August 19, 1982. The Braves had opened the season 13-0 and led the NL West comfortably into July, and then dropped 19 of 21 games and watched the whole thing evaporate. Pascual Perez, 25 years old, recently arrived from Pittsburgh, was scheduled to start that night against Montreal. He had picked up his Georgia driver's license that same day.
His roommates told him to take I-285 to I-20 and get off at the stadium. He got on I-285, which locals call the Perimeter because it is a 64-mile ring around the entire city, and he missed his exit. Rather than panic, he reasoned correctly that a loop returns you to where you started. So he kept going. Then he missed it again. Accounts differ on whether he made two laps or three. Either way it was somewhere around 150 miles of Atlanta beltway.
Low on fuel and without his wallet, he pulled into a filling station where the attendant recognized him and wanted to know why he was not at the ballpark. He finally walked into the clubhouse right around first pitch and was fined $100.
Phil Niekro took the start instead and won it 5-4, which ended the losing streak. His teammates hung a map of Atlanta in his locker and made him a warmup jacket with I-285 across the back. The Braves won 12 of their next 14 and took the division. Joe Torre, asked later what turned the season, did not credit a lineup change or a pitching adjustment. He said it was Pascual Perez getting lost, and that it lightened the mood.
Worth saying plainly: he could really pitch. All-Star in 1983 at 15-8, back to back double-digit win seasons, an eephus curve he would drop in for fun and finger guns for the hitter after a strikeout. He sprinted to and from the dugout every inning because he felt like it. In 2012 he was killed during a robbery at his home in the Dominican Republic. He was 55, and he had never come back for a single Braves reunion. Niekro, hearing the news, said he had not known whether Perez was even still out there, and that he would have liked to see him again.
