It only took a mere 54 years to stand between the first and the newest hitless, runless postseason pitching performance---by a pitcher who had already pitched a perfect game early in the regular season. Posted on 10/06/2010 5:53:02 PM PDT by BluesDuke
It only took a mere 54 years to stand between the first and the newest hitless, runless postseason pitching performance---by a pitcher who had already pitched a perfect game early in the regular season.
OK, so Roy Halladay Wednesday afternoon walked Jay Bruce---whose walkoff, leadoff bomb got the Cincinnati Reds here in the first place---on a full count with two out in the fifth. He didn't have to be reminded that nobody's perfect, if you didn't count that fine day in May when he cleaned, scaled, and stuffed the Florida Marlins on eleven strikeouts and no Fish getting to within ten fathoms of first base.
The man who went the longest among active pitchers with 324 appearances none of which had been in the postseason, until Game One of a National League division series, made maybe the most sensational postseason premiere in baseball history in beating the Reds, 4-0, at Citizens Bank. Forget the Doc Halladay stuff. Come Wednesday, Halladay was Doc Debakey---methodically scalpeling the heart right out of a Reds team that may yet prove to be in over their heads in the first place, and leaving no room for an artificial pump to stand in and recover the patient.
He didn't punch or swish anybody out in the first inning---he started by getting Brandon Phillips, the Reds' postgame answer to Cicero, to ground out to shortstop meekly enough, then continued by getting Orlando Cabrera to fly out to center and finished off by getting Joey Votto---at this writing all but popularly coronated as the National League's Most Valuable Player---to ground out to second.
Bad enough that the Reds couldn't solve Halladay when they stepped into the batter's box. They discovered the hard way that they couldn't solve him when he stepped into the batter's box, with two out and two on (Carlos Ruiz, four-pitch walk; Wilson Valdez, infield hit) in the bottom of the second and the Phillies already up, 1-0.
Halladay merely swatted Edinson Volquez's first service to left to send home Ruiz. A full-count walk to Jimmy Rollins later, he came home behind Valdez when Shane Victorino---whose RBI slice down the left field line in the first gave him everything he'd really need on the afternoon--- singled up the pipe, ending Volquez's afternoon early and abruptly.
The Reds' afternoon, alas, still had a long enough way to go with Halladay running the operating theater. He sawed through the Reds methodically enough, mixing eight strikeouts in with a diet of material the Reds could only whack into the ground, send on flights with Phillie gloves marked as their first and final destinations, and leave the Reds in postsurgical shock.
He threw 26 first-pitch strikes not counting first pitches that were hit, and only twice did any Red make contact on the first pitch, Phillips's game-opening grounder and Bruce's one-out bouncer right back to Halladay in the Cincinnati eighth. Only three un-hit first pitches from Halladay were balls, and the net results were an inning-ending line out to right (Travis Wood, in the third), an inning-ending fly out to right (Phillips, in the sixth), and a ground out to third (Votto, one out, in the seventh).
Unlike Larsen, who needed a sensational running catch by Mickey Mantle midway through to preserve his jewel, Halladay didn't really need any off-the-chart heroics from his defenders to finish what he started. About the only time the Reds got anything even smelling like a base hit in the making was in the top of the fourth, when Votto shot one deep enough in the hole at shortstop and Jimmy Rollins went just as deep before whipping a throw to first that would have thrown a bullet right through a horsefly perched on a hitching post.
Well, the Reds did have another close moment, when Wood, who relieved Volquez, hit a sinking line drive to right in the Cincinnati third that Jayson Werth handled as if he'd been doing it for instructional films for years.
The difference between Halladay and Volquez were glaring as the game got underway. For a fellow who'd never gotten anything close to even a whiff of postseason play labouring all those years for the Toronto Blue Jays, Halladay hit the mound as though it had his name on it. Volquez, by contrast, looked like a rookie from the outset, tugging his cap and dreadlocks, taking breaths deeper than normal, and fidgeting just enough that Reds catcher Ramon Hernandez had to motion visibly to one and all for Volquez to calm down.
The Bank broke in the ninth when Halladay took the mound to finish what he'd started. "Let's Go Doc!" rang around the yard almost from the moment he started his warmups to the minute he got Phillips to tap meekly in front of the place, with room enough for Ruiz to jump all over the ball and throw Phillips out by about the length of a small conversion van.
At which point Ruiz played Yogi Berra to Halladay's almost-Larsen, jumping into the pitcher's arms, though resisting the temptation to which Berra succumbed and not throwing a bear hug all the way around Halladay.
