September 2, 1996: David Cone returns to Yankees after aneurysm surgery, pitches seven no-hit innings

“A high popup! He’s gonna do it! At shortstop, Jeter. Jeter on the outfield grass … makes the catch! The Yankees win! The Yankees win! And Doc Gooden pitches a no-hitter!” – New York Yankees radio announcer John Sterling, May 14, 19961

Tears emerged in David Cone’s eyes.2 His teammate Dwight Gooden, whom he had known since their wilder years as New York Mets starters, had overcome drug addiction and found redemption at Yankee Stadium. That the losing team was the Seattle Mariners, who had beaten the Yankees to win the previous year’s American League Division Series, made the night’s no-hitter sweeter. “The entire Yankees team is between shortstop and the pitcher’s mound,” Yankees announcer Michael Kay reported. “And they are mobbing Dwight Gooden!”3 – most of them, anyway.

Cone wasn’t there. Just over the Harlem River, in the shadow of Yankee Stadium’s façade, he lay in a Columbia-Presbyterian hospital bed with his radio. Doctors days earlier had removed an aneurysm from his throwing arm, saving his career and his limb, but anxiety and depression gnawed nonetheless. “I was besieged by self-pity at not being able to experience such a great event with my teammates,” he later said.4

He went to the bathroom and wept. “I wondered if I would ever make it back to the mound and ever have the chance to do what Gooden just did.”5

But Cone didn’t spend much time wallowing. All he had to do was turn on a television and see Gooden’s post-no-hitter smile.6 That was it. The 33-year-old 1994 AL Cy Young Award winner, who had begun 1996 with a 4-1 record and a league-leading 2.03 earned-run average before the aneurysm interfered, decided to defy expectations and finish what he started. “That’s my goal,” he told reporters after leaving the hospital, “to pitch in the pennant race.”7

On September 2 – Labor Day – Cone rejoined a New York team that was hemorrhaging its division lead. Bidding for their first AL East Division title in 15 seasons, the Yankees had seen their edge over the Baltimore Orioles drop from 12 games on July 28 to 4 on Labor Day. The team had lost 20 of its last 33 games, including six of its last eight.

Cone’s first game back, after less than four months of recovery and rehabilitation, came with a safeguard. Yankees manager Joe Torre placed him on a 100-pitch limit.8 But that didn’t ease the pressure inside Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, against an Oakland Athletics team that had hit a major-league-leading 219 home runs. “The anxiety level will be as high as any game I’ve ever pitched in,” Cone told a reporter before the game. “In one sense I feel pretty fortunate about being able to come back. In another sense I feel that isn’t going to be enough. I have to do well.”9

Cone’s nerves showed early. He fiddled with his cap, shifting the brim up and down against his brow. He dug his spikes into the dirt near the pitching rubber more than two dozen times, all before a single at-bat.10 He walked two of his first three batters, José Herrera and Jason Giambi, on four pitches apiece.

Cone, however, powered through like old times. Tony Batista struck out. Herrera was caught stealing second base. Mark McGwire, who entered the game with a major-league-leading 46 home runs, popped up. Catcher Joe Girardi got under the ball for the third out. The frame was over – hitless and scoreless, a relief.

Even more reassuring to Cone, as he walked back to the bench, was the sight of someone familiar. Right behind the visitors’ dugout sat his father, Ed, who had taught him how to play quarterback in football, point guard in basketball, and how to “drop and drive” off the pitching rubber.11 The 62-year-old had flown in from Kansas City to be there. “I had never made eye contact with my dad during a major-league game, because the family seats weren’t typically in my line of sight and because I was so obsessed with what I was doing,” Cone recalled later. “But on this tense day, I looked for my dad often, and it was relaxing to see him.”12

The pitcher looked at his father again after each inning. And as those innings passed – a one-two-three second, a one-two-three third, a 12-pitch fourth, a one-two-three fifth – a pattern emerged.

