A perfect game

Don Larsen wasn’t the greatest Major League Baseball pitcher.

On Oct. 8, 1956, however, he performed a feat without equal in baseball history.

The late Hayden Lake resident threw a perfect game for the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1956 World Series. Larsen retired all 27 batters he faced.

His Idaho vanity license plates touted the record: DL000: no runs, no hits, no errors.

In a 2017 interview, he told Brian Walker of the Coeur d’Alene Press that he wasn’t worried that a pitcher might throw another perfect World Series game.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They can’t break (my record) anyway. All they can do is tie it.”

At the time, at age 88, Larsen and his wife, Corrine, had spent more than 20 years in North Idaho. In retirement, Larsen loved to fish, especially at Hayden Lake, to attend the occasional old-timers game, and to bask in the afterglow of perfect Game 5.

By 2017, he was the last player standing — the last living member of his 1953 St. Louis Browns team and the final starter left on either club from the perfect game. Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, who caught Game 5, had died two years earlier.

An iconic World Series photo captures Larsen and Berra moments after the hurler struck out pinch hitter Dale Mitchell for the final out. The picture shows Berra leaping into Larsen’s arms. Among the other players on the field that day were Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Whitey Ford, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges.

In September 1996, Larsen and the players from that series appeared in a book authored by Mark Shaw, with Larsen’s help: “The Perfect Yankee.”

Corrine Larsen, however, told Howie Stalwick of The Press that the book’s name was a “misnomer.” Originally, she said, the book was to be called “Miracle on the Mound.” But the publisher thought that it was important to put “Yankee” in the title to increase sales.

Without that perfect game, Larsen’s career was average.

In Game 2 of the 1956 series, Yanks manager Casey Stengel pulled Larsen from the game after he blew a 6-0 lead in a 13-6 Yankees loss. New York eventually won the series four games to three. Larsen compiled a record of 81-91 for seven teams during a 15-year career.

Larsen saw North Idaho for the first time during a Minor League Baseball trip to Spokane. Upon retirement, the Larsens preferred Hayden Lake’s laid-back lifestyle to big-city life.

Don Larsen died in Coeur d’Alene on New Year’s Day 2020. He was 90.

Coroner’s Report

The report from Coroner Dr. Robert West inflamed the usual players in 2000 during the region’s annual field-burning controversy.

Air pollution, Dr. West ruled, was partly to blame for Marsha Mason’s death.

Dr. West noted carefully that the torching of wheat fields — not Rathdrum Prairie grass-seed fields — had triggered the acute asthma attack that led to the death of the popular Rathdrum waitress, 49, on Sept. 14, 2000.

Mason’s family, however, attributed her death to an adverse reaction to medications for asthma and bronchitis. And one air quality specialist insisted that smoke from grass-field burning on the Rathdrum Prairie was to blame. He said, “Smoke is smoke to an asthmatic.”

A year later, U.S. News and World Report spotlighted Marsha’s death in a five-page article, “Fields on Fire.” The magazine reported that West described the afternoon before Marsha’s death as “one of the haziest, soupiest days he had seen in his 31 years in Coeur d’Alene.”

Raised on a North Dakota farm, the magazine said, Dr. West “knew the regenerative powers of fire on cropland.” Also, it reported that Dr. West backed the right of farmers to burn their fields if the wind was blowing away from cities and towns.

According to U.S. News and World Report, Dr. West realized he would “have people down my neck” if he listed field-burning as a cause in Marsha’s death.

Nevertheless, he did, the magazine said, possibly marking the first time in 40-plus years that a U.S. coroner had linked a death to air pollution.

Beary Good Idea

Actress Patty Duke was known for her many stage and screen roles, including her Academy Award-winning performance as Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker.”

But who remembers that she joined a friend 25 years ago to market an original artist line of — Teddy bears?

At the time, Patty Duke and Ann Inman-Looms both lived in Hayden. Ann was a 20-year veteran of the artist Teddy bear business. And Patty was a fan who owned 20 of the bears.

Early in 2001, Patty suggested that they work together. Ann provided the experience; Patty offered the creative drive and imaginative skills of a veteran actor and best-selling author.

Their 11-inch bears with angelic faces were made of German-imported mohair. They had a hand-blown glass eyes, a hand-stitched nose, and wore symbolic charms for their names: Faith, Hope, and Charity.

