No-Hitters Usually Are Flashes in the Pan

The thing about a no-hitter is, they’re like streetcars. Right! If you miss one, there’ll be another one along in a few minutes.

Baseball must feel like Custer when he said, “Did you ever see so many Indians in your life?” Baseball must wonder when the no-hitters are going to stop.

Guys are pitching no-hitters the same day. They pitched five no-hitters in one month, June. They come in all sizes. Six-inning no-hitters. Losing-game no-hitters. We’ve had no-hitters pitched by brothers, consecutive no-hitters and no-hitters fashioned by as many as three pitchers in the same game.

The other thing about no-hitters is that they’re like holes-in-one in golf. You don’t need any particular talent to get one. Cy Young won 511 games, but only two were no-hitters. Walter Johnson had it worse. He won 416 games, but only one was a no-hitter.

Nolan Ryan has pitched six no-hitters, and that’s altogether fitting. Sandy Koufax pitched four no-hitters, and no one will quarrel with that. Bob Feller had three.

But no-hitters are not the stock-in-trade of the great and the near-great. No-hitters are pitched by nobodies, for the most part.

I guess the typical no-hit pitcher was Bobo Holloman. Bobo Holloman pitched a no-hit game in his first major league start. It was the only complete game he was ever to pitch in the major leagues. He only won two other games. He started 10 and lost eight. Bobo had good stuff. Unfortunately, he drank it. I was in the magazine dodge in those days, and we sent a colleague, Eddie Rees, to St. Louis to interview this phenom. He never got to. Bobo showed up drunk for breakfast. Bobo showed up drunk for lunch. And for good measure, for a postgame meeting at a hotel, Bobo showed up falling out of the elevator. He was out of baseball forever in weeks.

Bobo was the biggest nobody to throw a no-hitter but not the only one. You would think the no-hit roster would read like a Who’s-Who. It reads like a Who’s-That?

Johnny Vander Meer is the only major leaguer to pitch consecutive no-hitters. So, he’s one of the elite of the game, right? Johnny’s lifetime record: 119-121.

You look down the no-hit roster, and sandwiched between all the Ryans and Koufaxes and Fellers are such household names as Dick Bosman, Tom Phoebus, Ed Head, George Culver, Ed Halicki.

You ever heard of Mike Warren? Well, Mike threw a no-hitter seven years ago for the Oakland A’s against the Chicago White Sox. That shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was Mike’s fifth victory of the year and, since it came on Sept. 29, his last. That was more games than Mike was to win the rest of his career as he drifted to 3-6 and 1-4 and out of the game.

Dizzy Dean never threw a no-hitter. But his brother Paul did. That right there is almost all you need to know about no-hitters as a fact of baseball life. Dizzy was 100 lifetime victories ahead of his brother and, at that, his own career was shortened by injury. Dizzy was miffed when his brother pitched a no-hitter in the second game of a doubleheader in which Diz pitched the first game. “I wish I’da known Paul was goin’ to pitch a no-hitter. I’da pitched one, too,” Diz sniffed. He had pitched a three-hitter.

Don Drysdale never pitched a no-hitter. But Bill Stoneman did. The only quibble with that is, Drysdale won 209 lifetime games, Stoneman 50. Big D’s ERA was 2.95, Stoneman’s was 4.08.

Once, Gaylord Perry, who won 314 games, 12th on the all-time list, pitched a no-hitter for the Giants. The next afternoon, in the same ballpark (Candlestick), Ray Washburn of the Cardinals, who was to have 72 lifetime victories, threw another no-hitter.

The last (solo) no-hitter pitched in the American League before Randy Johnson’s this season was by Juan Nieves of Milwaukee (against Baltimore) in 1987. Juan was pitching in the American Assn., at Denver, when last seen.

The late, luckless Don Wilson was an in-and-out pitcher for Houston for nine years. He scratched out a lackluster 104-92 record. But he threw two no-hitters. He pitched one of them the day after Jim Maloney of the Reds had no-hit his team.

Harvey Haddix is widely held to be the most star-crossed of the no-hit pitchers. Harvey threw 12 innings of perfect baseball--no baserunner reached first base on anything, walk, error, hit-by-pitch--only to lose the game in the 13th to a guy, Lew Burdette, who was pitching a 12-hit shutout.

But Maloney has a strong case. He pitched two no-hitters in 1965 and only won one of them. What’s more, they both went extra innings. He lost one in the 11th inning, won the other in 10 innings. He had a third no-hitter in 1969.

A great dust-up was raised this year when the Yankees’ Andy Hawkins lost a no-hit game because of errors. But losing no-hit games are no novelty. Bobo Newsom won 211 games in his career. But he lost 222. And one of his losses was a 9 2/3-inning no-hitter, in which he had given up no hits but a run (to an error), when the Boston Red Sox beat him in the 10th with a ground ball that hopped off the shortstop’s (appropriately named Strange) glove.

There have been 212 no-hitters pitched in major league history, including some when the distance to home plate was only 50 feet. But the no-hitters belong to the nonentities. The Dave Moreheads (lifetime record 40-64), the Bill Dietrichs (108-128), the Jack Kralicks (67-65), Don Cardwells (102-138), Bob Keegans (40-36), Joe Cowleys (33-25).

Melido Perez’s was an absolutely perfect profile for a no-hit pitcher when he faced the Yankees Thursday night--lifetime record 31-32, lifetime ERA 4.47. Not many people outside of Chicago had ever heard of him. Few knew Pascual Perez had a brother, much less one in the big leagues.

But does his six-inning no-hitter constitute a real no-hitter? Well, it’s an official game. There have been about 34 no-hit games that went fewer than nine innings. Mike McCormick holds a no-hit game record for a five-inning complete game even though he gave up a single in the sixth (it was wiped out by rain, and the game reverted to the previous inning).

No-hitters are as bewildering as the people who throw them. If Melido Perez’s “no-hitter” counts, so should one thrown for seven innings by Walter Johnson in 1924.

It’s a freak. But what about no-hitters isn’t? If four innings of no-hit ball went into the record books, there would probably be 9,000 no-hit pitchers in the game. As of now, the Perez brothers have two “official” no-hit games between them--even though their total innings would not equal one of Harvey Haddix’s. Baseball, like life, isn’t fair, and no-hit games are the unfairest of all. The Perezes each have a no-hit victory on their record with a total of 11 innings. Harvey has a 12 2/3-inning loss. Someone should sue.