Out of all the pitching performances witnessed, Verlander’s no-hit has been the finest.
I can now scratch 'Score a No-Hitter' off my bucket list of sports experiences.
I've worked on a lot of telecasts - closing in on 2,700 is my best guesstimate - and have come achingly close to witnessing a handful of no-hitters over the years.
Justin Verlander's gem on Saturday, in which he throttled up the fastball as the afternoon turned into evening, averaging 99 mph over the final three innings, was the finest pitching performance I have ever witnessed.
It tops Roy Halladay's second career start, sullied only by Bobby Higginson's opposite field sliced dinger with two out in the ninth inning on the final day of the 1998 season. It topped Dustin McGowan taking a no-hit bid into the ninth inning only to lose it on a lead-off single by Colorado's Jeff Baker in June of 2007. And it also topped Brandon Morrow's 17-strikeout one-hitter last August when Rays' star third baseman Evan Longoria bounced a single into short that Aaron Hill couldn't corral, one out from joining Dave Stieb in the most exclusive pitching club in franchise history.
I also witnessed, as a fan, Stieb's second one-hitter in a row - both one out from immortality - at The Ex when Baltimore's Jim Traber blooped one over the head of big Fred McGriff in September 1988.
Stieb would finally get his elusive no-hitter two years later when he hung the zero on the Cleveland Indians. As luck would have, I did not see that game, nor hear anything about it until three days after the fact as I was away for the weekend at a cottage with no communication to the outside world.
Fast forward to Saturday.
Verlander was spot on from his first pitch. He went through the first three innings on just 31 pitches, with David Cooper's lazy fly to centre the only ball hit out of the infield. Between the three of us in the booth, each of us had the look that something special was at hand.
With Jose Bautista and Aaron Hill still a day away from returning to duty, the Jays really had no answer for the Tigers' ace. Their only shot at a hit was a liner back at him by Edwin Encarnacion that glanced off his arm before he scrambled to throw out EE.
Just 37 pitches to get through the Toronto line-up a second time, with not one ball hit out of the infield.
The final nine hitters never had a shot at a hit, with J.P. Arencibia's epic 12-pitch walk ending a perfect game bid with one out in the eighth. A double play removed the Jays' only runner of the afternoon.
With his fastball now hitting 100 on the gun, Verlander was forced to cool his heels in the dugout and back up the runway as the Tigers sent eight men to the play in the top of the ninth to open up a 9-0 lead. But he went right back out to induce a pair of easy outs before he struck out Rajai Davis with a slider, his 108 - and final- pitch of game. Well played, Verlander.
I guess, if I had to sit through the Jays getting no-no'd, I can stomach it at the hands of the Tigers. After all they were my team of my early teens before the Blue Jays first took flight. In fact, the only personalized jersey I owned was a classic home white with the stylized 'D', still one of the classiest in the history of the game. First Major League game I ever saw was at Tiger Stadium, in the magical 1976 season of 'The Bird'.
It was the beginning of my journey towards now. Justin Verlander's dominant no-hitter definitely high in the list of highlights this old dog has seen.
YEAR OF THE PITCHER ... PART DEUX
The end of the Steroid era has reset the balance in the game, with pitching and defence moving back into the spotlight, now that Manny Ramirez has moved into retirement.
It all started with Roy Halladay moving to the National League, pitching a regular season perfect game for the Phillies, followed by a post-season no-hitter. Part one ended with Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Brian Wilson helping hold the free-swinging Rangers to a .190 average in a five game World Series conquest. This season, the trend continues. Verlander's no-no comes four days after Minnesota's Francisco Liriano no-hit the lowly White Sox -with six walks driving up his final pitch count to 123 - despite coming into the game with the 110th ranked ERA in the Majors.
Marlins' stud right-hander Josh Johnson is one of five starters in the Majors with a sub-two ERA heading into Sunday's action. Just over five weeks into the season, Angels' righty Jered Weaver has six wins and is currently projected to win 28 games this season. Halladay, who else, heads a group of six pitchers to already win five. Cliff Lee, back in Philadelphia after a two-city tour of the A.L. West last season, was the first pitcher in baseball to hit the 60 strikeout plateau and is on a pace to 'K' over 290 hitters this season, a full hundred more than his career high of 185 a year ago. Then there's the rookie class, led by Seattle's Michael Pineda who holding opponents to .210 average while striking out hitters at slightly better than one an inning.
Seems like at least once a night there's a stellar pitching performance somewhere across the Majors. A good one sets up on Monday night at the Rogers Centre in the closer of a four-game weekend series against the Tigers, who send 5-0 Max Scherzer out against Jays' fireballer Brandon Morrow. As the late Billy Red Lyons would've said, "Don't Ya Dare Miss It!"
WHAT'S UP WITH BLUE?
Bad enough that Joe West and his crew made a fiasco of the middle game of last week's Jays/Rays game at Tropicana Field, ejecting both managers and B.J. Upton (who was suspended for a profanity-laced and equipment throwing outburst), then took their confrontational styling's to Fenway Park.
After a fake-to-third, throw-to-first pick-off by Tim Wakefield was called a balk by plate umpire Angel Hernandez, West stepped in between Hernandez and Red Sox manager Terry Francona and made physical contact with the skipper.
I guess West was trying to even the score, thinking back to 1988 when Reds' manager Pete Rose shoved umpire Dave Pallone not once, but twice, in a game at the end of April in 1988, for which Rose would be ejected and subsequently suspended and fined for 30 days and $10,000.
Also this week, Astros' outfielder Bill Hall was ejected a night before the Francona/West confrontation for arguing balls and then had to endure an aggressive and profane tongue lashing from umpire Tom Hallion. With the quality of the umpiring dropping while tempers are rising, the time has come for the Commissioner's Office to step and quell the anger before something a lot more physical than bumping occurs.
