‘Phillies Extra’ Q&A: Tom McCarthy recounts calling Roy Halladay’s 2010 perfect game

Where were you when Roy Halladay threw a perfect game?

Here’s a guess: You probably didn’t plan on watching every pitch that night. Not only were the Phillies on the road in Miami, but it was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and the Flyers were in the Stanley Cup Final.

“If I recall correctly,” longtime Phillies television play-by-play announcer Tom McCarthy said, “the ratings got higher as the Flyers game wound down and this was happening.”

Well, sure. Everyone wants to witness history, and Halladay made history on May 29, 2010, by throwing only the 20th perfect game. He retired 27 consecutive Marlins batters on 115 pitches, the masterpiece of his Hall of Fame career.

» READ MORE: From 2020: Roy Halladay’s perfect game lives on with the Phillies, Marlins, and so many others who were there

McCarthy still considers it “No. 1″ on his list of calls after nearly two decades in the Phillies’ broadcast booth. He even has his scorecard — autographed by the late Halladay — framed on the wall in his office.

To mark the anniversary of Halladay’s perfection, we rewatched the game, then invited McCarthy to join Phillies Extra, the baseball show from The Inquirer, to relive it. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation, which has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Watch the full interview below and subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

A: Honestly, it’s No. 1 for me only because there were only 20 [perfect games] at the time. It was a remarkable feat. And it was one of those things where, as a young TV broadcaster — I’d always done radio — you’re trying to make sure that you tell the story. But the adrenaline rush in the eighth and ninth inning was just unbelievable. Because you just didn’t want to screw it up, first of all. But it was so exciting to be part of it. It was a 1-0 game. And quite frankly, Josh Johnson had no-hit stuff for the Marlins. So it made it even better.

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So, yeah, I’ve told people when they ask me, I say it’s probably No. 1. I’ve had some basketball calls — Princeton knocking off UCLA in Pete Carril’s last year was pretty incredible. That was my first NCAA Tournament. St. Joseph’s going to the Elite Eight with Jameer Nelson was pretty incredible, too. Tom Glavine’s 300th win. There were so many moments that I try to catalog, but that’s the biggest one because it was such great baseball theater and history. And he was such a phenomenal athlete, too.

A: Well, I do think that the attention of a lot of the Philadelphia fans was on what was going on with the Flyers. There was no doubt. Because if I recall correctly, if you go back, the ratings for this game got higher as the Flyers game wound down and this was happening. We always know that the Phillies draw well from a ratings standpoint, but it was playoff hockey, so it was something that was really important to the city of Philadelphia. And rightfully so. We were keeping an eye on what was going on, not really divulging what the score was, because I know people even back then in 2010 recorded games and sometimes watched both. So you didn’t want to give out too much of the information. But we did recognize that the Flyers were rolling and were on that day.

But I know that I was excited about the [pitching] matchup because, in my mind, Josh was going to be Roy Halladay down the road at some point. He was that good of a pitcher. And it was fast. It was moving. That game was flying by. And I remember that part of it, too, and I’m thinking — and this is before the pitch timer, obviously — I’m thinking, this is going to be like a Carlton-Gibson matchup back in the day.

A: It’s a great question. And I’ve always talked to young broadcasters about this: I was taught by Harry [Kalas] and Ernie Harwell and Vin Scully that you have to tell the story, particularly on radio. Now, TV is a little different because you have the [score] bug that comes up after every inning. So you see the big zero under hits. … I had done, I think, about five no-hitters previously in the minor leagues. The Kevin Millwood one [in 2003], which I was part of the pre- and postgame show at the time. But this game kind of taught me that I do have a sequence. And I’ve tinkered with it even since this game. So, through five, I still didn’t say it was perfect. In fact, I don’t think it was until the seventh inning I might have said that it was perfect.

» READ MORE: ‘With all the vim of a washerwoman’: How The Inquirer covered all 14 Phillies no-hitters, dating back to 1885

But anyway, I try to [say] — because I still think it’s early; yeah, he’s through five, he hasn’t allowed a hit, but he’s through five — ‘He’s retired all 15,’ something like that, so people kind of get an idea of what the deal is. But that game taught me a formula. Through four, saying a ‘no-hitter,’ eh, it’s not that big of a deal. Through five, all right, ‘We’re through five, he hasn’t allowed a hit yet.’ It’s not that you harp on it. You really do have to tell the story. And I think that’s kind of what we tried to do there without harping on it with, ‘Hey, he hasn’t allowed a baserunner yet. Hey, it’s perfect.’ Because what’s happening on the field is the story. It’s not whether I’m going to express it, but it’s how I express it.

And I kind of felt the adrenaline start to build as we got deeper into that game. I hope that makes sense. But it did teach me a lot because it reinforced that I always say it, particularly if it’s through six innings: ‘He hasn’t allowed a hit through six. He still has a no-hitter into the seventh,’ that type of thing. We have no control over it except for the perception of it. But I still think we have to tell the story.

A: And I’m shaking, by the way. Like, it was weird. I looked at my hand at one point and I’m thinking, ‘Oh boy, like, this is why I’ve gotten into broadcasting,’ because it was the closest thing to being a player. Like that adrenaline rush of being a player.

A: … I didn’t write anything down — and I never do. I do remember thinking to myself, ‘Twentieth perfect game. Second in Phillies history. Make sure that you’re descriptive of this call. Because it’s a gift to the Phillies fans, but it’s also a gift to Roy, honestly, because this is special for him.’ And then I thought to myself, ‘OK, I’m two years into doing TV full-time. I’m going to do this like I do a radio game.’

So, if you hear it, it’s way more descriptive than it normally would be. And I think I did that for comfort level for myself so I didn’t screw it up, if that makes any sense at all. Because, again, I was a radio guy who came back to the Phillies to do TV in 2008 and did three innings of play-by-play. Still did a majority of my stuff on TV for basketball and football. And then in 2009, when Harry passed, I took over the full-time gig, but I still feel like I’m a radio guy at heart. And that’s kind of what I thought. I said to myself, ‘Don’t screw it up and be as descriptive as you possibly can. Be overly descriptive than you possibly can.’

A: I had him sign the scorecard at the bottom. And I asked him first if he would do it, he went, ‘Yeah.’ I’m kind of getting choked up a little bit … And he was looking at my scorebook — because at that point I had a book; now I do it on my iPad, it’s amazing how technology’s changed — and he’s like looking at all the things that I wrote, all the notes I wrote, the different color pens. And I’ll be honest with you, we didn’t have a warm and fuzzy relationship with him because he was so workmanlike. It was all about pitching. He was always genuine if you asked him a question, but he always had something else going on that he was like, ‘I’ve got to go work out. I got to do this. I got to do that.’ But that was probably the one time that he let his guard down. Because we talked the next day on TV, we did an interview on TV, and I think he appreciated the fact that I brought in [Carlos] Ruiz a lot and his teammates and didn’t always talk about him.

For more from McCarthy, including his favorite memories from Halladay’s perfect game, watch the entire interview here.