He was a regular in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am every February and clocked 300-yard drives that rolled as far as the tour professionals. If there was anything Cain loved as much as competing on the mound, it was gripping and ripping from the tee box. They invited Hensley and a couple of other Giants players to participate. PGA officials set up a driving range mat on home plate and staged a long drive competition into McCovey Cove. Open was returning to Pebble Beach that summer and the PGA Tour arranged for Dustin Johnson to appear at AT&T Park as part of a publicity tour. “I get to figure out what she’s thinking, which is not easy.”īut when Cain arrived at the ballpark, reliever Clay Hensley was buzzing with excitement. “Just worrying about my crazy little 1 1/2-year-old right now,” he said. They scampered around the dog park for a bit. The morning started like any other, with breakfast at Town’s End with his wife, Chelsea, and their 18-month-old daughter, Hartley Mae. So as Cain and the Giants celebrate the 10th anniversary of the perfect game on Monday, here are 10 memories, moments and minutiae from that day: 1) Cain did not have a typical pregame routine Gregor Blanco makes the perfect-game saving catch.
All of them were reminders that the cosmos had to align again and again and again for Cain to throw the 22nd perfect game in major-league history.
Some moments were impossible to forget, like Gregor Blanco’s diving catch in the nearly inaccessible expanse of right-center field to take an extra-base hit away from Jordan Schafer in the seventh inning. He did another with NBC Sports Bay Area for a special that aired Sunday night. He did a game watch with SFG Productions for a video feature. That’s what stands out the most as I’ve looked back over the last handful of weeks.”Ĭain looked back on every pitch. There’s so many variables that can happen. “Being away from it now for 10 years, the rarity of it registers with me - all the things that have to go in one team’s favor. But no baserunners, no nothing? That wasn’t ever on my radar during that game. “Maybe it’s because as a kid, I had never dreamed of throwing a perfect game. “I definitely didn’t understand it at the time,” Cain said in a recent interview with The Athletic. “This is stupid,” was all he could utter when he emerged from the dogpile and manager Bruce Bochy congratulated him.Ī decade later, so much of it still seems so stupid. He’s had 10 years to process the events of June 13, 2012, when he took the mound in China Basin, retired 27 consecutive Houston Astros batters and transformed an ordinary Wednesday night into one of the most historic moments in franchise lore.Ĭain’s reaction that night was one of disbelief.
It’s been a decade since Matt Cain threw the first and only perfect game in Giants history.
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