believed his team could overcome its 4-0 deficit.

Ermer inserted left-hander John Roseboro2 as a pinch-hitter to lead off the inning, but the veteran catcher rolled the first pitch to second base for an easy out. Rookie catcher Bruce Look, a left-handed hitter stepping to the plate for only the seventh time in his career, saw five pitches and struck out for the third time.

Yet Ermer still did not give up hope, sending Rich Reese3 – another lefty – to hit for the pitcher’s spot in the lineup. Reese, who had become Minnesota’s leading pinch-hitter because he was blocked by other players at his natural positions,4 gave Hunter his toughest battle of the night.

“All I was trying to do was get a base hit,” Reese said. “That’s all you can do when you pinch-hit.”5

Hunter, whose whizzing fastballs and wicked sliders had whistled across the black edges of home plate all night, fell behind in the count 2-and-1, and Reese fouled off the next five pitches. Reese then took a close pitch that home-plate umpire Jerry Neudecker deemed inside – even as new A’s catcher Jim Pagliaroni6 leaped from his crouch in premature celebration.

Hunter faced a 3-and-2 count for the sixth time that night,7 but Reese swung through a fastball8 – the 107th pitch of the game. Hunter’s 11th strikeout9 sent a scant Wednesday night crowd of 6,29810 into a frenzy as his teammates mobbed him and carried him from the field.11

With 27 up and 27 down, the man who wore number 27 on his back became the ninth pitcher in major-league history to author a perfect game12 – doing so against a respected lineup that featured three future Hall of Famers and finished the season with the second highest batting average in the AL.13

“He never lost his fastball all night,” said Pagliaroni, who caught Bill Monbouquette’s no-hitter with the Boston Red Sox on August 1, 1962. “The ball was tailing in real good, and his slider was outstanding. But mainly his control was fantastic.”

“He only shook off two of my signs,” Pagliaroni added. “I called for a couple of breaking balls, and he wanted to stick with the fastball. It was his ballgame, and he was throwing with confidence.”14

Making his second start before a home crowd since the A’s moved from Kansas City to Oakland for the 1968 season, Hunter became the first American League hurler to fire a regular-season perfect game since Charlie Robertson of the Chicago White Sox stifled the Detroit Tigers on April 30, 1922.15

But unlike what happens in many no-hitters and perfect games, no A’s player made a particularly memorable defensive save behind Hunter in Oakland’s 12th home game of the season.

In the fourth inning, Minnesota’s César Tovar hit a liner that rookie Joe Rudi caught on the run in left field. An inning later, third baseman Sal Bando backhanded a hard smash from Bob Allison, and his throw beat the left fielder to first. Rudi, who had been recalled from the Triple-A Vancouver Mounties that day to begin his second stint in the majors,16 was tested again in the seventh when reigning AL Rookie of the Year Rod Carew sliced a liner toward left.17

“There was only one ball all night that concerned me,” Hunter said. “That was the one Rod Carew hit to left field in the seventh inning to Joe Rudi.”18

Added the 21-year-old Rudi: “I thought that one was over my head. I was hoping the ball wouldn’t be hit to me. I was so nervous.”19

After Rudi chased down the second of his three putouts, Hunter faced Harmon Killebrew, who came into the game tied for second in the majors with seven home runs.20 In what became a momentum-shifting point of the game, Killebrew swung violently at a two-strike breaking ball.

The pitch fooled the 15th-year veteran so badly that he launched his bat to second base as he reached to make contact with what he suspected would be a fastball.

“The turning point of the whole game was that 3-and-2 change he threw to Harmon Killebrew in the seventh inning, when Killebrew threw his bat at it,” said first-year A’s manager Bob Kennedy. “He sees it’s an off-speed pitch, and he’s trying to get out in front. It was just a real good pitch at the time.”21

“The very good pitchers,” Kennedy said, “have the moxie to change up in a situation such as that on a difficult pitch to control.”22

After Killebrew’s strikeout, Oakland finally pieced together a scoring rally. The A’s had at least one baserunner in each of the first six innings against Minnesota’s Dave Boswell but had stranded six runners – including five in scoring position. Oakland twice hit into inning-ending double plays.

