Stewart’s nono part of baseball history
Dave Stewart made history north of the border on the night of June 29, 1990, and later in Southern California, that Friday evening became even more historic.
Stewart threw a nohitter in Toronto; the righthander struck out 12 and walked three in the A’s 50 victory. The Oakland native would rack up 22 wins in 1990, the fourth straight season in which he’d have at least 20 wins. He had been named the World Series MVP the previous year when the A’s swept the Giants.
“This was the highlight of my career,” Stewart said about the nohitter in a wireservice story. “Winning 20 ballgames, that’s something because they don’t have to vote on 20 wins. But I thought after winning a World Series and an MVP that you couldn’t top that. This does.”
Stewart issued a twoout walk in the ninth before getting Tony Fernandez to fly to center fielder Dave Henderson to end the game and give the
A’s their first nohitter since Mike Warren shut down the White Sox on Sept. 29, 1983.
It didn’t take long for the next nohitter to be thrown in the majors. A few hours after the final out in Toronto, the Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela finished his nono against St. Louis. Stewart and Valenzuela, who had been teammates in L.A. in the early 1980s, became the first and only majorleague pitchers to throw a nohitter on the same day in modern MLB history.