Can I get a No-hitter??

Today, September 1 is the first anniversary of the Clay Buchholz no-hitter for the Boston Red Sox and I have to say I'm jealous of anyone who's sat in a Boston pressbox in the last six years. They've seen three of those and all have been in Boston (Derek Lowe 2002 vs. Tampa Bay, Buchholz 2007 vs. Baltimore and Lester 2008 vs. Kansas City).

I've seen close to 500 games in both ballparks in New York and have never seen one. I've already caught three foul balls so I don't need anymore, I just want a no-hitter!

When I used to work at SportsTicker, no-hitters were rooted against. It created too much work. There used to be one guy who would claim that within 10 minutes of tuning into the game the no-hitter would break. There was that one time that a baseball recap that I got assigned by this same person and I thought for sure that I would be taken off it for a more experienced hitter but I stayed on the game.

That game was 5/18/2004, which also happens to be the most recent perfect game in baseball history when Randy Johnson did it against the Atlanta Braves

That's how close I got to a no-hitter, writing about it from watching it off TV.

But I've been fortunate to see some close calls over the years. The first one I remember was 1991 when the Mets played the San Diego Padres. A pitcher named Greg Harris took a no-hitter into the eighth and winds up with a one-hitter when Mackey Sasser breaks it up in with a ground-rule double.

I'm pretty sure I didn't see any close calls until I saw a couple in the 2005 season, which was my first of being a regular in the press box. Note - I consider a close call as having a no-hitter through five. Without further ado, here's the list

1 - 7/26/2005 - Randy Johnson's two years with the Yankees can be classified as disappointing but there were times when he was the "Big Unit" that dominated in Seattle and Arizona and this was one of them. After opening the game by hitting Shannon Stewart with a pitch, he retires 16 straight Twins and loses his no-hit bid with two outs in the sixth when Juan Castro singles up the middle. He allows two hits in eight innings and the Yankees win it 4-0.

2 - 9/20/2005 - I remember Cliff Floyd relaying the story of running into A.J. Burnett in the outfield during batting practice and the righthander saying the Mets were in trouble. Obviously it was friendly banter between former teammates but it turned out to be almost right. Burnett no-hits the Mets through six and the guy on the other end of the phone, tells me I've got to end it. I'm telling OK but I'm thinking "Dude, it's not like I can step in the batter's box,". Victor Diaz does it by ending the bid with a leadoff double that barely stays fair. The Mets wind up winning in the 12th on Mike Jacobs' single.

3 - 9/26/2006 - Daniel Cabrera is one of those pitchers that hits both extremes. You know the type, when they're on, they're really good and showing why the team even promoted him and when they're bad, they stink and you wonder what this guy is doing there. Cabrera falls into that description against the Yankees. In his six wins, he has a 2.16 ERA and on this night he nearly pulls it off. He takes a no-hitter into the ninth and loses it when Robinson Cano slaps a single to left field. The worst thing about this is that he gets a game-ending double play on the next pitch.

4 - 5/5/2007 - Chien-Ming Wang makes it through seven with perfection and then decides to throw his only changeup of the afternoon and it goes into the right-center field bleachers for a solo home run by Ben Broussard. The Yankees win 8-1 over the Mariners but the perfect game would have been nice.

5 - 8/28/2007 - This one by Wang was as close as the previous attempt but it still counts. The Yankees are attempting to close in on the Red Sox and Wang takes a no-hitter into the seventh inning before it gets broken up by a Mike Lowell single. The game features some other interesting stuff but the no-hitter is the part that's the most compelling.

6 - 5/15/2008 - No game seemed to epitomize the early-season poor play of this year's version of the Mets than this one. The Mets had never thrown a no-hitter and now Mike Pelfrey might be a candidate to do it at some point. At this time, he doesn't appear to be as he often labored through five innings and wound up losing. This time it's a different story as he takes a no-hitter into the seventh. It gets broken up by Aaron Boone. Met fans in the crowd that day might join in adding the expletive to his middle name. But in this one that should be devoted to Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran, who make key baserunning blunders and the Mets lose 1-0 to the Nationals. Then the fun starts, for some reason Billy Wagner is kind of talkative and he got pissed when he had to talk while others were gone

Basically the point of this post is that I want to see a no-hitter. Sorry if it creates extra work, I've never seen one and I want it to happen.