David Cone, previously unsure if he would ever play baseball again, was flirting with his first no-hitter.13

His fastballs whizzed. His curveballs painted the strike zone’s corners. His splitters and sliders fooled his victims. Most importantly, he kept his cool. “Toward the middle innings, I really began to relax,” he went on to say. “I got much more in control as the game went on.”14

In the sixth the Yankees’ offense gave Cone additional peace of mind. Mariano Duncan led off with a line-drive single to right field. A grounder by Girardi passed through second base for another single. Bernie Williams’ groundout moved Girardi and Duncan to second and third. Athletics starter Ariel Prieto intentionally walked Paul O’Neill to load the bases, a move that backfired on Oakland. Prieto hit Cecil Fielder with a pitch, putting New York ahead, 1-0.

More run support came in the seventh. Charlie Hayes hit a solo homer to double the Yankees’ lead.15 Duncan and Girardi followed up with singles to left field. A single by Jeter scored pinch runner Andy Fox and knocked Prieto out of the game. Against southpaw reliever Buddy Groom, Williams delivered a single to score Girardi, the Yanks’ fourth run.

Speculation that Cone might pull off a no-hitter gained further traction in the bottom of the inning. Jeter caught Giambi’s easy liner to short for the first out. McGwire grounded to third baseman Hayes, who dived toward short, rolled, and threw to Martinez, robbing McGwire of a hit. Gerónimo Berroa drove the ball just over the center-field wall, but center fielder Williams made an ice-cream-cone catch to end the inning, jumping toward the sun and leaning over the wall.

Williams raised his glove to show the ball inside. Cone, looking on through eyes that a writer later described as “flecked with green and gold and always ablaze,” got the message.16 Six outs to go.

But another message awaited Cone in the dugout: His day was over. “That’s gonna be it, David,” Torre told him, citing the 100-pitch limit. “You’re at 85 [pitches] already. We can’t push it.”

“You know,” Cone replied, “it’s possible I could have a quick eighth.”

“Even if you do, you still won’t pitch the ninth.”17

Cone exhaled and conceded. Before the aneurysm, he might have fought back, even against a manager who had his vascular health at heart, but not anymore. “I’ve learned the art of backing off, subtracting rather than trying to add,” he told Esquire in 1999. “That’s the number-one lesson to learn as a pitcher, the toughest lesson: Less is more sometimes.”18

His seven innings had said plenty, especially to the opposition. “Cone was great, really great,” McGwire told reporters after the game. Athletics third baseman – and future Yankees teammate – Scott Brosius concurred: “It didn’t look like he missed a beat at all.”19

And there on the bench, ready to give Cone his due praise, was the kindred spirit whose comeback he had heard on the radio that May. “When Dwight Gooden embraced David Cone after Cone’s heroic and life-restoring effort … that was the sweetest sight of a stellar season that was gradually turning scary,” Jon Heyman wrote in the next morning’s Newsday. “Gooden looked so thrilled for his friend and his team that it was almost like he was throwing a second no-hitter.”20

A no-hitter on this day, though, was not to be. With Mariano Rivera pitching and one out in the bottom of the ninth, a grounder by Herrera slipped between Hayes and Jeter. Jeter rushed to the left-center-field grass and hurled to Martinez, but the throw arrived too late. Herrera slid head-first and beat the out. A replay confirmed umpire Larry McCoy’s call. Oakland had a hit on the board.

Still, the Yankees won easily. Herrera’s single wound up being the Athletics’ only hit. Oakland starter Prieto took the loss, and Cone logged his first win since May 2. The victor said years later, “That game gave me my life back.”21

Life remained good for Cone. On September 25 he pitched the Yankees to a division-clinching 19-2 blowout against the Milwaukee Brewers. He stayed healthy enough to celebrate New York’s World Series title that October, the team’s first since 1978. Three more championships followed, in 1998, 1999, and 2000.