To lead off the seventh, Rick Monday hit a looper to shallow center that fell just in front of Ted Uhlaender’s attempted shoestring catch and went for a double. A wild pitch moved Monday ahead a base to set up Hunter’s chopping one-out suicide squeeze bunt, which he beat for an RBI single and a 1-0 lead because no one covered first base after Killebrew charged in on the play.

In the eighth, Bando hit a leadoff single and moved to second when Ramón Webster singled to left. John Donaldson attempted a sacrifice bunt, but Look threw out Bando at third. Pagliaroni hit a hard smash, but Twins shortstop Jackie Hernández made a diving stop to force Donaldson out at second and put runners at the corners. Boswell walked Monday to load the bases. After left-handed pinch-hitter Floyd Robinson took two balls, Ermer called in left-hander Ron Perranoski from the bullpen. Kennedy countered by pinch-hitting the right-handed Danny Cater, who watched two more balls sail past for an RBI walk.23 Hunter followed with his third hit of the game – a two-run single to left-center and a 4-0 lead.24

“There was just one thing [Hunter] did wrong,” quipped A’s reliever Jack Aker of Hunter’s 3-for-4 offensive effort.25 “He flied to center field once.”26

Both teams finished the night at 13-12 and tied for third in the standings. The victory put the Athletics back over .500 after spending 21 of the first 24 games at or below the break-even point.27 The Twins started strong at 11-6 but this loss was their sixth in eight games.28

Hunter’s perfect game was not televised, but Athletics owner Charlie Finley and his son listened to a Twins broadcast of the game on a transistor radio at their La Porte, Indiana, home by picking up a feed from a Des Moines, Iowa, station.29 After the game, Finley made a long-distance phone call to the Coliseum’s locker room to congratulate his pitcher and offer him a new contract with a significant raise.30

“I just finished talking with Mr. Finley,” Hunter told a swarm of reporters. “Не said, ‘I just lost $5,000. Do you know who won it?’ I told him, ‘No, sir.’ And he said, ‘You did.’”31

Three days later Finley presented Hunter with his new contract and a $5,000 check to make up the difference in an on-field ceremony. Pagliaroni also received a new contract and a $1,000 check from Finley, and Hunter gave the 30-year-old catcher an engraved gold watch, which read: “To Jim Pagliaroni, my batterymate in a perfect game. May 8, 1968. Thanks, Catfish.”32

Hunter improved to 3-2, but the perfect game did not propel him to a banner season. He faced the Twins in his next start, but Carew launched the first pitch of the game for a home run.33 Though Hunter earned the victory after Oakland’s offense rallied that day, he lost six of his next eight decisions and finished his season at 13-13, well short of his preseason goal of earning 20 wins.34

“Sometimes I say to myself that I wish I never pitched the perfect game,” Hunter said in mid-July. “It’s put a little pressure on me every time.”35

But Hunter’s perfect game36 became the first of many memorable moments from his 15-year career. The eight-time All-Star37 earned five World Series rings,38 picked up the 1974 AL Cy Young Award,39 tallied 20 or more wins in five straight seasons from 1971-75, and went into the Hall of Fame in 1987.

“Everything just seemed to come together,” Hunter recalled two decades after his magical night. “I had real good control. That was the main thing.

“It doesn’t matter much how hard you throw if you can’t place it where you want, and I was able to paint the black all game long.”40

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Stew Thornley and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, and Retrosheet.org websites for pertinent statistics and the box scores noted below. He also used information obtained from the Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Examiner, Sacramento Bee, Minneapolis Star, Minneapolis Tribune, and The Sporting News.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK196805080.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1968/B05080OAK1968.htm

Photo credit: Catfish Hunter, Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Ermer began the 1967 season as the manager of the Denver Bears of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, but he became the Twins’ manager post on June 9 after Sam Mele was fired. The Twins fired Ermer after the 1968 campaign. He became a coach for Oakland in 1977.

