BASEBALL DAILY REPORT : Maloney to Gardner: Forget Friday

Jim Maloney was at home in Fresno Friday night watching on ESPN as another Fresno resident, Mark Gardner of the Expos, pitched nine innings of no-hit ball against the Dodgers only to lose in the 10th.

“I know exactly how he feels,” Maloney said by phone Saturday. “He’ll never forget that night as long as he lives.”

Maloney remembers almost every detail about the game he pitched on June 14, 1965, for the Cincinnati Reds against the New York Mets.

“I had the best stuff of my career that night,” said Maloney, who held the Mets hitless through 10 innings but then lost, 1-0, when Johnny Lewis homered leading off the top of the 11th.

“I had struck out Johnny Lewis three times that night,” Maloney said. “After Lewis’ homer, Roy McMillan got an infield single much like the one (Lenny) Harris got off Gardner in the 10th. Then I got the side out.

“Billy Cowan, who is from Bakersfield, was in the Mets’ lineup that night, and he told me later that he went into the dugout after striking out and said, ‘You can just forget it tonight. We’re not going to hit this guy.’

“After the game, I thought I’d never have another night like that, that I’d never come that close to a no-hitter again. Actually, I guess it was a no-hitter, but with an asterisk.”

Two months and five days later, on Aug. 19, Maloney pitched a 10-inning no-hitter at Wrigley Field against the Cubs. The Reds won that one, 1-0, when Leo Cardenas homered in the top of the 10th.

“There were two outs when Cardenas, the eighth hitter, hit a ball that hit the left-field foul pole and bounced fair for a home run,” Maloney said. “I was in the on-deck circle.”

Maloney, who pitched 10 years for the Reds and one, 1971, for the Angels, had one other no-hitter, a 10-0 victory over Houston in 1969.

“That one was a no-brainer,” Maloney said.

Maloney said he followed Gardner’s career at Fresno State in the mid-1980’s, but he doesn’t recall meeting him. Gardner said Friday night that he met Maloney at a banquet in Fresno about four years ago.

What advice does Maloney have for Gardner? “I’d tell him to erase the memory of what happened Friday night,” Maloney said. “You never know when you’ll get another shot at a no-hitter. I would have never dreamed that barely two months later I’d get one.”