As a preteen reader, one of my favorite books was The Perfect Game (see photo). I read it at least a half-dozen times. As an adult, I have never been able to find a copy of it for sale online. That is, until I worked with a librarian a few weeks ago.
The Perfect Game, written by Jackson Scholz, was published in 1959 by William Morrow & Company. The book is about the sudden fame and career struggles of a rookie pitcher named Clay Morgan who pitches a perfect game for the fictional New York Titans in the deciding game of the World Series. There’s plenty of baseball action, but the real story is the lessons Clay learns about teammates, trust, and pitching maturity after being sent down to the minors the next year.
I have been searching off and on for years for The Perfect Game on eBay, which seemingly has everything, and on websites that exclusively sell used books. I wanted to see how well I remembered it and to connect with my youth. Without knowing the author or publisher, my searches only found false hits from more recent fiction and videos with “perfect game” in the title or as a subject. There are more out there than you might think. The newer stuff seemed to always crowd out any links to “my” book. I did know the approximate copyright year (ca. 1960), but that didn’t help. Either that or no one was listing a copy of it for sale whenever I did a search.
Microsoft Copilot wasn’t any help except for one good suggestion it made. That was to work with a librarian with skills in finding old books.
The next time I visited the Timberland Library in Belfair I approached one of the staff members and told her I was trying to find an out-of-print book. Using the scant details I was able to provide, she did a Google search. I can’t remember exactly what keywords she used, but several strong possibilities popped up. The clincher was a link to a short Kirkus review that briefly summarized the plot and gave the author’s name and copyright date. (I didn’t know Kirkus was reviewing books some 67 years ago.) With that information, I was able to verify that the listing by a vendor named PangoBooks from the librarian’s search results was the real thing. The price was right too. Only $6.00 plus shipping.
It sounds crazy to say I could never find the book with my searches and the library staff member found it on the first try. Sometimes all it takes is a different perspective.
I reread the book after it arrived this week. One thing I had forgotten was the length—it’s about 250 pages. Also, I did not remember the cover illustration. But those things aside, many of its passages are very close to the way I remember them. Not bad for an old guy.
Jackson Scholz, a prolific and knowledgeable author of sports books, died in 1986. If he were still around, I have one plot point to argue with him. In the 9th inning of the perfect World Series win, Scholz has Clay Morgan facing the heart of the opposing team’s batting order. Perhaps that’s to provide drama and suspense, but it wouldn’t happen that way. After 8 innings and 24 outs, the bottom third of the batting order would be up unless there were pinch hitters. It doesn’t really matter though. Clay retires the side in order, finishing with a strikeout, and the rest of the book is a great baseball story and character development novel for young readers.
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