2 Roseboro, whom the Twins acquired in a trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers after the 1967 season, was no stranger to a perfect game. He caught 131 games for the Dodgers in 1965 and witnessed Sandy Koufax’s perfect game on September 9. (Rookie Jeff Torborg was behind the plate.)

3 Reese slugged his first career home run off Hunter on May 11, 1967. Reese also smashed an RBI double and drew a bases-loaded walk in that 8-0 Twins victory.

4 Reese, a natural first baseman, came to Minnesota as a 20-year-old in 1962, but it took him five seasons to earn semi-regular playing time because the Twins employed veterans like Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison, Vic Power, and Don Mincher at Reese’s primary position. After earning a September call-up in 1964, Reese made Minnesota’s Opening Day roster in 1965 – though he was sent back to the minors after appearing in only 10 games. In 1966 Reese learned to play left field in Triple A, but that new skill was still not enough in 1967, as Allison blocked his path in left and Killebrew held down first base. But Reese made a team-high 46 pinch-hit appearances for the Twins that year and went 8-for-13 as a pinch-hitter from August 31 to October 1 as Minnesota battled the Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, and Chicago White Sox for the AL pennant. In seven plate appearances as a pinch-hitter in 1968 prior to facing Hunter, Reese had not recorded a hit.

5 Charles Aikens, “Minnesota has Praise for Hunter,” Oakland Tribune, May 9, 1968: 50.

6 The Oakland Athletics purchased Pagliaroni from the Pittsburgh Pirates in December 1967. On August 4, 1960, he recorded his first major-league hit – a double – against the Kansas City Athletics as a rookie with the Boston Red Sox.

7 Only one Twins hitter had a 3-and-0 count against Hunter: Tony Oliva in the second inning.

8 The play-by-play account of this game on Baseball Reference and Retrosheet both state that Reese struck out looking, but news reports the next day from Oakland and Minneapolis both indicate Reese struck out swinging. Reese later added another historic strikeout to his ledger in 1973 when Nolan Ryan fanned him in the 11th inning on September 27 for his record-breaking 383rd strikeout of the campaign. Ryan’s strikeout total surpassed by one Sandy Koufax’s record for the most by a pitcher since 1900. Overall in major-league history, Ryan’s total ranks eighth behind seven pitchers from the 1880s.

9 Hunter’s 11 strikeouts fell one shy of his career-high total, which he achieved in 7⅓ innings against the Boston Red Sox on September 12, 1967. The 11 punchouts were the most by an Oakland pitcher to date in 1968 and remained tied for the team’s season high for a nine-inning victory. Two days after Hunter’s perfect game, Chuck Dobson struck out 11 hitters in a 2-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox. Three Oakland pitchers struck out 13 batters in 1968, but all of those performances came in extra-inning losses. Blue Moon Odom reached the mark across 12⅓ innings in a 7-2, 13-inning loss to the White Sox on July 29. Dobson struck out 13 California Angels in 12 innings on May 31 in a 3-0 loss. Jim Nash set down 13 White Sox across 9⅔ innings in a 1-0, 10-inning loss on May 17.

10 The game started at 6 P.M. The earlier-than-usual start time was in place to accommodate Minnesota’s travel plans to Anaheim later that evening.

