September 2, 1990
It was on this day in 1990, that
Toronto Blue Jays’ pitcher, Dave Stieb, threw the first, and to date only,
no-hitter in franchise history. The Jays beat the Cleveland Indians at
Municipal Stadium in Cleveland by a score of 3-0. Four Indians’ hitters reached
base in the game, all on bases on balls. The win was Stieb’s 17th of
the season and he would finish 1990 with a record of 18-6 with an ERA of 2.93.
He had been close on numerous occasions to throwing a no-hitter, but had not
been quite able to finish all those opportunities.
Stieb played his varsity
baseball at Southern Illinois University as an outfielder. Two scouts for the
Toronto Blue Jays, Al LaMacchia and Bobby Mattick, were unimpressed by his
abilities. That is, until he was pressed into service as a pitcher in one of
SIU’s games. His pitching ability surprised the scouts and after they convinced
Stieb that his career in baseball would be as a pitcher and not an outfielder,
the Jays drafted him in the fifth round of the 1978 draft.
He was a seven-time All-Star
during his career with the Jays, and would win 15 games or more six times in his
eleven full seasons with the club (he would pitch in parts of four other
seasons as well.)
Before his no-hitter against
Cleveland, Stieb was always considered to have bad luck when it came to
finishing no-hitters (as mentioned before) as he had already thrown four
one-hitters.
The first came on September 24,
1988, also at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. With two outs in the bottom of the
ninth inning with the Jays leading 1-0, Cleveland batter Julio Franco hit what
looked like a routine ground ball to Jays’ second baseman, Manny Lee. However,
on what would have been the final bounce before Lee gloved the ball, it hit the
seam where the infield grass meets the dirt base path and bounced too far over
Lee’s head into centre field. Stieb retired the next batter to preserve the
shutout.
The second heart-breaking
attempt came only six days later, September 30, 1988, in Stieb’s next start at
Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium. Leading the Baltimore Orioles 4-0 with, again,
two outs in the ninth inning, Baltimore pinch-hitter Jim Traber, blooped a
single just over Jays’ first baseman Fred McGriff’s outstretched glove. Stieb
retired the next batter on a ground ball to finish the game.
The third one-hitter, and less
dramatic, game in Stieb’s second start of the 1989 season against the New York
Yankees in Yankee Stadium. In an 8-0 Blue Jays’ win, the Yankees only hit came
in the fifth inning on a line drive single to left field by the Yankees’ Jamie
Quirk.
The fourth one-hitter also came
in 1989, on August 26, at Toronto’s new baseball facility, SkyDome in a 7-0 win
over the Milwaukee Brewers. Robin Yount hit a two-out infield single in the
sixth inning to spoil yet another Stieb bid for his moment of immortality.
But perhaps the most
gut-wrenching attempt came on August 4, 1989, also at SkyDome. In what may have
been the best pitching performance of Stieb’s career, he struck out eleven
Yankee batters and walked none. With two outs in the ninth inning, and an
opportunity of a perfect game in front of him, Stieb threw a pitch to Yankee
batter Roberto Kelly that the New York outfielder pulled into left field for a
double. Another single followed scoring Kelly, before Stieb got the final out
to win the game 2-1.
On the day he finally did throw
his no-hitter, Stieb didn’t really have his best stuff. On a cool Sunday
afternoon on the south shore of Lake Erie, Stieb walked four men, but struck
out nine. When Indians batter Jerry Browne took Stieb’s final pitch of the
afternoon and lofted a high fly ball (not deep) to right field, I’m sure every
Toronto fan held their breath, hoping for the best but fearing the worst (like
a strong gust of wind, or a dropped ball.) However, Jays’ right fielder Junior
Felix squeezed the final out in his glove and the best pitcher in Blue Jays’
history finally had his no-hitter.
In later years, other pitchers
have come close to throwing no-hitters for Toronto (Roy Halladay and Brandon
Morrow, for example) but Stieb’s remains the only one in franchise history.
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