Quote:
Originally Posted by David W
2 others come to mind.
1972 Milt Pappas lost a perfect game with 2 outs in the 9th when Bruce Froemming called back to back borderline pitches balls. Pappas to this day thinks Froemming blew those calls. He did get the no hitter however.
1990 Andy Hawkins pitched a complete game no hitter, but only 8 innings as he lost the game on errors. The no hitter was taken from him by a later rule change that said no hitters had to be 9 innings. So he pitched a complete game with no hits, but it was not a no hitter????????? Very strange, and his game was struck from the record books.
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David,
I actually do own a ticket to both of the games that you mentioned in my collection. There are surprisingly a lot of near misses that were lost in the 9th inning. The subset of games that were lost beyond 9 innings is reasonably short. Many of these games occured in the early 1900's. Andy Hawkins was not the only modern pitcher to have this happen to him. On April 12, 1992 (Game 2) Boston's Matt Young did the same thing in Cleveland. Recently, the Angels' Jered Weaver and Jose' Arredondo combined for the same scenario vs. the Dodgers in LA on June 28, 2008...
BTW, the liklihood of losing a no-hitter or perfect game was much greater during the deadball era (prior to Ruth). Runs (especially) as well as hits came at more of a premium because the ball didn't travel as far. The other factor that influenced the number of (unofficial) no-hitters that didn't end up going a full 9 inings was the obvious lack of lights in baseball. Prior to 1934 baseball was always played in the daytime. When the sun went down the game was over, no matter how many innings were played....