11 In 1986 the Oakland Tribune celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Oakland Coliseum and declared Hunter’s perfect game the top individual sports performance. Other “magic moments” from the Coliseum recalled by the newspaper included “The Heidi Game,” an NFL comeback by the Oakland Raiders over the New York Jets on November 17, 1968, that most East Coast fans did not see because NBC ended the live broadcast to air the previously scheduled debut of the film Heidi; two 1985 Bruce Springsteen concerts that drew 100,000 attendees; and a 1972 Elvis Presley concert. Ron Bergman, “Hunter’s Perfect Game Started in Batting Cage,” Oakland Tribune, September 14, 1986: H-1. The Oakland Coliseum later saw two more perfect games – one thrown by A’s starter Dallas Braden on May 9, 2010, and another thrown by New York Yankees starter Domingo Germán on June 28, 2023. Minnesota was later on the losing end of a perfect game thrown by New York’s David Wells on May 17, 1998

12 Some contemporary reporters cited Ernie Shore’s nine perfect innings of relief on June 23, 1917, and Harvey Haddix’s 12 perfect innings in a 13-inning loss from May 26, 1959, among their counts of perfect games.  Other unofficial “perfect games” before 1968 included Dean Chance’s five perfect innings in a rain-shortened game on August 6, 1967; Rube Vickers’ five perfect innings in a darkness-shortened game on the final day of the season on October 5, 1907; and Ed Karger’s seven perfect innings in a seven-inning game on August 11, 1907. Two other AL pitchers also had notable stretches of perfection during extra-inning games. Waite Hoyt retired every batter over a nine-inning stretch during a 13-inning loss on September 24, 1919, and Walter Johnson put down 28 straight batters during a 12-inning shutout on May 11, 1919.

13 Future Hall of Famers in Minnesota’s lineup were Harmon Killebrew (inducted in 1984), Rod Carew (1991), and Tony Oliva (2022). Six Twins hitters came into the game batting better than .250 – Carew (.333), Bob Allison (.320), Cesar Tovar (.283), Killebrew (.282), Ted Uhlaender (.261), and Oliva (.255). Overall, the Twins batted .237 in 1972, the second-highest mark in the AL behind the A’s (.240) during the “year of the pitcher.” Minnesota collected 1,274 hits – third in the AL behind Oakland (1,300) and the Detroit Tigers (1,292) – and tallied 1,878 total bases, second to the Tigers (2,115). These and other factors led SABR researcher Gary Belleville to rank Hunter’s opponent as the second most difficult in a perfect game since 1901.

14 George Ross, “Hunter $5,000 Richer,” Oakland Tribune, May 9, 1968: 39.

15 Before Hunter’s, the last perfect game by an AL pitcher came on October 8, 1956, when New York Yankees starter Don Larsen fired one against the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game Five of the World Series. Hunter was the third pitcher to throw one in the 1960s – joining Los Angeles Dodgers ace Sandy Koufax (September 9, 1965) and Philadelphia Phillies standout Jim Bunning (June 21, 1964). Hunter’s outing was the second no-hitter of the 1968 season – Tom Phoebus of the Baltimore Orioles had no-hit the Red Sox on April 27. Cincinnati Reds pitcher George Culver later threw a no-hitter in the second game of a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Phillies on July 29. San Francisco Giants hurler Gaylord Perry no-hit the St. Louis Cardinals on September 17, and the next day, St. Louis’s Ray Washburn got revenge by no-hitting the Giants.

16 Rudi played 19 games for the Kansas City Athletics in 1967.

17 Coming into the game, Carew was tied with Max Alvis of the Cleveland Indians for the AL lead with a .333 batting average. His average slipped to .273 by season’s end, but in 1969 he won his first of seven batting crowns during his 19-year career.

18 Ross.

19 Ross.

20 Only California Angels outfielder Roger Repoz had more homers (8). Killebrew was tied with National League leaders Willie McCovey and Ron Swoboda.

21 “Masterpiece by a Superstar,” Oakland Tribune, May 9, 1968: 41.

22 Bucky Walter, “Bat Cage Ban Spurred Catfish,” San Francisco Examiner, May 9, 1968: 57.

23] Because Boswell was pitching at the start of the at-bat, the walk was charged to his ledger.

