James Paul David "Jim" Bunning was born on October 23, 1931 in Southgate, Kentucky. Jim Bunning graduated from Saint Xavier High School in Cincinnati in 1945 and later received a bachelor's degree in economics from Xavier University.
His first game as a major league pitcher was on July 20, 1955. For the 1955 to 1963 seasons, he pitched for the Detroit Tigers, moving to the Philadelphia Phillies from 1964 through 1967, to the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1968 through the middle of the 1969 season (finishing the 1969 season on the Los Angeles Dodgers), and back to the Phillies, where he closed his career in 1970 and 1971. He wore uniform number 15 on the 1955 Tigers, switched to 14 in 1956, which was the number he wore for the Tigers, Phillies, and Pirates until he was traded to the Dodgers in 1969. For the Dodgers, he wore number 17, but returned to number 14 on being returned to the Phillies.
Bunning pitched his first no-hitter on July 20, 1958 for the Detroit Tigers against the Boston Red Sox. His second was a perfect game, which came against the New York Mets on June 21, 1964. He is one of only five players to throw a no-hitter in different leagues. He played in the All-Star Games in 1957, 1959, every year from 1961 through 1964, and in 1966. In 1996 he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
First elected to office in 1977, the ambitious Bunning would serve only two years on the city council of Fort Thomas, Kentucky before running for and winning a seat in the Kentucky State Senate, where he served from from 1979 to 1983. The Republican nominee for Governor of Kentucky in 1983, Bunning was defeated by the incumbent Democratic Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky Martha Layne Collins, but four years later Bunning was successful in his race for the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until 1998. That year he was elected by a very narrow margin to the United States Senate over Congressman Scotty Baesler. In 2004 Bunning won re-election to a second term in an unexpectedly close race against state senator Daniel Mongiardo.