The names, Patty told Bill Buley of The Press, matched her three basic tenets in life: “You gotta have faith, you gotta have hope, and you better have charity,” she said.

Patty also added a personal touch — her signature on the foot of each bear.

“You know, after you sign your name about 250 times, you don’t know your name anymore,” Patty said. “Some of (the signatures) get really wobbly.”

Huckleberries

• Poet’s Corner: She would never forget/through the years that came after/one bright summer morning/and her baby’s first laughter/The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“August Memory”)

• No Room: In 1969, when Coeur d’Alene High was built, it was designed to hold 1,250 students. By 1991-92, three years before the opening of Lake City High, CHS had an enrollment of 2,001. The year before, CHS was deemed the largest three-grade high school in the state. So, Vice Principal Steve Casey smiled, added 20 portables, seven roaming teachers, and posted this on the reader-board: “No Vacancy.”

• Hall of Famers: The six North Idahoans inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame in 2001 were the crème de la crème: resort owners Duane Hagadone and Bob Templin, World War II hero Pappy Boyington, Coeur d’Alene Indian Tribe leader Ernie Stensgar, and the husband-and-wife dynamic duo Charlie and Susan Nipp.

• Water-Logged: On Aug. 31, 1981, Lisa Malloy, 14, of Coeur d’Alene, swam round trip from Marina Harbor (possibly the current UI Center) to Kidd Island Bay to see if she could — about 8 miles. Her mother, Joan, and brother, Beck, 17, followed in a rowboat. The water was cold. So, Lisa ate and warmed up at the halfway point. Also, her mind played tricks on her. “I didn’t like swimming around seaweed,” she said. “I started thinking about all the stories people had told me about things in the lake.”

• Vote Him Out: The Guberif was Idaho Public Enemy No. 1 from 1950 and into the 1980s. The dastardly creature was so hated in the Gem State in September 1966 that Keep Idaho Green launched a crusade against him, titled “Vote Guberif Out of Office.” The campaign claimed that the Guberif was responsible for most man-made fires. So, what’s a Guberif? Spelled backward, the name reads: “Firebug.”

Parting Shot

As feuds go, the war of words between feisty Coeur d’Alene Mayor Ray Stone and dismissive County Commissioner Glenn Jackson was a doozy.

Jackson, a lame-duck commissioner who lost his 1986 Republican primary race, reportedly tossed the first brickbat.

Jackson claimed Stone had a big ego and was a better drummer than a mayor.

Stone, the leader of a swing band, responded that Jackson was too busy flying for the Mexican Air Force to attend joint city-county meetings. Jackson, who flew his own plane, said he preferred not to be in the same room as the Lake City mayor.

Then, Jackson shot back that Stone’s ego was so big that he tried to “market his bathwater.”

The flap continued for months until the combatants called a truce.

In an editorial, The Press admitted that the spat was fun while it lasted. The exchanges, it said, “brought an oft-needed breath of fresh air to the staid and sometimes yawn-producing happenings in city and county government circles.”

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D.F. Oliveria can be contacted at [email protected].

    In 2001, Amy Bell, daughter of air pollution victim Marsha Mason, scanned a U.S. News & World Report article about Inland Northwest field burning. Her son, Hunter, 2, was with her.
  

    In 1981, Randy Howard helped control traffic at Poleline and Chase roads, near Post Falls, during the annual Rathdrum Prairie field burning.
  

    In 2001, actress Patty Duke, left, and friend Ann Inman-Looms produced a new line of original artist Teddy bears.
  

    In 1991, Steve Casey, then assistant principal at Coeur d’Alene High, posted in jest a “no vacancy” sign as school enrollment topped 2,000.
  

    In 2001, author Susan Nipp and her husband, Charlie, a property and banking developer, were inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame.
  

    In 1981, Lisa Malloy was shown after her eight-mile swim.
  

    In 1966, Jaycee officials Archie McGregor, left, and Ben Kohler promoted Keep Idaho Green’s campaign, “Vote Guberif Out of Office.”
  

    In 1986, a political cartoon for the Coeur d’Alene Press showed combatants in a war of words: Mayor Ray Stone, left, and Commissioner Glenn Jackson. The cartoon by “Speck” was titled: “Everything’s Ducky.”