From 1969-1980, the Cleveland Indians finished no higher than fifth in the six-team AL East. But after winning four of their last five games on a road trip, the 1981 edition of the Tribe returned home for a game with the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday, May 15, leading the division by one game.

25-year-old righty Len Barker, the scheduled starter for the home team, almost didn't make it to the park on time.

• He had to pick up his brother at the airport. However, the plane arrived late, only an hour before game time.
• So Len had to rush to the ballpark, get his arm rubbed down, put on his uniform, and hurry onto the field to warm up.

Despite Cleveland's strong start, only 7,290 fans showed up in 49° weather in cavernous Lakefront Stadium. They were rewarded for their loyalty with a perfect game.

• Barker threw mostly fast balls early. In the second, 2B Duane Kuiper made a diving stop and threw out Willie Upshaw.
• Two unearned runs in the bottom of the first gave Barker a quick lead.
• In the fifth, 3B Toby Harrah learned into the stands to catch a foul ball. Otherwise, there weren't many tough plays. There was a line drive off of a changeup, right at the 2B, recalls Len. After that, I got rid of the changeup.
• Ron Hassey, who would go on to catch another perfecto for Dennis Martinez, started calling mostly curve balls when he realized Barker had a good one going.
• I'm not superstitious, but my teammates were. When the seventh inning rolled around, the manager, coaches and the players were down in one end of the dugout, and I was on the other, all by myself - though Harrah and Rick Manning told me in the seventh inning that they were behind me and they knew I could get it.
• I started thinking about the perfect game in the seventh. I didn't really think I could get it until the ninth. When I went out there, I was pretty confident I could throw the perfect game.
  
• Len struck out 11 of the final 17 batters, including Al Woods pinch-hitting for 3B Danny Ainge, on three pitches for the 26th out. Another PH, Ernie Whitt, flied out to end the 3-0 victory in 2:09.

Len Barker after his perfect game

At that point, Barker's gem was only the 10th perfect game in ML history.

• There are a lot of stories people tell me about where they were, what they were doing.
• One story stands out above the others.

I had a lady come up to me and tell me she was in labor and she told the doctor she's not going to have the baby until the game was over, and she waited.

Alas, after starting 16-8, the Indians fell to last place (sixth) on June 10 and remained there the rest of the season.

• Coming off a 19-12 season in 1980, Barker won only five more games to finish 8-7.
• He won 15 in 1982 for the Tribe before being dealt to Atlanta during the '83 campaign.

On May 25, 2011, Wilson Valdez of the Phillies became the first player in 90 years to start a game playing the field and end up the winning pitcher. And the player who accomplished that feat in 1921? None other than Babe Ruth.

• Valdez, who hadn't pitched since high school, played the first 18 innings against the Reds at 2B.
• Having run out of pitchers, pitching coach Rich Dubee asked Valdez if he could pitch. "I'm going to say, 'Yes,'" said Wilson afterwards.
• He hit the first batter, Scott Rolen, then retired Joey Votto and Jay Bruce on fly balls and opposing moundsman Carlos Fischer on a pop-up. His fastball was clocked at 88-89 mph.
• "I was trying to throw strikes," Valdez explained. "If I give up a HR, what are they going to say?"

Babe Ruth, who retired from P in 1919 to play every day for the Red Sox, won two games in 1921, his second season with New York. He started against the Tigers on June 13 before 12,000 fans at the Polo Grounds, the Yankees home park that they shared with the Giants. Why he started is a story in itself.

• Babe yearned to settle a score with Ty Cobb, Detroit's player-manager.
• The day before, Cobb had humiliated Ruth in front of 34,000 fans, "pantomiming like a gorilla and pushing his nose up when the Babe ran past him."
• At one point during the game, Cobb and Ruth squared off to fight, but umpire Bill Dinneen broke it up. When Ruth struck out in the fourth, Cobb whistled and roared.
• Immediately after the game, Babe rushed to manager Miller Huggins. "Let me pitch against Detroit. I want to show Cobb up."
• He pitched 5 innings, giving up 4 runs (3 earned), 5 hits, and 7 BBs. In his last inning on the mound, Babe had the pleasure of striking out his nemesis.
• Leading 10-4, he moved to CF for the rest of the game. The Yankees held on, 13-8.
• Batting in his usual third spot, Ruth hit 2 HRs, one as a P and one as CF. As the Babe romped across second during one of his HR trots, he sent a shrill and mocking laugh out to the desolate Cobb in CF.

On October 1, the second-to-last day of the season, Ruth reversed what he did June 13 by starting in the field before becoming the winning pitcher.

• The Yankees led the Cleveland Indians by 2 games with three home games left with the Philadelphia Athletics.
• In the first game of the doubleheader, the Yankees prevailed 5-3 to clinch the franchise's first pennant.
• Babe started in LF in the nightcap, then moved to 1B. Batting in his usual third spot in the order, he went 1-for-4 to end the day at .376.
• Leading 6-0 in the top of the eighth, manager Miller Huggins put Babe on the mound. The A's smacked the rusty southpaw around to tie the game before he finally retired the side.
• Ruth settled down and pitched three scoreless innings until the Yanks plated a run in the bottom of the 11th. Instead of starter Waite Hoyt notching his 20th victory, Babe got his second.

Bob Broeg was a St. Louis sportswriter who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980. In his autobiography, he recalls his first World Series game.

