The Perfect Game

Friday, August 23, 1957

No recap of the Little League post-season of 1957 would be complete without the telling of what is perhaps the greatest Cinderella story in youth baseball history: the improbable and unstoppable march to Williamsport of a scruffy bunch of upstart Mexican pee-wees which culminated in the historic perfecto pitched by their ambidextrous ace in the final game of the Little League World Series.

The team blanked by Monterrey Industrial 60 years ago today was La Mesa, California: the champs of the same State Tournament in which West Covina won Third Place less than two weeks before.

My mother was so thorough in her scrapbooking that she actually subscribed to the Williamsport newspaper so she could also document the Little League World Series that year. The following are selections from her many pages of clippings.

By all accounts, the pint-sized niños from Mexico were celebrated fan-favorites, contradicting the political narrative in the 2006 film The Perfect Game, which portrayed the team as a target of xenophobia and racism throughout their tournament play. It was simply not true. (I don't care how good a team is from a technical point-of-view: you can't win 13 games in a row in any sport if the crowd is constantly hostile towards you.)

Click on the jump for more articles and photos!

The Stars and Stripes and La Bandera de México fly over Original Field.

Apparently, 6 La Mesa players came down with colds and were hospitalized before World Series play started. Hospitalized? With colds? In August? Hmmm...

Postscript: On August 18, a perfect game was thrown in this year's Little League World Series! North Carolina pitchers Chase Anderson, Matthew Matthijs and Carson Hardee combined to prevent any South Dakota batsman from reaching base. It's the first perfecto in World Series play since Mexico's Jesus Sauceda's in 2008, and the first ever by a U.S. team. No one has ever repeated Angel Macias's feat of throwing a solo perfect game in a LLWS final, however, and given today's 35/85-pitch rules, it's highly doubtful anyone ever will.