Hard-Luck Harvey Haddix and the Greatest Game Ever Lost

He pitched a baseball game that was more than perfect, and yet he lost. Southpaw Harvey Haddix had logged a solid but unspectacular career by the time he took the mound on May 26, 1959. Facing the Milwaukee Braves, he set down the first 36 batters in a row, or 12 innings’ worth—a perfect game three innings longer than the norm. But his Pittsburgh Pirates couldn’t score, either, and Haddix lost in the 13th inning on a controversial play. This book recounts Haddix’s one-of-a-kind performance and describes the official decisions that changed the historical record.

Lew Freedman is a long-time, prize-winning journalist for such newspapers as the Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Anchorage Daily News and Wyoming’s Cody Enterprise. Specializing in sports and the outdoors, he has written more than 100 books. He lives in Columbus, Indiana.

Lew Freedman
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 218
Bibliographic Info: 10 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2009
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4124-2
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5419-8
Imprint: McFarland

Introduction      1

1. All Pitchers Should Be So Sick      5
2. Bad Baseball      12
3. First Inning      19
4. Harvey      27
5. Second Inning      33
6. The Worthy Opposition      38
7. Third Inning      44
8. Pittsburgh      49
9. Fourth Inning      54
10. Branch Rickey      59
11. Fifth Inning      65
12. A Prince of a Guy      70
13. Sixth Inning      76
14. Speaking Spanish      82
15. Seventh Inning      90
16. The Boss      96
17. Eighth Inning      102
18. Ninth Inning      107
19. Tenth Inning      114
20. Eleventh Inning      120
21. Twelfth Inning      127
22. Thirteenth Inning      135
23. Aftermath      146
24. The 1959 Season 155i
25. The Year All Pittsburgh Went Crazy      162
26. Waxing Eloquent Over Haddix      171
27. Life After Imperfection      179
28. Upon Further Review      184

Box Score: Milwaukee 1, Pittsburgh 0      189
Chapter Notes      193
Bibliography      203
Index      205

“If you want an illumination of one baseball’s most magical games, Freedman serves up a winner in detailing the ‘greatest game ever lost.’”—Baseball Happenings.