As baseball continues to wait things out along with the rest of the sports world, TSN digs into the archives to bring you a bundle of classic Montreal Expos games. Relive some of the best memories from the 36-year history of Canada’s first Major League franchise right here on TSN. On tap for today? The Expos find themselves on the wrong side of things as David Cone throws the 16th perfect game in MLB history in July of 1999.

Consider how hard it is to throw a perfect game in the majors. At any given time, an average big-league hitter has about a one-in-four chance of getting a base hit. Factor in walks, hit-by-pitches or reaching on an error and the chance of a hitter reaching base increases to about one-in-three. And then there’s the matter of having to face 27 hitters – assuming your team scores at least one run – while maintaining a pitch count low enough to stay in the game.

Maybe that’s why there’s only been 23 of them in MLB history. A pitcher doesn’t just have to have his good stuff and get some nice plays made behind him – they have to get lucky. All in all, the stars need to align for a big-league starter to achieve perfection.

On the afternoon of July 18, 1999, they did.

Relive David Cone’s perfect game – the 16th in MLB history – against the Montreal Expos tonight on TSN4, TSN.ca and TSN Direct at 8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT.

New York Yankees starter David Cone was coming off a rough outing in his last start before the All-Star Break but was having a pretty good season overall. His team was, too, as the Yankees sat in first place at 53-36 just months removed from winning a World Series title the season before.

On the other hand, 1999 was going anything but well for the Expos. Already on their way to a fourth-consecutive losing season, Montreal entered the series-opener at Yankee Stadium losers of five straight with a record 21 games below .500.

It was as good an afternoon as any for the performance Cone was about to turn in. Not only were 40,000-plus in attendance, it was Yogi Berra Day in the Bronx. Berra had not been back to Yankee Stadium since his firing as the team’s manager in 1985. Naturally, Berra was behind the plate to catch the ceremonial first pitch, which was thrown by none other than Don Larsen – who threw the postseason’s only perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

When the festivities ended, Cone took the mound in the first inning but his bid at perfection almost ended before it even got started. After a strikeout to start the game, No. 2 hitter Terry Jones scorched one into the right centre field gap that looked like extra bases off the bat. Right-fielder Paul O’Neill got a bit of a late jump but ran it down and dove to make a fabulous catch for the second out. Two innings later, Cone faced another threat, this time from Mother Nature.

With New York’s Tino Martinez at the plate in the bottom of the third inning and the Yankees leading 5-0, the skies opened up and umpires sent both teams back to their dugouts. Rain delays of any significant length of time are often the end of a pitcher’s start as prolonged breaks not only throw off a pitcher’s timing, but their warmup process as well. Luckily for Cone the system passed quickly and the game resumed after a 33-minute stoppage.

From then on, he was locked in.

Cone retired the Expos on seven pitches in the fourth, 11 in the fifth and only needed five in the sixth. He got a scare leading off the seventh when the speedy Wilton Guerrero chopped one to the hole between short and third. Except third baseman Scott Brosius was cheating in a bit to account for Guerrero’s speed and cut the ball off before it got too deep in the hole and fired a strike to first, getting Guerrero by half a step. If the ball got past Brosius it would have been an extremely tough play for Derek Jeter at short.

Cone’s perfecto was once again in jeopardy with one out in the eighth when Jose Video hit one hard on the ground up the middle. Yankees second baseman Chuck Knoblauch made a nice play to get to it but that was only half the battle. While effective throughout his career with the bat, Knoblauch was dealing with a throwing issue at the time that made it difficult for him to complete simple throws from second over to first base.

Not this time.

Knoblauch planted and threw a seed over to Tino Martinez at first for out No. 2. Cone then got Brad Fullmer looking to end the frame and bring him within three outs of immortality.

After a swinging strikeout to start the top of the ninth, Mother Nature would come into play once again, only this time in the opposite way. Montreal’s Ryan McGuire sent a shallow fly ball to left field where Ricky Ledee came in to make the catch. Except when he put his glove up, he appeared to lose the ball in the sun. Ledee turned his wrist over at the last second and the ball somehow found the webbing of hit mitt to bring Cone within one out. He didn’t show much emotion on the mound but later said his adrenaline was so intense in that moment he thought he could feel his own hair growing.

Facing Orlando Cabrera on a 1-1 count, Cone hung a slider but got it just far enough on the outside edge that Cabrera was unable to get much wood on it, popping it straight up in the air in foul territory near third base. As many tough plays as the Yankees had to make behind Cone that day, this wasn’t one of them. The celebration started as soon as the ball went up in the air and when Brosius made the catch to end the ballgame, pandemonium ensued.

The Yankees jumped on Cone and eventually carried him off the mound as over 40,000 fans roared for their new hero. Don Larsen, still in the stands after throwing his perfect game 43 years earlier, was one of them.

"Usually, I'm gone after three or four innings, with something to do," Larsen told MLB.com. "As time went on, they made [me and Yogi Berra] stay. We both stayed and watched him do his marvelous performance."

"I didn’t know whether to stay on the field, tip my hat … how long do I stay out there, do I take a victory lap? All these things are going through your mind. You end up just kind of going with the flow. It really is kind of a surreal moment, and it goes by like a blur," Cone told the New York Post.

TSN’s run through Expos history continues Sunday night with the ‘Tim Raines Game’ against the New York Mets in May of 1987.