David Wells bounced off the mound and stared out into the clear, blue skies of right field as the pinnacle of his dreams was about to come true. As a kid, he dreamed about situations like this: Yankee Stadium, ninth inning, one out away
from making Yankee history. Now all that was coming to fruition on May 17, 1998. All he needed was this lazy fly ball hit by Pat Meares to be caught by Paul O'Neill. Seconds that seemed like hours passed away as O'Neill trotted a few steps towards the right field line before he
raised his glove to grasp a piece of history. The ball was caught and history was made: David Wells had pitched a perfect game.

Wells pumped his fist twice and screamed with jubilation. The Yankees burst out of the dugout and swarmed him like he had won the seventh game of the World Series. The team carried his bulky frame on their shoulders as he basked in the fans adulation, raising his arms in ecstatic triumph. (Wells would later joke that he was slightly askew since one half of him was resting on Strawberry's shoulders, the tallest man on the team.) Moments later, Wells reached the zenith of his day when he came out one last time for a curtain call, a curtain call demanded by the 49,000 roaring fans who wanted to thank him for providing them with one of the more special moments in baseball. Yes, it was Wells'  dream
which was realized - he now goes down in the record books along with Don Larsen as the only pitchers to have hurled a perfect game in pinstripes.

But at the same time, the fans owned a piece of it as well.

This was the reality: Cut through all the hoopla and what this momentous occasion comes down to is that Wells hurled one of the most dominant games a pitcher could ever have. From the moment he warmed up in the bullpen before the game, his pitches were outstanding and had excellent movement.

"When Mel (Stottlemyre) came out of the bullpen today I asked him, "How's he doing?" and he said, 'Wow.', " manager Joe Torre said.

That carried on throughout the game as well, from the first batter in the lineup to the very last. The Twins appeared lost at the plate as Wells had four pitches working during most of the game. In fact, batters struck out on four different pitches: his cutter, curve ball, fastball and change-up. Javier Valentin struck out looking at a curve ball in the sixth. Pat Meares struck out swinging at a change- up in the third. John Shave whiffed on a nasty cutter in the sixth. And Ron Coomer couldn't catch up to a fastball in the second. Four different pitches, four different strikeouts. Just one sign of how dominant Wells was on this day.

"(He) had pop," said catcher Jorge Posada, who was only shaken off twice by Wells. "When he gets to the fifth, when his sinker's down, cutter's in, fastball's in and change-up low, that's when you know he's on top of his game."

And how. Overall, Wells accumulated 11 strikeouts on the day. But the true sign of Wells' dominance was measured when the Twins managed to make contact, the balls weren't hit hard at all. Most were just lazy fly balls that the Yankees outfielders easily gobbled up. As Posada put it, it was, "Strike one, strike two, fly out; strike one, strike two, fly out. He was like that the whole game." Torre, for one, was a tad surprised by how Wells mowed down this lineup. "There weren't many hard-hit balls, which is unusual," Torre recalled. "I remember Larsen's perfect game there were a few hard hit balls."

Most of the Yankees began to feel the uniqueness of the day around the fifth or sixth inning when they realized Wells still had his best stuff. As the fans steadily increased their volume with each out,  the excitement grew - along with the tension. What was Wells' best way to battle tension? Well, superstition helps. "After the inning he'd go inside and after one guy was out he'd come outside (to the dugout)," Torre said. "That was basically the routine and I think Mel said, "Nice going, Boomer," every time he went by. It was one of those things that you knew was there."

Superstition only goes so far, though, since the game had to be decided on the field. There certainly were a couple of moments that  could have shattered ballplayers' faith in superstition while causing heart palpitations among the fans - and the manager as well. First, there was one at-bat that had Torre concerned in the seventh inning.

"The one batter that scared me was falling behind 3-1 to Paul Molitor, a hitter like that," Torre said. Wells fought back, though, and eventually whiffed the future Hall-of-Famer. And then came the one hard-hit ball of the day. With one out in the eighth inning, Ron Coomer laced a fastball on the outside corner right to second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. Knoblauch did his best Mike Richter impersonation by knocking down the ball, but he left plenty of time to pick it up and toss it to first for the out. No harm, no foul. Wells escaped the inning with his perfect game intact.

"It was one those day where everything worked," Wells said. "I got lucky and kept in stride."

So Wells moved on and strode to the mound in the ninth inning with a chance for a perfect game. What was he thinking when he stood on the mound, glaring into home plate with three batters left before the pursuit of perfection was accomplished?

"I was hoping the fans would kind of shush a little bit," Wells said. "They were making me nervous out there. I'd run out there and they'd start screaming and yelling - it was great, though."

Every pitch earned a reaction from the near-sellout crowd. For three batters, there were over 49,000 umpires in the stands. No ball escaped without a monumental groan. No strike was called without a monstrous roar. Meanwhile, the situation in the dugout was almost the exact opposite.

"I was nervous," Torre said. "You didn't want to do anything. I'm not superstitious, but you didn't want to mess anything up in case someone was. We were all pretty quiet, basically."

The first batter, John Shave, flied out to Paul O'Neill after Wells fell behind in the count. Wells jumped ahead of the next batter, Valentin, and struck him out swinging. Then, Meares stepped up as the final batter . . . and the rest was baseball history.

Afterward, an emotional Wells dedicated the game to his mother, who passed away close to two years ago. He wished that his family could have been at the Stadium, a chance to see Wells in the best moment of his career.  But even if some close ties were not capable of watching his
performance, Wells was still proud. As he should have been. It was one of those days that made people remember that the best of baseball cannot be matched by any other sport; a day which will be forever engraved in the minds of the 49,000 fans who watched it at the Stadium and the millions who witnessed the moment on television. Wells may have described it best when he simply said, "It was a dream come true."