Monday, September 03, 2007

Two No-Hitters



I have been going to MLB games since 1980 or 1981. Let's say I have been to an average of 5 games every season, and let's say it's 27 seasons. That's 135 games total.

The odds are very low to have seen one no-hitter out of 135 games.

But now, I have seen TWO.

It's well documented that I am from New York originally. The Yankees are my team. I try to put it into perspective with Sox fans who live here and question my allegiance to them while living in Boston. I ask them if they would suddenly become fans of the Yankees if they moved to New york, and then usually it makes sense to them.

I gotta admit, six innings into the game, 8-0 Sox, no-hitter brewing, I absolutely became a fan of the game over a fan of any particular team. Three innings of yelling and screaming for the no-hitter did indeed coincide with cheering for the Sox to win, but truly I just waned to no-hitter. I pledged that if hit #1 came, I'd be done aligning myself with the rest of the crowd there.


But it never came, and it was awfully fun to witness history and to be cheering along with everyone else at Fenway (for me, that NEVER happens).
The other no hitter I witnessed was back in 1997 in Pittsburgh when the Pirates still played in Three Rivers Stadium.
It was fireworks night, they had an extremely rare sellout crowd (we scalped tickets), and the Pirates needed 10 innings before they put up any runs. But when they did, the place went crazy. Two pitchers combined for the no-no, but Francisco Cordova indeed pitched the full nine innings of the regular game. The Pirates just could not score a run to support the effort. It was bizarre. Finally a walk-off three-tun homer in the bottom of the 10th sealed the no-hitter.

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