Presented by POOL SCOUTS.
This Day In Sports…May 8, 1968:
One month after the A’s debut in the Oakland Coliseum following their move from Kansas City, they give their new fans a historic thrill. Jim “Catfish” Hunter threw a perfect game—the first in the American League in 46 years—as the A’s beat the Minnesota Twins, 4-0. Outside of Don Larsen’s legendary perfecto for the New York Yankees in the 1956 World Series, nobody had thrown a perfect game in the AL since Charlie Robertson of the Chicago White Sox in 1922.
Hunter struck out 11 batters, including the last two in the ninth inning. He also fanned Harmon Killebrew three times when Idaho’s favorite son was at the height of his Hall of Fame career. Only two Twins batters got as far as three balls in the count. The second was the final hitter of the game, pinch-hitter Rich Reese, who fouled off five straight full-count pitches before striking out to end it. Little-known fact: Hunter was a great-hitting pitcher (this was five years before the designated hitter made its debut in the American League). He went 3-for-4 that day and knocked in three of the A’s four runs.
It was only the Athletics’ 25th game in Oakland. But as excited as the city was for big league baseball to come to town, only 6,298 fans attended the nighttime matchup at the Coliseum. It remains the smallest crowd ever to see a perfect game. It was too early to be an omen, but crowds like that plagued the A’s during their time in the Bay Area. Just a fact. The stadium was only two years old, so fans couldn’t blame that the way they did the past two decades. The A’s are now biding their time in Sacramento as they wait for a new ballpark to be built in Las Vegas. (It’s still a shame that ownership didn’t work out a new stadium deal in Oakland.)
Hunter, who was 22 at the time, would remain the heart of the Oakland pitching staff as the A’s would win three straight world championships in the early 1970s. He’d become baseball’s first big-money free agent after A’s owner Charlie Finley reneged on some provisions in Hunter’s contract in 1974, the year he won the AL Cy Young Award. He signed with the Yankees in 1975 and became the richest pitcher in MLB history as he inked a five-year contract worth $3.35 million. Hunter pitched in three more World Series in New York (the Yanks won two of them).
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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