"Supernatural"
Johan Santana's historic night and the perils of the Modern Age
by Thomas Scherrer
Eight thousand and twenty. 8,020. It is, above all else a number. A large data sample for most things centered around sports. Whenever you have over 8,000 examples of something happening and with a consistent nature, you are led to believe that a) this consistency will always occur, meaning finding an anomaly is impossible if not, improbable and b) you don't ever expect to see that anomaly occur in your lifetime. After all, do some simple math: 8,020 games divided by 162 baseball games is exactly 49.5. A simpler translation is that if something happens for almost a half-century every single time, you don't expect it to change...EVER. However, last night, June the first, in the year two thousand and twelve Johan Alexander Santana from Tovar, Venezuela became the anomaly in the 8,020. He became the first New York Met pitcher to fire a no-hitter, ending a 50-plus year history of oh-so-close and not-quite.
Understand this: if you aren't a Met fan or do not know a Met fan, you cannot possibly understand what this moment meant to them. In an organization fully rich in pitching since its inception in 1962, this almost feels surreal in some regards; long overdue in most. After all, this is the organization that drafted Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan. Had starters like Jerry Koosman and John Matlack. Drafted the phenom Dwight Gooden. Acquired arms like Ron Darling, David Cone, Bret Saberhagen, and Al Leiter. Signed former Cy Young winners in Orel Hershieser, Tommy Glavine, and Pedro Martinez. Still for 8,019 games...every Met pitcher fell short of not allowing a hit. There was a Jimmy Qualls or a Paul Hoover around the corner to spoil the party. Last night, there was no broken bat flare that dropped in for a hit, no slow roller up the 3rd base line for an infield single, and no line drive double just off the chalk (well...we'll get to that). Last night, Johan became Nohan: a worthy candidate based off his pedigree, talent, and professionalism. A shocking candidate based off where he was 12 months ago. On June 1st last year, Johan Santana was rehabbing from a torn anterior capsule in the left shoulder. His career was certainly hanging in the balance with each passing day. Each long rehab day, followed by a long recovery day and so on and so on. Met fans wondered if, not when, Santana would return. If he returned, would he be anywhere near the same pitcher that snagged two Cy Young awards in Minnesota, he man who literally dragged the sinking Mets in 2008 to the playoffs with two Pantheonic performances with a meniscus that wasn't strained or tender...it was partially torn, and submitted 2009 and 2010 seasons while injured that about 99% of Major League Baseball pitchers wished they had.
Through the first 9 starts, Santana was impressive but not dominant. Unfortunate in that he had no run support in going 1-2, but shaky enough to make you think if he is all the way back yet. In his last road outing against Pittsburgh, while staked to a 4-0 lead, Santana failed to hold onto it against an anemic offense. It prompted me to make this mental note in my head after his outing, in which the Mets lost: "Johan is, while still serviceable, cannot be called an 'Ace' at the moment. He is the Mets Number 1 starter but an Ace he is not right now. And one has to wonder if he ever will become one again." His next two outings? 18 innings, 4 hits, no runs, and yes, a no-hitter. That no hit performance included this mind blowing statistic: he threw 134 pitches, a career high. Remember, his shoulder was reconstructed and Manager Terry Collins had placed his 'Ace' on a budget: 110-115 pitches. Clearly, that went by the board. And you never saw a human being more uncomfortable with history than Mr. Collins was before, during, and after the no-hitter was accomplished. Collins almost broke down in the interview after the game after Kevin Burkhart referenced the 'hero' line by Collins to Santana in the top of the 8th after Rafael Furcal's walk. It appears that the most guilty conscience in Queens last night was the one of the manager whose pitcher was making history...
And not the one of Adrian Johnson.
Johnson, the 3rd base umpire became a focal point in the 6th inning when he incorrectly ruled Carlos Beltran's line drive over 3rd to be foul when replays (all 800 of them) showed it kicked chalk, which would have been the first St. Louis Cardinal hit. Instead, like most no-hit bids, there needs to be some luck involved in making it happen. But that error didn't stop the St. Louis Dispatch from taking the lead in denouncing the historical accomplishment by their headline in the morning paper reading "No-Hitter*". Which, to say the least, is a low and pathetic headline, very un-like the great city of St. Louis and their great baseball fans. Still the accomplishment of Santana will be looked at as historic but also a barometer for why the sport of baseball needs to reinvest in its replay system. After the ball game was over, Johnson said he looked at a video of the blown call...and said nothing else. In the past week, Jim Leyland called for umpires to be held more accountable in the wake of Tigers-Red Sox series and, we get THAT?!? Look, I'm not saying that I didn't love what happened last night, but when the other 4 men on the field DO make a bad decision and get to see it for their very eyes, at least acknowledge the error and chalk it up (literally) to human error.
One final note to the Nohan: I was out, as most of you know, bowling on a Friday night. My girlfriend looked on her phone and saw the accomplishment, calling it belated 28th birthday gift. I wasn't even thinking about that. I thought about Seaver and Gooden. Darling and Cone. I thought about Howie Rose and Gary Cohen, two lifelong Met fans turned hometown announcers who got to call Santana's strikeout of David Freese to finish off the no-no. And I called my dad. I hardly ever call him. He sent me one back that I only listened to after I watched the replay of the game and it went like this:
"Yes TJ, I didn't move...from where I was sittin'..."
And the message stopped with him sniffling, perhaps holding back something. Maybe he had no other words. But that is the glorious thing about baseball. There is a true link to your father and to his father and even perhaps to his father, who probably tried to sneak into Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds or the original Yankee Stadium to watch their heroes play with a baseball and a bat, some gloves and chalk lines. Fans dressed to the nines with snap brim hats and cigar smoke encircling the baselines looking to idolize men they dreamed to be like and perhaps the women they had their choice of as well. Young boys having their teacher pull out a transistor radio or a television in the middle of class so that you can listen to DiMaggio track down a fly ball in the vast gaps of Yankee Stadium or Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle going deep or perhaps tune in and listen to Sandy Koufax strike out 15 or possibly throw a no-hitter himself. It is the last of these things that make baseball really special: the art of the pitcher taking command, turning the game into his own showcase event. Guys like Koufax, Bob Gibson, Seaver, Ron Guidry, Gooden, Pedro, and a few others weren't pitching in a baseball game-they were pitching in an event. A showcase of their once in a generation skills to where anything could happen. I remember Pedro, vintage '99...all string bean thin, arms and legs, firing mid-90's heat, with a jaw dropping hook and a change up that looked like it froze in midair before the batter meekly swinging at it for strike 3. I remember the crowds in Fenway, sensing that anything was possible: a no-hitter, perfect game, 15 K's. When Pedro came to the Mets, the same feeling came to me: Pedro is pitching, something big could happen just like when my dad saw Seaver pitch. The beauty of it was that in the sometimes monotonous routine of baseball, every 4 or 5 days, someone was taking that mound that could capture the imagination of your baseball soul. On June 1st, 2012, I went back to being a 10 year old kid. Giddy that Johan Santana made history in a Met uniform. Giddy to hear Cohen and Rose call the last out. Giddy to see the crowd react to something special. In a word, it was a Supernatural feeling.
