Filling a Void in No-Hitter History : Richard Coberly Turned Frustation Into Inspiration for Book

Rich Coberly, a lifelong baseball fan, finished watching a no-hitter on television in 1984 and was dying. He went to the library only to find that there was nothing published on the topic. So he decided to write the book himself.

That is how Coberly, 43, came to write “The No-Hit Hall of Fame,” a look at every nine-inning no-hitter thrown in the major leagues since 1900.

The book was released in April and, helped by good reviews, is now in its second run after selling out all 5,000 copies of the first edition.

For Coberly, a resident of Newport Beach who is administrator of a community health clinic in Downey, the measure of fame and fortune is now his reward for more than 1,000 hours of research he put into the book from 1984-86.

“I never really totaled the hours of research because I thought it might frighten me,” Coberly said. “But I worked on it an average of four to five hours per day--and sometimes more--for over a year, so that’s at least 1,000 hours right there.”

The book credits virtually every major newspaper in the country, along with various city libraries and baseball team archives as sources. The work, including the hiring of researchers in other cities to dig up all the old newspapers on microfilm, wasn’t easy.

“I knew I was onto something good,” he said. “But occasionally it was frustrating because the newspapers and official box scores sometimes conflicted.

“On Rube Marquard’s no-hitter in 1915, for instance, the Brooklyn Eagle and New York Herald reported that Zack Wheat made the last out of the game by grounding out, but the New York Times said he struck out.”

Occasionally, however, Coberly did find a little nugget or two. During Boston Red Sox pitcher Howard Emkhe’s no-hitter against the Philadelphia Athletics in 1923, the A’s Bryan Slim Harris actually doubled to the left-field wall, but was called out on an appeal play for not touching first base, thus preserving the no-hitter.

Olympic great Jim Thorpe knocked in the winning run in the Cincinnati Reds’ 1-0 no-hitter against the Chicago Cubs in 1917.

According to Coberly, the inspiration for the book was based on his interest in baseball. “Don Larsen pitched his perfect game when I was a freshman at Camarillo High in 1956,” Coberly recalled. “They played all day games in the World Series then, so there was a real buzz going through the school that day: a perfect game in the World Series .”

In 1975, Coberly was in the stands at Anaheim Stadium when Nolan Ryan tied Sandy Koufax’s record of four no-hitters by beating the Baltimore Orioles.

He vividly recalls every pitch of the last inning and as a true trivia buff, points out that Ryan followed that game by no-hitting the Milwaukee Brewers for five innings in his next start before Hank Aaron finally broke it up.

The clincher came in 1984.

Coberly: “Two years ago, I was watching the no-hitter that Jack Morris (of Detroit) threw against the Chicago White Sox on TV. It was fascinating how, in the later innings, the no-hitter hung on every pitch he threw.

“So I went to look for a book on no-hitters after that, and checked the local bookstores, the library, everywhere, including the librarian at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and he’d never heard of any books like that, either.

“From there, it just looked like a good opportunity for me to fill the void, to pay tribute to the accomplishments of the Nolan Ryans, the Sandy Koufaxes.”

By December, 1985, the book was ready for publishing, so he formed Triple Play Publications in Newport Beach and hired a typesetter and printer, who had the 226-page book ready for its April release.

“I didn’t even think of going to a (traditional) publisher,” Coberly said. “I saw a writer on ’60 Minutes’ once who said she sent her manuscript to 17 or 18 publishers before the 19th one or so accepted it. I didn’t think I could take that much rejection.”