OT: Justin Verlander 3rd No-Hitter
 

Justin Verlander threw his third career no-hitter today. All-time list is:

Nolan Ryan 7
Sandy Koufax 4
Larry Corcoran 3
Cy Young 3
Bob Feller 3
Justin Verlander 3

He's a sure HOFer, no doubt.

I think he was before this, but it is weird how he started to falter around 30 only to re-become a dominant power pitcher. Let's put it this way, if Kershaw has a second act like Verlander's he will go down as the greatest of all time.

Pitching with a team as strong as the Astros may just have given him a second life.

Never saw a guy come out for the 9th inning of a no no and act so freakin relaxed. Seemed to be zero stress. Strong mental game in addition to physical Gifts.

I think it was shoulder trouble that he finally found a treatment for, if I remember correctly. A gifted physical therapist discovered that his shoulder problem was just a symptom of an overall lack of flexibility and he rehabilitated himself.

Was he the one who lost a perfect game on the last out because of a terrible blown call at first? Or am I thinking of someone else?

No, someone else.

Jesse, wrong Tiger. Not going to remember his name without looking it up but it was basically a guy who never panned out and that was his one moment of greatness stolen from him.

Just googled it. Galarraga. Considering the situation that was perhaps one of the top 3 or 4 worst calls in sports history.

Awesome achievement by Verlander though.

Maybe it's that ugly wife he has to go home to :D

Armando Galarraga and the ump who blew the call, Jim Joyce, wrote a book about that game, “Nobody’s Perfect”.

Nobody's Perfect: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802119883..._MceBDbGNZA1DK

Charles White scoring what turned out to be the winning TD in the 1979 Rose Bowl -- without the football which he had fumbled -- may be the worst.

THAT would certainly relax me!...after a while, anyway...:cool:

Not to under-appreciate Verlander's achievement, but luck and randomness contribute, to some extent, to throwing a no-hitter.

I, my own self (think Dan Jenkins), threw two in the local semi-pro league - but I also threw two (consecutive) one-hitters and there was much more skill involved in those. The no-no's weren't even shutouts...and, in the second one, my team scored in bottom of the ninth to just to win the game.

Now, again, I'll state that Verlander's effort was masterful and one of the very best pitched games - maybe EVER...but lady luck and Roger Random do play too.

The list of 3+ No hit pitchers doesn't look much like guys who got lucky. While there is luck involved in any individual no-hitter, all the luck in the world won't get you there without a LOT of skill, and the skill factor goes up, probably exponentially, with each subsequent no-no. Especially in the majors.

Larry Corcoran was very much the Sandy Koufax of his day. He didn't struggle at the beginning of his career, but was washed up by 26.

Even the list of two no hitter pitchers only has a couple of "Average" guys on it.

20 strikeouts, on the other hand, is all on the pitcher. Total dominance.

Ryan also lost 5 no hitters in the 9th, along with the 7 he finished off. I guess he was the luckiest pitcher of all time?

I think people are missing Raymond's point. Any given no hitter clearly has some luck in it. That's all he is saying.

Joyce made the bad call on Armando Galarraga in the days before replay was instituted. Today he would have had the call overturned and been credited with the perfect game.

True, but as Scott mentioned that doesn't really apply here. I'm sure pitchers have gotten lucky, or been in the zone for a night. Most no hitters probably had a couple close calls or great defensive plays. Maybe what could have been a hit was scored an error. But the guys on that short list didn't just get lucky 3 or more times.

Agreed. Indeed if any of Ryan's one hitters was broken up by a cheap hit, you could call him unlucky.

Dave Stieb might've been the unluckiest pitcher of all time. He could've quite conceivably been on this list. My brother and I have a phrase we use a lot when talking about pitchers that applies to Stieb...

...and he was a better pitcher than Jack Morris.

Stieb lost back to back no-no's BOTH with 2 outs in the ninth. That's how close someone came to Vander Meer

Remember that travesty of a result for Armando.

Without instant replay at the time, I propose instituting distant replay and review the play today and make necessary corrections.;)

Thanks...that is what I was saying...

FYI- I also had a 21K game

- of course, before I became a pitcher, I set what I believe is still the Pony League record for consecutive strikeouts - as a batter...also 21.

I ran across a post on the web from 2016 that MLB was going to award Galarraga the perfect game, yet it still does appear in the listings that I see for perfect games...what gives?


http://www.baseballessential.com/new...ndo-galarraga/

Brian

It was 0-0 for 8 innings. Thank goodness the Stros put across two runs in the top of the ninth for Verlander.

Also, the only walk he gave up came on the second batter of the game. That's a lot of domination for the rest of the game.

One of my favorite players!