24 Through the 2024 season, Hunter’s three hits are the most recorded by a pitcher in a perfect game. John Ward, Lee Richmond, Jim Bunning, Dennis Martínez, and Matt Cain all collected a single hit in their perfect games. After the game, teammate Jim Nash quipped: “Hey, Hunter, what’s all the excitement? A damn pitcher goes 3-for-4 and everybody goes wild.” Quoted in Ross, “Hunter $5,000 Richer.”

25 Hunter had also collected three hits in his previous outing, on May 3 at Fenway Park in Boston. He had four other three-hit games during his career (one in 1965 and three in 1971). Hunter closed his career with a .226 batting average, leaving him as one the best hitting pitchers of his era. Hunter had 710 plate appearances from 1965 to 1979, and among pitchers with at least 200 plate appearances in the same era, only Ken Brett’s .262 average over 373 plate appearances from 1967 to 1981 was better than Hunter’s.

26 Ron Bergman, “Catfish Is Perfect,” Oakland Tribune, May 9, 1968: 39.

27 Oakland finished 82-80 and sixth in the AL – a 20-game improvement over the previous season. The A’s improved their record in the next three seasons before winning three straight World Series titles (1972-74).

28 The Twins finished 79-83 and seventh in the AL – a disappointing finish after three straight seasons with at least 89 victories. In 1969 Minnesota rebounded under manager Billy Martin to win the first-ever AL West Division crown but were swept by the Baltimore Orioles in the AL Championship Series.

29 “All ‘Catfish’ Lost During Big Night Was His Uniform Cap,” Sacramento Bee, May 9, 1968: E5.

30 According to one account, Finley told his son, Charles Jr., that he would give Hunter a $2,500 raise for pitching a no-hitter. When the younger Finley suggested Hunter could throw a perfect game, the elder Finley said he would double the raise if it happened. “Call From Cooperstown,” Oakland Tribune, May 9, 1968: 39.

31 Dave Beronio, “Hunter Receives Bonus of $5,000,” Vallejo (California) Times-Herald, May 9, 1968: 13.

32 Blaine Newnham, “Pag’s Reward Caps Big Week,” Oakland Tribune, May 12, 1968: 47.

33 On May 22, 1971, Hunter was nearly perfect against the Twins again. He allowed two hits and walked none for his eighth successive victory – a 5-1 triumph. On the 10th anniversary of the perfect game, Hunter was scheduled to face the Twins in a start for the Yankees, but rain pushed the game back one day. On May 9, 1978, Hunter allowed one hit in six innings during a 3-1 victory.

34 “A’s Opening Day Starter?” Oakland Tribune, March 22, 1968: 57.

35 Ron Bergman, “Hunter Gets First Win Since June 19,” Oakland Tribune, July 18, 1968: 39.

36 Hunter pitched five no-hitters in high school in North Carolina, including a seven-inning perfect game on April 15, 1963. In that perfect game, Perquimans High School’s eighth straight shutout victory, Hunter struck out 10 batters in a 4-0 win over Elizabethtown for his second consecutive no-hitter. Perquimans’ offense scored four times in the first inning before opposing pitcher Ronnie Dail pitched six straight no-hit innings. “Perquimans Wins, 4-0,” Raleigh News and Observer, April 16, 1963: 13.

37 Hunter was the Athletics’ lone All-Star representative in 1966 and 1967. He later made All-Star teams in 1970 and 1972-76.

38 Hunter helped anchor the Oakland pitching staff that helped lead the Athletics to three straight World Series titles from 1972 to 1974. He added championships with the Yankees in 1977 and 1978.

39 Hunter earned half of the 24 first-place votes to beat out Fergie Jenkins of the Texas Rangers. Hunter went 25-12 with a league-best 2.49 ERA and a .986 WHIP.

40 Jim Bainbridge, “Catfish Had Special Feeling the Night He Was Perfect,” Oakland Tribune, May 8, 1998: C-3.