He didn't have to. It took a mere three decades plus for Halladay to stake the Phillies to a little vengeance for what the Big Red Machine did to them in the 1976 National League Championship Series.
That was then, this was Wednesday afternoon. And in joining Johnny Vander Meer, Allie Reynolds, Virgil Trucks, and Nolan Ryan as the only men to pitch two no-hitters in the same year, this doctor turned a different team of Reds---a young team with plenty of heart and little much more experience in this sort of operating theater---into the Little Red Tinkertoy.
An amazing day for a guy who cracked up so bad in his second season in the league that he looked to be another Rick Ankiel - 10.64 era and a banishment to the minors later, he has returned as one of the most quietly dominant pitchers of the last decade.
Great writin’, Duke! Enjoyed immensely!
Great performance. It will either make the Reds shrivel up and die in three games or get them psyched to win the rest of the series. The Reds are young so I expect the former. How embarrassing to make your first postseason appearance in 15 years and get a no-hitter thrown at you right out of the gate! It’s like when you finally make the Super Bowl and your QB’s first pass is picked off and run back for a touchdown. Very demoralizing.
That was the greatest-pitched game I’ve ever seen, or ever will see. Roy was completely dominant.
An amazing day for a guy who cracked up so bad in his second season in the league that he looked to be another Rick Ankiel - 10.64 era and a banishment to the minors later, he has returned as one of the most quietly dominant pitchers of the last decade.The funny thing of that 10.64 ERA season is that Halladay even then was throwing strikes. He only had a couple of games in which half or less of his pitches were strikes. The trouble seemed to be that he was making the strikes too good. He seems to have learned in that minor league banishment how to correct that problem and, though it took him the rest of the major league season to apply it consistently, that was just about the last time you could call him a case of raw talent with ordinary-to-appalling results.
That was the greatest-pitched game I’ve ever seen, or ever will see. Roy was completely dominant.This will probably betray my age, but Sandy Koufax's 1965 perfect game---for his 22nd win of the season, and down the stretch of a hammer-and-tongs pennant race against the Giants--- was better, including his striking out the final six he faced and (I don't know if you'll ever see this again, in either of our lifetimes) the entire game featuring only one hit . . . and a hit that didn't factor in the game's only run. (The only run scored on a walk, a steal, a sacrifice, and a throwing error, in an inning other than the one in which the only hit, by Dodger outfielder Lou Johnson, left him stranded otherwise.)
Wasn't around for that one, but I've seen a few in my 32 years (sadly, never one in person though). The one most fresh in my mind is Halladay's perfect game earlier this year, and I thought his stuff was far better tonight.
I thought his changeup today was a lot better than the one he threw in his perfecto. Today’s changeup looked like it was whomping the big black cloak in front of it while shifting on its way to the plate. The Reds couldn’t hit it decently if they’d been swinging garage doors, it was that good.
Awesome performance. Go Phillies!!
We in Toronto are not surprised. We have known Doc for quite a while now. He was very classy when he left Toronto taking out a full page ad in the papers to thank the fans while he was here. I don’t keep a lot of trinkets but I do have one his bobbleheads commemorating his 03 Cy Young.
Even classier-—Halladay could have pulled down almost twice the money he got from the Phillies to go elsewhere, but he actually wanted to go to the Phillies if the Jays weren’t going to keep him. And jeez did he prove it bigtime! (I wish he’d gone to my Mets, his pitching style and repertoire would have been perfect in that new ballpark of theirs, he’s tough to hit straightaway and not too easy to pull, so he’d have been a perfect fit there . . . )
I wish today's sports writers had this eloquence. Excellent read, thanks.
I wish today's sports writers had this eloquence. Excellent read, thanks.I only wish I had the eloquence of the genuine greats of the genre---Roger Angell (he isn't baseball's Homer, Homer was ancient Greece's Roger Angell), Thomas Boswell, Jim Murray, Red Smith, William Nack, W.C. Heinz, Shirley Povich . . . (Boswell, Smith, Murray, and Povich were the best newspaper baseball writers I ever read; Angell, Heinz, and Nack are the best of the magazine scribes . . .)
And that might be the most astonishing part of all. I never thought I'd see the day that would happen.
And that might be the most astonishing part of all. I never thought I'd see the day that would happen.Indeed. Once upon a time, players receiving contract offers from the Phillies or the Indians or certain other clubs---or being traded to those clubs---reacted as did Leon (Daddy Wags) Wagner, when the old Los Angeles Angels swapped him to the Cleveland Indians: What did I do to deserve this?!?
Of course, during the 1980s, when George Steinbrenner's (RIP) act really got out of whack, players involved in trades or trade rumours sending them to the Yankees often asked the same question . . .
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