Clay Throws a No-No

So, I am flipping the dial on Saturday night between the various college football games and the U.S. Open tennis tournament. The big sports story of the day thus far is in college football: Michigan's shocking loss to former Division I-AA team Appalachian St. At home, no less. I didn't get to watch any of this game on the new Big Ten network since Comcast (my cable company) was unable to negotiate a deal with the Big Ten in time for the start of the season. So yes, I live in a city with alumni of every Big Ten school and the major cable company here does not carry the network. Makes perfect sense. Did I mention that Comcast also made the NFL Network a premium channel after carrying it on basic cable last year? That won't suck or anything once the season starts and I'll lose a free NFL game every Thursday night.

Occasionally, I check the score on the Red Sox/Orioles games and see that the Sox are winning and that the Orioles are being shut out. What I don't initially notice is that the O's are also being no-hit. The starting pitcher for the Red Sox, 23 year-old rookie Clay Buchholz, is making his second career start. As he goes deeper and deeper into the game I start to take notice. No-hitter through 6 innings. No-hitter through 7 innings. Suddenly, ESPN is cutting in for updates and ESPNews has it on their ticker and is talking about it. Unfortunately, I do not have the Major League Baseball TV package so I cannot view the game live. I am relying only on TV and Internet updates. It is absolutely killing me not to see this game live. Of course, I could drive to a bar but figure by the time I get there Buccholz will have lost the no -hitter and it will have all been in vain.

Boston IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA
Buchholz (W, 2-0) 9.0 0 0 0 3 9 0 1.80

Buccholz takes the no-hitter to the 9th. Assuming that he retires the first two batters, the last hitter he would face is outfielder Nick Markakis. Markakis is a member of my fantasy baseball team, and I only mention this because another member of my fantasy team, Oakland's Shannon Stewart, broke up a no-hit bid by Boston's Curt Schilling with 2 outs in the 9th inning earlier this summer. "Oh no, not again," I exclaim. I needn't have worried. Buccholz retires Markakis on a called strike 3 for the 17th no-hitter in Red Sox history, the first by a Sox rookie in the team's history and the first since Derek Lowe threw one in 2002. Fenway Park is up for grabs, it is absolute bedlam.

One of the ironies of the event is that Buccholz would not even have been starting were it not for the back injury of starter Tim Wakefield, whose absence pushed the scheduled starter, Julian Tavarez, up a day to Friday and gave Buccholz his date with destiny Saturday night. The other irony is that earlier I saw on the ESPN ticker that Pedro Martinez, long time Red Sox ace who left as a free agent to the Mets in 2005 after winning the World Series with Boston, will make his first start of the year next week. The connection? Buchholz was obtained in the 2005 supplemental draft with a pick Boston received by virtue of losing Martinez as a free agent. Funny how things work out sometimes. The first thing that comes to my mind as a Red Sox fan after the no-hitter? "Cool, we're 5 games up on the Yankees again." Ahhh, the life of a Red Sox fan.