Not trimmed or altered in any way, I pulled these from my own sets I bought in 2005 and sent them to PSA.

Longevity coupled with dominance puts him in as a first ballot HOF. But I thought that even before the 3rd no no.

I've watched the vast majority of his starts, until the last few yrs with the Astros, but there have been numerous times he has gone deep in games before giving up a late hit. Just about every time he took the ball for 12.5 yrs it felt like there was a chance for something special and it was an amazing ride watching him in the Old English D.

A lifetime ERA around 3.3 and even lower in the postseason. All of this during the juiced ball and steroid era.

As the Tigers announcers would always say, "JV is must see TV"

Lawrence J Corcoran

I have to assume an Old Judge of a player from London, Ontario is exceptionally scarce. Just how tough are they?

Two players in the set, Corcoran and Pettee, who seems to be harder to find. I have nine Corcorans and one Pettee. I'd say that could be half that exist

I'm sure you've discussed this before, but what is your interest in Corcoran? Is he somebody from your hometown?

Raymond- It's interesting that you SO 21 consecutive times and that I was a 21 K pitcher in PONY league. It was a 2 hitter.

I have, but I'll be happy to give the quick version again. I was able to pick out an OJ card as a birthday present when I was young and bought Corcoran from Larry Fritsch because it was the best common player he had available. When Ebay first started, I went on and the first card ending was a Corcoran, different pose than mine and cheap, so I bought it. At the time, I thought maybe 20 of his cards existed, so having two seemed hard to get.

I decided to try to get all of his variations. In the process of doing that, I had trouble finding the last two, but I saw doubles that I bought as trade bait in case anyone had them. While waiting, I upgraded two of them and by the time I completed all six variations, I was just one away from getting two runs of all six. So I did the same thing and it finally just turned into me buying whichever ones I saw because that's what I was basically doing.

The initial intention was far different than the final outcome. I'm at the point now where I won't go all in for one if it shows up because the prices were getting out of hand, though I've only seen three in the last 2+ years. The only exception would be the one variation I only have three copies of, because who doesn't want four runs of the same player :)

Got it. I assume there are other people who at least have a few, and that you don't have them all.:)

Others do exist. If I had to guess, I'd say 70 copies of his OJ card exist. I've never bought or even bid on any of his other cards, so I'm not a complete monster.

Ok, I"m assuming there's a connection to Verlander in here somewhere.....

Do you have any of the glass negatives of Larry? You have to figure, if you're all in on the card board, might as well be all in on the entire Larry collection.

Barry,

John is the reason so many people can't get a Larry card.... I'd love to have a London Larry but I'm sure it's not to be.... not a bucket list card, but it's one I'm looking for....

Verlander threw his third no-hitter. Corcoran was the first to throw three no-hitters

Offer John a good trade item. That's always your best chance.

I was watching the game on t.v. and as soon as it ended they flashed the graphic with the 6 guys to throw 3 or more and Todd Kalas was asking Geoff Blum about Corcoran. I was pretty sure I was going to see a Corcoran thread on here after that. I bet we see another one after Mike Fiers hurls his third.

Mike Fiers has a grand total of two complete games in his career...and both were no-hitters.

I got this for a song when he looked washed up. Very happy to have this in the collection.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...4a2b45a424.jpg

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

What does that tell us about the next time Fiers pitches a complete? It will be a no-no, well, at least a shut out..... That's a really weird stat.

--Nice card, Carl.

More Fiers trivia..He led the Astros in innings pitched in 2017 and was left off the playoff roster. If he somehow were to get to 4 and tie Koufax, he'd have to be considered for the HOF. He's having a nice year for the A's.

There it is! I've got to believe that the Larry collection has got to be the biggest collection of a single player assembled by a single collector of a player from the N172 series. Sooooo, can you post your glass negative of Larry? I'm sure you have at least one, if not the entire run....

That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works...

I think Kevin owns one. I don't have anything else Corcoran except an old picture from before he made the majors and I don't have a scan of that available.

I had to laugh at the red highlighted text above. It's not that you need anything else :p How many glass negatives do you think exist of Larry? Do you think there's a glass negative for each variation? If so, there's got to be a few of them out there. I'd figure you'd have at least one because you've got just about everything else! Would you crap your pants if someone found an uncatalogued pose of Corcoran?:eek: Just kidding - however if that did happen I'm guessing you'd be "all in" on that one.

Corcoran only has two poses; I’m sure John means variations. Tough to get other cards of Corcoran. The only ones I can think of are his N167, his NY Kalamazoo Bats, and his Gypsy Queen, and all are very rare.

Not who you are referring to. Brian Holman lost a perfect game with 2 outs in the 9th. Ken Phelps hit his last career homer to blow it. Brian is a great guy with an amazing collection.