Martinez reflects on perfect game on 30th anniversary, Stieb recalls brush with perfection

Montreal Expos right-hander Dennis Martinez tossed a perfect game 30 years ago today. Photo: YouTube

July 28, 2021

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

Dave Stieb came this-close, one batter, from a perfect game. For Dennis Martinez, it was 27 up, 27 down.

Tales of workhorse Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductees.

After retiring the first 24 New York Yankees batters, Stieb struck out pinch hitters Hal Morris and Ken Phelps to start the ninth inning on Aug. 4, 1989 at the barely christened SkyDome in Toronto. There were 48,789 fans on their feet, cheering Stieb on.

Then Roberto Kelly spoiled it all with a double to left.

In their 45-season history, including 2021, the Blue Jays have never had a pitcher throw a perfect game. In their 36 seasons before heading to Washington, the Expos managed one such piece of grandeur: El Presidente's gem 30 years ago on July 28, 1991 in Los Angeles.

"The first pitch I threw to Kelly was inside and the umpire (Terry Cooney) didn't call it a strike,'' Stieb recalled in a phone interview this week. "I was flabbergasted. I should have had that first pitch.

"You'd think with a perfect game and the 27th man up that anything even questionable would be a strike. The next one inside was obviously a ball. So now I'm down 2-0 and I don't want to walk him. So I gave him a slider, a normal slider that broke away. My slider wasn't working very good.''

Kelly drilled a ball over third in front of George Bell in left to break up the perfection. Stieb had retired the first 26 batters and then he lost it.

"I was so dejected to have seen this happen,'' Stieb said.

Then Steve Sax singled to right to score Kelly to make it 2-1 Jays. The next batter, Luis Polonia, drilled a ball to third and Kelly Gruber fired the ball to Nelson Liriano at second for the force out and the end of the game.

The consolation for Stieb was that he pushed his record to 11-6 with 11 strikeouts.

As for Martinez, the Nicaraguan native told me this week he has done so many flashback interviews about his day of perfection that he can't remember how many he has done. But it's all fun to remember.

Like Stieb did almost three years earlier, Martinez had gone into the ninth inning perfect. He got Mike Scioscia to fly to left and struck out pinch hitter Stan Javier. One batter to go, another pinch hitter, Chris Gwynn.

"I knew what to expect. It was not Tony Gwynn,'' Martinez said. "He was a different hitter but I couldn't take him for granted. The last hitter can do the damage. I threw him a fastball. I wanted to go more in. He hit it and the ball went up in the air a bit. I knew right when it came out of his bat it was going to right-centre. Marquis (Grissom) hit that gap.

"Some guys, they don't want the ball hit to them in that situation. You hope they don't lose the ball in the sun or fall down. Anything can happen.''

When Grissom hauled in the ball and the elation and back slapping and hugging and congratulations had concluded, Martinez sat on the Expos bench, stuck his head down low and cried.

"I mean, it happened for my country and Montreal,'' Martinez told me about the special win. "It reminded me of the reward and compensation you get. That was a gift. It puts things into perspective. It was coming after the drinking problem I had.

"The mindset was that what I do off the field and I cross the white line I become a different person. As long as I keep the concentration level, I will be okay. It was a crazy season (poor Expos record) for the people of Montreal. We had the (Olympic Stadium) roof collapse and we played a lot of home games on the road. But one thing people can remember about the 1991 season was the perfect game.''

We will not forget announcer Dave Van Horne’s exclamation, ‘El Presidente, El Perfecto!’

The bad-luck Stieb at least can say he did throw one no-hitter, despite being close so many times. He finally pitched a no-no in Cleveland on Sept. 2, 1990, the irony he said being that he should have had a no-hitter in Cleveland on Sept. 24, 1988 when a bad-hop ball hit by Julio Franco went over the head of second baseman Manny Lee.

Looking back at the near-perfect gem and his other missed no-hitters, Stieb figures he didn't go to his fastball often enough.

"I should have learned to throw more fastballs by these guys,'' Stieb told me. "I should have gone to my fastball more in those situations. I would have gotten my no-hitters. I was stubborn. I threw too many breaking balls. I overthrew my slider. I was in love with it. You have a better chance of making a mistake with a slider than with a fastball.''

Stieb's biographer Kevin Boland couldn't believe how calm Stieb was in the clubhouse after the near-perfect game. Boland said Stieb threw the game ball into a garbage can but Boland retrieved it.

"Dammit. He needed one out against the Yankees,'' Boland told this writer. "He invited me to join him and friends at a bar up the street from the SkyDome. I couldn't do it. I was a f-in mess.

"Remember, we had called his (1986) bio Tomorrow I'll be Perfect and took a lot of grief for it. I was thinking time for the b-i-g payback. I was the next best thing to a drooling idiot on the streetcar ride back home. Riders kept lookin' at the poor old bugger talkin' shit to himself at an open window in the back row.''

Danny Gallagher's new Expos book Never Forgotten is available at Indigo and Amazon.