Wells’ and Larsen’s perfect games echo in Point Loma

This is No. 50 in our yearlong countdown of the greatest moments in San Diego sports history. Read more about “The 52” here.

Perfection, of course, is nearly unattainable, especially in sports. Of the four major sports, only one has defined perfection, and it’s baseball.

Since the sport’s inception in the 19th century, only 23 pitchers have thrown a perfect game: 27 batters up, 27 batters down, no errors, hits, or walks.

Two of those 23 pitchers went to Point Loma High.

Yes, 42 years apart, Don Larsen and David Wells threw perfect games for the New York Yankees — after they graduated Point Loma. Larsen (Class of 1947) and Wells (Class of 1982) were also two of the 14 pitchers to throw perfect games in the 20th century.

“What does it feel like?” said Mike Hastings, Point Loma’s head football coach and former athletic director who has been at the school for 23 years. “It just feels special.”

“It puts us on the map and makes us kind of a known school,” Hastings added. “Like, ‘Hey man, that’s that school!’”

Larsen’s perfect game — tossed in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers — would have been unprecedented enough: Until 2010, it was the only no-hitter (let alone perfect game) thrown in the postseason. And it remains the only one in World Series history.

Larsen, now 86, was 27 when the Yankees were set to play the Dodgers on Oct. 8, 1956. The series was tied 2-2, and 64,519 fans were in attendance at Yankee Stadium.

Larsen didn’t find out until the morning of the game that he would pitching. “I took a big gulp,” Larsen told the U-T in 2006, “and tried not to show too much emotion.”

Ninety-seven pitches, and seven strikeouts, later, and he had made history.

“Before yesterday, no one knew I was alive,” Larsen said after the game. “Today everyone is telling me they went to school with me.”

Wells, at least, went to the same school. Hastings remembers watching Wells, now the coach at his alma mater, pitch at Point Loma. He even threw a perfect game then.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘This guy’s really good,” Hastings said. “As the years go by and he starts his pro career, then you start to get it.”

That much was clear on May 17, 1998. Wells wrote in his biography “Perfect I’m Not” that he was “half-drunk, with bloodshot eyes, monster breath, and a raging, skull-rattling hangover,” that day, and it seemed not to matter.

He threw 120 pitches and 11 strikeouts, and when he recorded the final out — a pop out to right field — he hopped into the air and was carried off the field by his teammates.

“Right now,” he told reporters after the game, “I’m the happiest man on earth.”

Back in San Diego, the air was similarly celebratory.

“I remember the vibe around here on campus,” Hastings said. “Everyone thought it was really special. We were just talking about it, how rare is that? …. That probably will never ever be done again, ever.”

“You just kind of pinch yourself,” Hastings added.

Several years ago Hastings, who has never met Larsen, was given a baseball signed by Larsen, Wells, and David Cone, the third Yankees pitcher to throw a perfect game. He put it in a case and proudly displays it at his house.

Hastings said that there has yet to be a Field of Dreams moment, when a person approaches Point Loma’s field and asks, “Hey, is this where Wells and Larsen pitched?”

But could it happen?

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it did sometime,” Hastings said.