David Cone

title: "David Cone" slug: "david-cone" era: "Core Four Dynasty" position: "SP" bats: "Left" throws: "Right" born: "1963-01-02" birthplace: "Kansas City, MO" debut: "1986-06-08" retired: "2003-05-28"

The 1998 Yankees had 114 wins, the best record in baseball history at the time, a lineup that made opposing managers physically ill, and a bullpen that featured the greatest closer who ever lived. They needed exactly one more thing: a veteran presence in the rotation who'd been through hell and come out the other side. They already had him. David Cone had survived an aneurysm that nearly ended his career two years earlier, won a Cy Young in Kansas City, and pitched for a World Series winner in Toronto. He wasn't a kid with potential. He was a 35-year-old professional who'd seen everything.

In 1998, he went 20-7.

The Long Road to the Bronx

Cone grew up in Kansas City -- literal Kansas City, Missouri, where he was born January 2, 1963 -- and the Royals drafted him in the third round in 1981. He bounced around their system for five years before debuting with Kansas City in 1986, then got traded to the Mets, where he spent five-plus seasons becoming one of the best strikeout pitchers in baseball. He led the National League in strikeouts in both 1990 and 1991. He won 20 games in 1988. He was genuinely great in New York before anyone in the Bronx paid attention to him.

Then came the Kansas City years, and the 1994 season that should get more run than it does: 16-5, 2.94 ERA in the strike-shortened year, AL Cy Young Award. He beat out Jimmy Key of the Yankees, which is a fun detail in retrospect. A year later, on July 28, 1995, the Blue Jays traded Cone to the Yankees for three minor leaguers. He went 9-2 down the stretch as the Yanks won the wild card.

He was signed. The dynasty was about to start.

Aneurysm, Comeback, and October

Here's a detail that doesn't always get attached to the 1996 season story: Cone was 4-1 with a 2.02 ERA when doctors found an aneurysm in his right shoulder in May. He had surgery on May 10 to remove it and replace the affected artery with a vein graft. He didn't throw a baseball again until late June.

He came back September 2nd in Oakland and threw seven no-hit innings.

(Seven. No-hit innings. After missing four months with a potentially life-threatening artery problem. In his first start back.)

He couldn't finish it -- pitch count restrictions kept him out of the eighth -- but the Yankees won 5-0 on a one-hitter, and the message was clear: Cone was back. He made his World Series start October 22 in Atlanta, Game 3, series tied 1-1 (the Braves had torched them in the first two). Six innings, one run, Yankees won 5-2. The dynasty got its first title four games later.

The Perfect Game

July 18, 1999 was Yogi Berra Day at the Stadium. Before the game, Don Larsen -- who'd thrown the only perfect game in World Series history in 1956 -- threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Yogi. The symbolic weight of that detail is almost too much to process.

Then Cone went out and threw a perfect game.

Twenty-seven up, twenty-seven down against the Montreal Expos on 88 pitches. Final score 6-0. It took 2 hours and 49 minutes, including a 33-minute rain delay in the third inning. Cone dropped to his knees on the mound after the final out, looking less like a man who'd just accomplished something rare and more like a man who couldn't believe what his body had just done.

It was the 16th perfect game in baseball history, and the first in an interleague regular season game. Cone was 36 years old.

What He Meant to That Rotation

Pettitte was the constant, the workhorse who showed up every fifth day without drama. El Duque had the mystique and the impossible windup. David Wells had the personality and that freakin' perfect game in May (and yeah, two perfect games in one rotation, in one year -- that actually happened). But Cone was the rotation's older brother -- the guy who'd pitched everywhere, won everywhere, and knew exactly what the moment asked for.

He mentored young pitchers. He talked craft in the dugout. He had the kind of command that came from 15 years of figuring out what worked and what didn't. Jeter and Mo were becoming the face of the dynasty, but Cone was the guy who understood history -- he'd been part of it long before the Bronx.

The 1998 season was the peak of everything he'd built. Twenty wins on the best team anyone had seen in decades. Cy Young Award on the shelf. Perfect game in the works. Rings stacking up. It didn't feel fragile because it wasn't.

The Fall and the End

Then came 2000, and it fell apart in a way that was hard to watch. Cone went 4-14 with a 6.91 ERA -- his worst season by a mile -- and couldn't figure out why. The stuff was still there in flashes. The smarts were still there. But the results weren't, and the Yankees knew it. He became a free agent after the season and never quite recovered. He spent 2001 with the Red Sox (which was a weird year for everyone involved), made a brief return to the Mets in 2003, and threw his last major league pitch May 28 of that year.

Career record: 194-126. Five World Series rings. A perfect game. A Cy Young. Eight-and-three in the postseason across 111 innings. By any reasonable measure, a Hall of Fame career.

The Veterans Committee still hasn't gotten there. When he appeared on the regular ballot in 2009, he got 3.9% of the vote and fell off. It's a bad look for the process, not for the pitcher. His 62.3 career WAR ranks ahead of Juan Marichal, Don Drysdale, and a handful of other pitchers who have plaques in Cooperstown.

Cone didn't get the sendoff he deserved -- no farewell tour, no ceremony, just a journeyman final act that bore almost no resemblance to what he'd been. But the body of work doesn't care how it ended. Four rings in pinstripes. A perfect game on Yogi Berra Day. A Cy Young Award that he won before anyone in New York was paying attention. The Hall of Fame will figure it out eventually.