The Homer Bailey No-Hitter

One of baseball's great cliches is that every time you go to a ball game, you might see something that you have never seen before, and tonight that was fulfilled as Marilyn and I watched the Reds' Homer Bailey throw a no-hitter against the Pirates.  There you see the evidence above - my score sheet and game ticket.  I saw my first Pirate game in 1959, and now, 53 years later, I have for the very first time witnessed a no-hitter.

Funny thing is that after the way this Pirates season has been concluding, and after some dicey looking skies this afternoon, it would not have taken a whole lot to make me skip going to this ball game tonight.  Also, I was strongly considering not bothering to take a score sheet along, but at the last minute I thought, what the hell, score the game.

I never consider the possibility of a no-hitter until the pitcher gets through the fourth inning, so when the Bucs went down 1-2-3 in the fourth, I began thinking of what might happen.  And as 1-2-3 inning followed 1-2-3 inning (Bailey only faced 28 batters tonight)  the tension, in my mind, anyway, began to mount.  I say "in my mind" because I never had the sense that the crowd was aware of what was taking place, and I was astonished to see people actually leaving the ball park in the seventh and eighth innings.

The fact that the score was only 1-0 made the crowd still root for a Pirate rally in the ninth, especially after the "hoist the colors" clip on the scoreboard before the inning began, and no doubt lessened the crowd's eagerness for Bailey to pull it off.  I wonder how the crowd would have been if the score was, say 7-0?  Anyway, once pinch hitter Michael McHenry flied to left for the second out leaving Alex Presley as the Bucs' last hope, I think at that point, the crowd began rooting for Bailey.  When Presley hit his pop up that second baseman Brandon Phillips would catch, I watched Bailey on the mound raise his arms, and it was neat to see the Reds' players, dugout, and bullpen mob him on the mound.  The PNC crowd also gave Bailey an appropriate tribute of cheers and applause when it was over, which was nice.

Lost in all of this was that this was that A.J. Burnett pitched a terrific game himself, one run in eight innings, in a losing effort, and that this was the Pirates 81st loss, so there will be no winning season in 2012.

Two months ago, we were looking at the schedule and thinking how important and dynamic this series with the Reds might be.  Well, it didn't turn out that way, but I am sure glad that I was in attendance tonight anyway.