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click to enlage the line up card
click to enlage the letter from the Reds batboy describing how Browning came to sign the historic line-up card.


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Tom Browning’s Perfect Game

More than 150,000 major league games have been played in the modern era but only 15 have been "perfect games". A game is perfect when "a pitcher pitches at least nine innings of a complete game victory and allows not a single runner to reach first base."

On September 16, 1988, Cincinnati Reds lefthander, Tom Browning pitched a perfect game against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It’s the only time a perfect game was thrown against the team that would go on to win the World Championship that same season. Here is the Dodgers' original dugout line-up card from that day. What’s amazing is that it was signed by Tom Browning after the game. The pitcher and his victims have never been better documented!


Tom Browning

Related links:

See the ball signed by all the guys who pulled off the unassisted triple, with a video of the last guy to do it — Rafael Furcal, signing this ball for me. On that page you will also see the glove Jimmy Cooney used the day he made an unassisted triple play in 1927.



Did you know:

Browning missed becoming the first Major League pitcher to hurl two perfect games, taking his second bid into the ninth on July 4, 1989, against the Philadelphia Phillies at Veterans Stadium; a lead-off single by Dickie Thon broke up this attempt.


The ball from the game used to sit on his mantelpiece. Where is it now? ''I don't know if the kids played with it or not,'' Browning said. ''I think it's in the woods behind our house. It didn't have anything on it, and it was just sitting there. I guess the kids needed a ball to play with."


The game was delayed two-and-a-half hours, but when it finally started Tom Browning was at his best, throwing one-hundred-two pitches and seventy-two for strikes. The small crowd that patiently waited nearly three hours for a 10 p.m. start were treated to a magnificent pitchers' duel that featured Tim Belcher taking a no-hitter into the the sixth inning and Tom Browning completing the first ever Cincinnati Reds perfect game.