No-hitter brings out pride in Canadians

As he watched James Paxton twirl a no-hitter last Tuesday, Paul Quantrill was not conflicted at all. Quantrill works for the Toronto Blue Jays as a special assistant, and he always wants his team to win. But Quantrill is also a Canadian, with the most major league pitching appearances of anyone born in his country, so he was proud of Paxton, the Seattle Mariners left-hander from Ladner, British Columbia, who humbled the Blue Jays on 99 dazzling pitches.

“He was just lights-out,” Quantrill said. “He was hitting 100 miles an hour in the ninth inning, so he really had it going on — every pitch, all night. The probability of us making a comeback was looking pretty slim, so I guess if we had to be no-hit, I was happy it was him.”

Quantrill, a right-hander from London, Ontario, who pitched in 841 games from 1992 to 2005, said he was surprised to learn that only one other Canadian had thrown a no-hitter: Dick Fowler of the 1945 Philadelphia Athletics.

“I would have guessed Fergie Jenkins,” Quantrill said, but Jenkins — the only Canadian in the Baseball Hall of Fame — never did it.

“Forty-nine shutouts,” Jenkins said with a laugh. “But with no-hitters, you’ve got to have a bit of luck involved. There’s always some good plays, some good circumstances. You’ve got to consider yourself pretty fortunate to do it.”

Jenkins threw two one-hitters, for the Texas Rangers in 1974 and 1979. Quantrill was mostly a reliever, but he did throw a two-hit shutout for Boston in 1993, when manager Butch Hobson gave him a spot start in place of an injured Roger Clemens.

“He pulled me off the field and we made an agreement,” Quantrill said. “I told him: ‘Butch, I’m tired of getting pulled after five because you think I can’t go. Leave me alone until they start hitting me.’ They got two hits early and no hits the rest of the game.”

Fowler was an unlikely predecessor for Paxton. He had not earned a victory in nearly three years before blanking the St. Louis Browns in the second game of a doubleheader, and he had just been hit hard in three relief outings after a long layoff during World War II.

“I came out of the Canadian army and I was hog fat, at least 35 pounds overweight,” Fowler said in 1947, according to an article on the Canadian Baseball Network. “I can honestly say I was never in worse shape in my life.”

Fowler — whose gem took a tidy 75 minutes — pitched 10 seasons for the A’s, with a 66-79 career record. Even so, he ranks 12th on the career wins list among the 129 Canadians who have pitched in the majors. Jenkins’ 284 victories are more than twice as many as the second pitcher on the list, Ryan Dempster.

Jenkins also threw 267 complete games in a career that stretched from 1965 to 1983. Paxton, a six-year veteran, had never thrown a complete game before his no-hitter.

“You knew who Fergie Jenkins was because he’s the best we’ve ever had, but I think like a lot of Canadians, I didn’t even follow baseball as a kid, because I was a hockey fan,” said Quantrill, who is 49 and pitched at the University of Wisconsin. “When I signed with the Red Sox, I could only name two or three guys on the team — and that was after going to college in the States.”