October 8, 1956. Yankee Stadium. Game 5 of the World Series. Don Larsen, a journeyman pitcher who had been knocked out of Game 2 after lasting barely two innings, is somehow still pitching in the ninth. Dale Mitchell of the Brooklyn Dodgers steps in as a pinch hitter. The count runs full. Larsen delivers, Mitchell swings at a pitch outside the zone, and catcher Yogi Berra sprints out and leaps into Larsen’s arms. Twenty-seven Dodgers up, twenty-seven down. It remains the only perfect game ever thrown in a World Series, and the image of Berra jumping on Larsen is one of the most famous photographs in sports history.
That’s the standard every perfect game is measured against — but what exactly qualifies as one, and why does baseball treat it as something close to sacred?
Table of Contents
- What Exactly Is a Perfect Game?
- Perfect Game vs. No-Hitter: What’s the Difference?
- The Official Rules Behind a Perfect Game
- How Rare Is a Perfect Game?
- The Most Famous Perfect Games Ever
- Why Perfect Games Are So Hard to Throw
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Exactly Is a Perfect Game?
A perfect game is a complete game pitched without a single opposing batter reaching base by any means. That’s the whole definition, and it’s stricter than most fans realize.
For a perfect game to be official, all of the following must be true:
- The pitcher retires every batter he faces — minimum 27 outs over 9 innings.
- No hits, no walks, no hit batters, no errors that allow a runner aboard.
- No runner reaches on a fielder’s choice, catcher’s interference, or a dropped third strike.
- The pitcher’s team must win the game.
- One pitcher must throw the entire game. A combined effort doesn’t count.
That last point surprises people. In 1991, Major League Baseball tightened its record-keeping standards: a perfect game must be a complete game thrown by a single pitcher over at least nine innings. Before that ruling, a few odd entries muddied the books. Since then, the definition has been airtight.
Think of it this way: a no-hitter asks a pitcher to be unhittable. A perfect game asks a pitcher, his defense, and frankly the baseball gods to be flawless for three hours. One bad hop, one generous ball-four call, one hit batsman on an 0-2 slider that slips — and it’s gone.
Perfect Game vs. No-Hitter: What’s the Difference?
People use the terms interchangeably, and they’re not the same. Every perfect game is a no-hitter, but only a tiny fraction of no-hitters are perfect games.
In a no-hitter, the pitcher allows no hits over a complete game, but batters can still reach base — on walks, hit-by-pitches, or errors. A pitcher can walk six guys, hit another, and still get credit for a no-hitter as long as nobody gets a hit and his team wins.
In a perfect game, nobody reaches base at all. Twenty-seven batters come to the plate, and twenty-seven go back to the dugout empty-handed.
The gap between the two is enormous. There have been more than 300 no-hitters in major league history and only 24 perfect games.
The Official Rules Behind a Perfect Game
The definition lives in MLB’s record-keeping guidelines rather than the playing rulebook, and the 1991 clarification settled several famous debates.
It must be a complete game by one pitcher. This is why combined no-hitters — increasingly common in the modern bullpen era — can never be perfect games, no matter how clean the line score looks.
It must last at least nine innings. Shortened games don’t qualify. If rain stops a game after seven innings with a pitcher perfect to that point, it’s a remarkable outing, but it doesn’t go in the record book.
The pitcher must face the minimum. Twenty-seven up, twenty-seven down is the standard line. If a game goes to extra innings and the pitcher stays perfect through nine but gives up a baserunner in the tenth, there’s no perfect game — just a broken heart.
The most famous casualty of these rules is Harvey Haddix. On May 26, 1959, pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Milwaukee Braves, Haddix retired 36 consecutive batters — twelve perfect innings. In the thirteenth, an error, an intentional walk, and a home run ended both the bid and the game. Under the pre-1991 standards it was celebrated as a perfect game; under today’s rules, it isn’t one. Ask any baseball historian, and they’ll still call it the greatest pitching performance ever. The record book disagrees, and that’s the cruelty of the definition.
How Rare Is a Perfect Game?
As of the 2026 season, there have been 24 perfect games in major league history, stretching from Lee Richmond’s gem in 1880 to Domingo Germán’s stunner in 2023. That’s 24 in well over 200,000 major league games — roughly one in every 10,000 contests.
After Charlie Robertson in 1922, baseball waited 34 years for Don Larsen. Then they started clustering: three perfect games in 2012 alone (Philip Humber, Matt Cain, and Félix Hernández), followed by an 11-year gap until Germán.
And then there’s the one that got away. On June 2, 2010, Detroit’s Armando Galarraga retired the first 26 Cleveland batters he faced. The 27th, Jason Donald, hit a grounder to first; Galarraga covered the bag and clearly beat him there. First-base umpire Jim Joyce called him safe. Replays showed it wasn’t close — Donald was out by a full step. Joyce admitted his mistake immediately after the game, and Galarraga handled it with more grace than most of us could manage. It goes down as a one-hit shutout. Everyone who watched it knows what it really was. That blown call is a big part of why replay review exists in baseball today.