• The Cardinals hosted the Philadelphia Athletics in Game 5 of the 1930 World Series. The teams were tied at two games apiece.
• Young Bob persuaded his parents to give him a dollar for a bleacher seat and permission "to play hooky."
• "I left home at 4 a.m. carrying a brown sandwich bag and made a couple of streetcar changes in the half-hour's trip to the ball park [Sportsman's Park]. Years later, Mom would wonder how she could allow her 12-year-old son to go out alone in the middle of the night."
• Broeg stood in the block-long line to wait for the opening of the RF bleacher gates.
• "A band began to play early on the outfield grass. And then the Cardinals appeared in brand-new uniforms."

The St. Louis starter was 37-year-old righty Burleigh Grimes, the last legal spitballer since he had thrown it prior to the 1920 ban. Broeg recalled Burleigh's style.

• "Grimes always raised his arms in a stretch position and brought the glove and bare hand to his mouth, concealing the ball."
• "More often than not, he flicked spit on the ball, creating a scientific situation by which the pitch seemed to fall abruptly off the table ... The dipping fast ball nosedived into a sinker."

Sportsman's Park St. Louis

The game was scoreless into the top of the ninth, George Earnshaw matching goose eggs with Grimes for seven innings before Lefty Grove pitched the eighth.

• Grimes walked C Mickey Cochrane to start the ninth. Then LF Al Simmons flew out. That brought 1B Jimmy Foxx to the plate. (Note the three straight Hall of Famers in the A's lineup.)
• Broeg: "Square-jawed, cap pulled tightly on his head like a jockey, Grimes occasionally faked the spitter and threw a curveball. That's exactly what Foxx was looking for. As Double-X would explain later, Burleigh had struck him out once with that slow curve, and Foxxie was guessing he'd see it again. I'll never forget watching the ball arch majestically off the slugger's bat far up into the bleachers in left-center."
• Grove set down the Cardinals to gain the 2-0 victory. Two days later, Connie Mack's Athletics wrapped up the series back home.

Broeg reports a post-game incident that took on significance many years later.

After the game, a western Missouri judge headed back for Kansas City with a carload of friends and stopped for gasoline on the outskirts of St. Louis. The filling station operator didn't have a radio and wondered about the score. "Jimmy Foxx 2, Cardinals 0," piped the judge, Harry S. Truman.

Bob returned to school the next day.

• His seventh-grade teacher asked him where he'd been the day before.
• "The World Series, Miss Prindable," he replied honestly.
• She smiled. "Good thing you told the truth, Robert," then explained that she lived near Sportsman's Park and saw him standing in the bleacher line while walking to catch the streetcar to school.

Hall of Famer Willie McCovey grew up in Mobile AL, home of other excellent players like Hank Aaron and his brother Tommy, Satchell Paige, Billy Williams, Amos Otis, the Bolling brothers (Frank and Jack), Juan Pierre, Jake Peavy, and Steve Sparks.

The same Hall of Fame scout who signed Willie Mays from Birmingham, Alex Pompez, arranged for 17-year-old Willie to go to Melbourne FL for a tryout at the New York Giants training camp in 1955.

• Willie recalls:

I didn't think I impressed them that much. We lived in an old army barracks. Alex Pompez would, on a daily basis, walk down the hall at the end of the barracks to let us know how we were doing. He had that look on his face when he approached me that I didn't make it. Pompez asked me, "Why don't you hit?" I said, "Well, I guess I'm a little nervous." He said they liked me anyway, and they were going to take a chance and sign me. It's funny because the day after he told me that, I went out and hit two home runs and started producing. But I didn't think I showed much before they told me they were going to sign me.

• Willie started in Class D and worked his way up: B in '56, AA in '57, then AAA in '58.

In 1959, with Mac tearing up the Pacific Coast League, the Giants, now located in San Francisco, called him up for their July 30 game against the Phillies at Seals Stadium (their temporary home until Candlestick Park was built).

• Willie recalls the call-up vividly.

We had played a doubleheader that night in Phoenix, and I had played both ends. ... The general manager of the Phoenix Giants came into the clubhouse and said, "You're going to the big club. They want you up there tomorrow." I was all excited, but it was midnight and the Giants were playing a day game the next day. So I kind of panicked in a way, wondering how I was going to collect all my things to take with me. It never occurred that I could get some of my friends to send them to me, so I was thinking that I had to gather all my things. I had loaned records and other things to friends all over town, and I tried to go collect them all.

Anyway, I made it up to San Francisco on time. I didn't get any sleep that night, naturally, because I was all excited about the big league club. I got there just in time to go straight to the ballpark and didn't even take batting practice. Practice was over when I got there. I walked into the clubhouse. I had been in Spring Training with the team, so that took a little of the edge off, because I knew all the guys ...

Bill Rigney was the manager, and he asked me how I felt, and I said I felt great. He said, "You're in the lineup today, and you're hitting third, and you know what that means." I said, "What?" He said, "That's Willie Mays' spot in the line-up. I'm moving him up to second and yhou're hitting third today." So that put a little more pressure on me.

• To add to the pressure, Willie had to face Phils ace Robin Roberts, a future Hall of Famer.

Willie McCovey in his debut game

McCovey excited Giants fans immediately.

• All he did in his debut was go 4-for-4, with 2 triples, 3 runs, and 2 RBI as the Giants won 7-2.
• Willie played 51 games for SF that season, compiling these rookie numbers.

.354 BA, 13 HR, 38 RBI, .656 SP

Willie played 14 more years for the Giants before moving to the Padres, the A's, and back to SF for 4 more years.

• He finished with 521 HRs in 22 seasons.
• Willie Mac was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1986