ANNOUNCERS CALL HISTORY FROM AFAR

As the Padres settled into Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, to start their first road trip, some 1,100 miles away Jesse Agler was beginning his commute from San Marcos to Petco Park.

He’d done much of his Rangers series homework on the off day. He arrived at the park roughly a half-hour before the day’s video conferences. After an early dinner, the 39-year-old Agler turned to his left, away from the playing field, and trained his gaze onto the monitors set up behind the card tables in the visiting TV booth.

Eight games into his gig alongside Tony Gwynn Jr. as the lead radio play-by-play man, Agler was about to tell the story of a San Diego kid throwing the first no-hitter in franchise history in a mostly empty ballpark in the most unimaginable way possible.

“It’s everything we always say about baseball,” Agler said. “You never know what you’re going to see. It might be wonderful. It might be bad. It might be historic. To me, that’s the beauty of the game.”

Indeed, a ballpark that fell silent as Fernando Tatis Jr. crumpled at the plate was again mostly silent as Joe Musgrove chased history Friday night, outside the euphoric calls from two play-by-play teams charged with telling the story as it unfolded and after it was completed the honking by cars still cruising downtown San Diego.

The only baserunner to reach through six innings did so by a hit-by-pitch when Agler and Gwynn — seated 6 feet apart — turned to each other.

OK, this is serious.

Of course, it had been before, too.

Before Friday, the Padres had taken 23 no-hitters into the eighth inning, two of them coming within an out before spoiling. That only added to the nervous energy building with every pitch as El Cajon’s Joe Musgrove took his bid deeper and deeper into the night.

By the time Musgrove’s nohitter reached the ninth inning, Agler was rocking back and forth in his chair — due in part to the chilliness in Petco’s open-air booth and an inability to contain his own anxiousness. Agler had been in Miami as a pre- and postgame host when Anibal Sanchez threw a no-no for the Marlins in 2001, but wasn’t behind the mic for the final out, nor had he been at any of his stops leading up to this strange moment.

Naturally, he let the fervor from an Arlington crowd of 27,575 piped into his headphones — and into listeners’ radios — set the stage as Musgrove closed in on the 27th out.

“This might as well be a home game for the Padres now at this point,” Gwynn said as Agler nodded in agreement before Musgrove’s second pitch to Isiah Kiner-falefa.

“It sucked that we were here at Petco and not at Globe Life Field,” Gwynn said Saturday afternoon. “As it got to the fifth and sixth, you could feel the vibe (throughout the stadium). Every ground ball that was hit, you could hear the applause. It would get quiet when a Ranger was coming up to hit and when it was apparent it was an out you could hear it building.”

Finally, Kiner-falefa swung at Musgrove’s 0-1 pitch with two outs in the ninth, a bouncer to the left side of second base that Haseong Kim grabbed and threw to first as Agler bellowed out an iteration of a call he’d been formulating for a couple innings:

“That is a no-hitter and that is history! Joe Musgrove with the first no-hitter in Padre history. April 9, 2021, at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. The kid comes home, and he gets it done!”

Not far away from Agler, the roars grew just as loud as Bally Sports San Diego’s Don Orsillo and Mark Grant put the finishing touches on their call.

You’re right if you thought Grant’s voice began to crack as he gave way to Orsillo’s capper: “Java Joe, no-no!”

Grant had pitched for the Padres from 1987 through 1990. This is his 26th season as a color analyst for television broadcasts. The Musgroves’ gourmet drivethru coffee shop in Alpine has been a favorite stop of Grant’s for years. Joe Randa’s pinch-hit homer with one out in the ninth to end Chris Young’s 2006 bid was among the heart-breaking nearmisses he’d witnessed firsthand.

“If it took this long, it’s been well worth it,” Grant said over the air. “Couldn’t happen to a better kid. Homegrown.”

Grant further reflected Saturday morning after stopping by the Musgroves’ Caffe’ Adesso, where the line was eight to 10 cars deep.

“I got emotional, man,” Grant said. “There’s a lot to this. Not only being starved of a no-hitter, just the Padres fans since Day 1 and it being a guy who wore the uniform as a kid, grew up in San Diego, season ticket holder. Being able to witness that, I got emotional because it was a nohitter but also because it was Joe.”

He added: “It’s one of the best baseball stories I’ve run across.”

Like Agler, Grant had become so accustomed to broadcasting road games from his Petco Park booth during last year’s 60-game pandemic season that it was second nature by the time he and Orsillo began giving each other looks, also about the sixth inning or so.

That breaking ball is biting. Is he going to get it?

“Sure, it would have been much more electric if we were there,” Grant said. “But I got so locked in it was almost like I was there. It really did not faze us at all or hinder us at all from calling it as if we were there live.”

Throughout the night it dawned on Agler, Gwynn and producer Dave Marcus that the booth was missing at least one person. Musgrove’s no-hitter arrived eight games into Ted Leitner’s transition into his ambassador role with the team. He’d been behind the mic for so many of the near-misses during his 41 years as the Padres’ play-by-play man. After the game, a couple texts from Leitner were among the dozens sitting in Agler’s phone.

Leitner said on Twitter Saturday afternoon: “No #Padres fans I do NOT feel badly about not calling the no hitter! Joyous for the team and for Joe and for @jesseagler . Would never trade my 41 wonderful years for that one game. Thank you all so much for even thinking of me on a special day in Padres history. I love you all.”

“He was on my mind as much as Joe Musgrove at times,” Agler said. “Forty-one years of doing these games, the probability would say he would have called a few by now.

“Baseball is funny that way.” Indeed.

Funny. Strange. Cathartic. Perfect

It was all those things Friday night in a press box more than 1,100 miles away from the mob that engulfed a San Diego kid on the mound at Globe Life Field.

“Can’t make it up,” Gwynn said. “You just can’t make it up.”