The Most Famous Perfect Games Ever
Don Larsen, 1956 World Series, Game 5. The only perfect game in postseason history, thrown on baseball’s biggest stage against the defending champion Brooklyn Dodgers. Larsen needed just 97 pitches. He later said he never shook off a single sign from Berra all afternoon.
Sandy Koufax, 1965. Koufax struck out 14 Chicago Cubs, the most in any perfect game, and beat Bob Hendley 1-0 in a duel where Hendley allowed just one hit himself. Broadcaster Vin Scully’s call of the ninth inning is still played in documentaries.
Catfish Hunter, 1968. The A’s had actually scheduled a “Catfish Hunter Perfect Game” promotion day as a joke before the season. Hunter also drove in three runs himself that day.
Len Barker, 1981. Eleven strikeouts on a rainy Cleveland night — and Barker never went to a three-ball count on any batter.
David Wells, 1998. Wells later claimed he was hungover. True or clubhouse mythology, the box score is real: 27 up, 27 down against Minnesota.
Mark Buehrle, 2009. Saved by one of the great defensive plays in baseball history — Dewayne Wise, inserted as a defensive replacement in the ninth, leaping at the wall to rob Gabe Kapler of a home run.
Roy Halladay, 2010. Halladay threw a perfect game against the Florida Marlins in May, then threw a no-hitter against Cincinnati in the NLDS that October — the second postseason no-hitter ever. One of the great single-season pitching achievements.
Félix Hernández, 2012. “King Félix” struck out 12 Tampa Bay Rays in Seattle, completing a season that saw three perfect games — still the record for a single year.
Domingo Germán, 2023. The most unlikely of them all. Germán had been shelled for 10 runs in his previous start, had never thrown a complete game in the majors, and then retired all 27 Oakland Athletics on 99 pitches. Only 12,479 fans were in the Coliseum to see it.
Why Perfect Games Are So Hard to Throw
It isn’t just the pitching. A perfect game requires about two dozen things to go right that the pitcher can’t control.
Defense. Every hard-hit ball has to find a glove. Buehrle needed Wise’s leaping catch. Germán needed Anthony Rizzo’s diving stop in the fifth. One ball through the infield and it’s over.
The strike zone. Umpires don’t widen the zone for history. A borderline 3-2 pitch in the eighth inning gets the same call it would get in April, and pitchers know it. The Galarraga game is the extreme example, but every perfect game survives a dozen calls that could have gone the other way.
Luck. Line drives get hit at fielders. Bloopers fall in. That’s baseball over 162 games, and a perfect game asks the randomness to take the night off.
Stamina and focus. About 100 pitches of maximum concentration, with the pressure doubling every inning. By the ninth, the whole stadium is standing for every pitch.
The unwritten rules. Nobody mentions it. Broadcasters dance around it — “he’s got something special going” — because saying the words feels like tempting fate. I’ve always loved that baseball, the most numbers-obsessed sport on earth, gets superstitious about this one thing. The numbers say it’s nearly impossible. The dugout acts like talking about it makes it more impossible.
That’s the real answer to what a perfect game is. It’s not just 27 outs. It’s the one achievement in baseball where excellence isn’t enough — you need excellence plus silence plus luck, all in the same evening. If you’re curious how championship formats create these kinds of stages, our guide to how the World Cup tournament format works breaks down another iconic competition — and for a different kind of rulebook deep dive, see the offside rule in soccer explained.
Frequently Asked Questions
A perfect game is a complete game in which a single pitcher retires all 27 batters he faces without any reaching base — no hits, walks, hit batters, or errors — over at least nine innings in a winning effort. There have been only 24 in major league history.
In a no-hitter, no hits are allowed but batters may still reach base via walks, hit-by-pitches, or errors. In a perfect game, no batter reaches base by any means. Every perfect game is a no-hitter, but only a small fraction of no-hitters are perfect games.
Yes — exactly one. Don Larsen of the New York Yankees threw a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, needing only 97 pitches. It remains the only perfect game in postseason history.
No. Since MLB clarified its record standards in 1991, a perfect game must be a complete game thrown by a single pitcher over at least nine innings. Combined no-hitters, however impressive, cannot be credited as perfect games.
On June 2, 2010, Detroit’s Armando Galarraga retired 26 straight Cleveland batters, but first-base umpire Jim Joyce incorrectly called the 27th batter safe on a play replays showed was an out. Joyce admitted the mistake after the game. The blown call became a landmark moment in the push for replay review in baseball.
Domingo Germán of the New York Yankees threw the 24th perfect game in MLB history on June 28, 2023, beating the Oakland Athletics 11-0. It was the first perfect game since Félix Hernández’s in 2012, and Germán’s first career complete game.
