… BUT NOT BEING THERE.
Twenty-seven years ago this week, my late buddy The Great Smitty was listening to the radio in the cottage and yelled the words I never thought I’d hear. “Stieb just threw a no-hitter,” Smitty roared. It was Corn Roast Weekend and, even though I was The Spectator’s baseball reporter/columnist, I always carved out time for our annual cottage cob carnival. So, I was not in Cleveland to see Stieb break the summer habit which had taken him, and the rest of us, right next door to ecstasy without reaching it, thrice in the previous two years. When Stieb beat the Indians 3-0 at Municipal Stadium on Sept. 2, 1990, in front of the usual Jays-heavy crowd in Cleveland, Jerry Browne flied out to Junior Felix to become the first and, to date, only Blue Jay to throw a nohitter. And Browne did not join a list that included Roberto Kelly, Julio Franco, Jim Traber, Robin Yount and Jamie Quirk. Each of them had the only hit against Stieb in his five complete-game one-hitters, the fifth-most of any pitcher in history. And the other four (Nolan Ryan, Bob Feller, Don Sutton and Steve Carlton) are in the Hall of Fame. I saw four of those one-hitters and have yet to see a no-hit game. Which is too bad, because there is nothing like the ninth inning of a potential no-hit game, so there must really be nothing like the ninth inning of one that actually happens. There was also nothing like the six-day period in late fall 1988 — with the Jays’ postseason hopes already done — when Stieb came close to equalling the greatest backto-back starts in baseball history. Those belonged to Johnny Vander Meer of the Cincinnati Reds who no-hit the Boston Braves (now in Atlanta) in June 1938, and four days later no-hit the Dodgers in the first night game ever played in Brooklyn. On Saturday, Sept. 24, 1988, Stieb faced the Indians at Municipal Stadium and arrived at the 27th out without giving up a hit, and had a 2-2 count on Julio Franco, who fouled off three straight pitches — what heart spikes those were — then slashed a bounder toward second baseman Manny Lee. The ball landed on the shallow outfield grass where it nestled mockingly. At the hop, Stieb dropped his arms and his shoulders slumped visibly. Lee knelt on the turf for more than a minute and catcher Ernie Whitt punched the ground. “What a hop that was,” Stieb said afterward. “I think it sums up my career and the bad luck I’ve had. It happened so fast. It took me from one emotion, immediately to another.” Franco, to his credit, said it should have been a no-hitter: “I should have been out.” A circus had just left Cleveland and there was some suggestion that the clump of dirt was a leftover from that. I’m not sure about that, but I am sure that if Roberto Alomar had been a Jay then, there would have been no clump of dirt and Stieb might have had his no-hitter. He was a maniacal housekeeper of the entire second-base area. Six days later, the Jays were back at Exhibition Place (SkyDome arrived the next season) and Pat Borders was behind the plate when Stieb, in his final start of the year, took a no-hitter into the ninth up 4-0 against the Orioles, got two out, had a 2-2 count on Jim Traber, and came inside with a textbook curveball. Traber somehow fisted it off and the ball blooped over first baseman Fred McGriff’s head. No-hitter to one-hitter on a soft 100footer once again. McGriff said he felt hopeless, Traber said he’d rather have been up with the game on the line, and Stieb, just escaping the mental agony he’d been through for five days, knew he was headed there again, as the only pitcher to have back to back no-hitters spoiled with two out in the ninth. “It was really hard not thinking about that bad hop, then to have this happen,” he said. “On the same count, too. It’s going to be a rough winter.” The following August at the new SkyDome, Stieb — whose earlier biography was called “Tomorrow I’ll be Perfect” — carried a perfect game into the ninth against the Yankees, but after two swinging strikeouts, he gave up a double to .330 hitter Roberto Kelly. Then he had to bear down just to win the game, which he did. It was just the fifth perfect game lost at the 27th out. Stieb was the Jays’ first homegrown star, the winner of more games in the 1980s than anybody but Jack Morris, and he did it with a team that couldn’t win the first years of the decade. He was bright, superbly athletic and so handsome that if you ever wanted to be invisible, you just had to walk down the street beside him. I considered myself close to him and I think it was mutual, but he got down on himself, and others, too often: a perfectionist who had trouble accepting anything less. And with any kind of luck at all, he would have been only the second pitcher ever to have a perfect week. I’m glad he eventually got his no-hitter, even if I didn’t see it.
smilton@thespec.com 905-526-3268 | @miltonatthespec
Spec columnist Steve Milton has pretty much seen it all in 40 years covering sports around the world. In Being There, he relives special moments of those stories, from the inside out, every Friday. If there’s a memorable event you want Steve to write about, let him know at smilton@thespec.com. Chance are, he was there.