University of Georgia Athletics
Woeltjen’s Perfect Game Still Stands Alone
May 03, 2023 | Baseball, The Frierson Files
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
Sixty years later, Don Woeltjen remains one of a kind at Georgia.
"It's such a special situation for those guys, including me, that were a part of it," Woeltjen said during a phone interview this week from his home in Fitzgerald, Ga.
On May 3, 1963, at Rose Bowl Field in Atlanta, against rival Georgia Tech, Woeltjen pitched a perfect game in a 5-0 Georgia win. The Yellow Jackets sent 27 batters to the plate, and Woeltjen and the Bulldogs got 27 consecutive outs, including 11 strikeouts by the talented senior from Savannah.
It remains the only nine-inning perfect game in school history and the only perfect game between two SEC schools (Tech was still in the conference at that time). According to the NCAA's website, since 1959 there have been just 20 nine-inning perfect games pitched in Division I.
"I'd had a lot of games (in high school and earlier in college) where you zip along like that, and six innings was pretty normal for me to have a pretty good game," said Woeltjen, a retired Methodist minister. "It was after the sixth inning that usually gave me some difficulty."
But not that day in Atlanta.
Before he was a Georgia baseball player for the Bulldogs in the late 1960s, and long before he was a prominent local attorney for decades, Athens native Lamar Lewis was the team's bat boy. Lewis, a freshman in high school at the time, was on the job that night in Atlanta.
"I was really lucky to make that trip," Lewis said.
Woeltjen's perfect day kind of came out of nowhere on a couple of fronts. He had, in his words, been in head coach Jim Whatley's doghouse for a bit, particularly after a rough outing against Oglethorpe.
"They really roughed him up," Lewis said.
Despite getting rocked in that game, Whatley left him out on the mound. Whatley was quoted later in a Sports Illustrated article as saying that he wanted to keep Woeltjen on the mound that day until he "found out what he was doing wrong."
In that sense, it worked. According to Woeltjen, his next few outings were as a reliever and he amassed nine perfect innings of relief work before the Tech game arrived on the schedule.
"All he'd let me do was relieve," Woeltjen said.
That day in Atlanta, Woeltjen arrived at the ballpark not knowing that he was starting against the Yellow Jackets. He said he went through pregame warmups like any other player, not his usual routine before a start, and it was only later as he sat in the dugout, sweaty and warm, that Whatley told him to take the mound.
"Coach Whatley, you never knew what he was thinking," Woeltjen recalled with a laugh. "We never knew who was going to pitch. I was out there before the game running wind sprints. I did that about 12-15 times before the game.
"If you knew you were going to pitch, you wouldn't be doing that. I came into the dugout after I finished all of my stuff, sat down on the bench, and took a breath, and Coach Whatley was down at the other end. ... He got up, walked down toward me, and he had a baseball in his hands. He put it in my hand and he said, 'You pitch today.'
"That's when I knew that I was going to pitch, and it wasn't too long after that that I went down and warmed up and got ready for the game."
Woeltjen, who had Georgia quarterback Larry Rakestraw catching him behind the plate for the first time, took the mound against rival Tech and had the game of his life.
"The game started, we rocked along and everything was going fine," he said. "I had really good control."
"He was really on his game against Tech," said Lewis, who had a perfect view of the action from the third-base dugout.
By the sixth inning, Woeltjen knew something special was happening. Most of his teammates did too, since they were following the baseball tradition of not saying a word to the pitcher that's got a perfect game or no-hitter going.
"I went into the dugout and nobody would sit around me," Woeltjen said. "It was like I had the plague. And you'd go back out the next inning and everything was three up and three down."
"As the game wore on, it got even more quiet," Lewis said. "People stayed away from him, didn't bother him, didn't want him to be distracted. ... Coach Whatley, I remember, got really nervous in the dugout before the ninth inning."
According to Lewis, Whatley sent him to the concession stand to get some more cigarettes. (It was most definitely a different era of collegiate sports.)
"I brought some back to him, and he was too nervous to light one so he asked me to light it for him. He really was a bundle of nerves in that last inning," Lewis said.
In 2011, Woeltjen was inducted into the Greater Savannah Athletic Hall of Fame. In 1998, he received the Outstanding Athletic Achievement Award from Georgia, recognizing his great play on the field and humanitarian work off it after graduation.
This weekend, when the Bulldogs host a three-game series against Tennessee at Foley Field, Georgia will celebrate Lettermen's Weekend. Woeltjen had originally planned to be there, but recent health issues will keep him away.
In the bottom of the ninth 60 years ago, with two outs, Rakestraw, the great athlete but rookie catcher, performed like a seasoned pro, Lewis said.
"The last out of that game was a towering foul pop-up right behind home plate, and it was one of those that was either going to land right outside the fence or it was going to be in play but right down the screen," Lewis said. "Hell, Rakestraw went back there, threw that mask off like Yogi Berra, and settled right under it.
"Perfect game."
"That was pretty cool," Woeltjen said of Rakestraw's game-ending play.
Perfect for Woeltjen, perfect for Rakestraw, perfect for Whatley who knew how to push the right buttons, and perfect for the Bulldogs. Against Georgia Tech, no less.
Moments after the final out was made, Woeltjen was on his teammates' shoulders, getting carried off the field. Simply perfect.
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