Along the way, he finally got his no-hitter – a perfect game. He retired 27 straight Montreal Expos on July 18, 1999, with the added perk of a Yankee Stadium crowd. Better yet, he did so following a ceremonial first pitch by Don Larsen, who had thrown the Yankees’ first-ever perfect game in the 1956 World Series. A 2024 Washington Post article declared Cone’s midsummer feat “almost too perfect to be true.”22

Cone, who as a kid considered becoming a sportswriter instead of a ballplayer, had authored a storybook ending.23

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: David Cone, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted a recording of WPIX’s telecast of the game, as available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi0j1pqrxUE.

The author also used Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for the box score and other material.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK199609020.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1996/B09020OAK1996.htm

Notes

1 A clip of the Yankees’ May 14, 1996, radio broadcast is available at “Dwight Gooden Pitches a No-Hitter vs. Mariners,” YouTube video (Stiven Bonilla), 1:17, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyiVppAv9ec. Accessed October 2024.

2 David Cone and Jack Curry, Full Count: The Education of a Pitcher (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2019), 253-54.

3 “Dwight Gooden Pitches a No-Hitter vs. Mariners.”

4 Foreword by David Cone, for Joel Sherman, Birth of a Dynasty: Behind the Pinstripes with the 1996 Yankees (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2006), VIII-IX.

5 Cone and Curry, Full Count, 253-54.

6 After leaving the hospital, Cone told reporters he had seen Gooden on the news following the no-hitter: “To see that look on his face, that emotion, it really touched me.” Joe Gergen, “Blown Away by a Cy-Cone: The Script’s Impossible to Make Up,” Newsday (Long Island, NY), September 3, 1996: A59.

7 Bob Klapisch, “Cone Goal: ’96 Return: Return; Yankees Ace Confident He Will Pitch Again,” Bergen (NJ) Record, May 16, 1996: S01.

8 Mel Antonen, “Cone Sparkles in Return, 5-0,” USA Today, September 3, 1996: 01C.

9 Jack Curry, “Today, Cone’s True Story Continues,” New York Times, September 2, 1996: 33.

10 Dave Anderson, “‘Hired Gun’ Finds Bullets in His Heart,” New York Times, September 3, 1996: 7.

11 Jack Curry, “Inspiration Behind a Dugout,” New York Times, September 3, 1996: 7.

12 Cone and Curry, Full Count, 255.

13 Cone pitched three complete-game one-hitters before September 2, 1996. His first two – on August 29, 1988, and September 20, 1991 – were with the New York Mets. His third was on May 22, 1994, with the Kansas City Royals.

13] Frederic J. Frommer, “Cone’s Perfect Game in 1999 Was Almost Too Perfect to be True,” Washington Post, July 18, 2024: D3.

14 Frank Blackman, “Cone Makes Sweet Return,” San Francisco Examiner, September 3, 1996: C1.

15 This marked Hayes’ third game since returning to the Yankees. He had played for the team in 1992 before stints with the Colorado Rockies, Philadelphia Phillies, and Pittsburgh Pirates. In exchange for Hayes’ return, the Yankees had sent minor-league pitcher Chris Corn to Pittsburgh on August 31, 1996.

16 Scott Raab, “The Slow Boil,” Esquire, May 1999: 102-107.

17 All dialogue between Cone and Torre comes from Bob Klapisch, “No Gem? No Problem; Better Than Ever Cone a Hit for Yanks,” Bergen (NJ) Record, September 3, 1996: S01.

18 Raab, “The Slow Boil.”

19 The McGwire quote comes from Klapisch, “No Gem? No Problem.” The Brosius quote comes from Associated Press, “Cone Is Sharp in Return,” Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1996: 1.

20 Jon Heyman, “Blown Away by a Cy-Cone,” Newsday (Long Island, NY), September 3, 1996: A59.

21 Cone and Curry, Full Count, 254.

22 Frederic J. Frommer, “Cone’s Perfect Game in 1999 Was Almost Too Perfect to be True,” Washington Post, July 18, 2024: D3.

23 Bob Nightengale, “David Cone Recalls Short-Lived Writing Career,” USA Today, June 5, 2023: C7.