[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
“IT HAS HAPPENED!” - Gary Cohen
withwordsithoughtidneverspeak:
Johan Santana pitches the first no-hitter in New York Mets history - June 1st, 2012 - New York Mets vs. St. Louis Cardinals
Mike Baxter’s amazing warning track grab to save Johan Santana’s no-hitter.
Baxter is day-to-day with a shoulder bruise.
All this is to say that a random game in the upfront of a long season is one people rarely remember. But Mets fans will remember this night for generations.
The Flushing Faithful will tell their kids about the night Johan Santana threw a no-hitter, and their kids will be bored to tears after hearing the story so many times, but the parents won’t care. “In the sixth-inning, we caught a break.” “I know, Dad, I’ve heard this so many times already!”
I’ll be telling my kids about the Davids (Cone and Wells) perfect games; Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit. Sure, I’ll tell my kids about the 1996, ’98, ’99, ’00, ’01, ’09 Yankees teams. But to talk about a random, meaningless game in early June means that the game isn’t meaningless. Baseball, besides being a game of numbers, is a game of stories. It’s history. Other sports have their moments, but how many of them come during the early part of the season? We don’t talk about the random week 3 game in the NFL; we rarely talk about a November NBA game. Yes, part of that has to do with the fact that baseball is a long season. And part of that has to do with the seemingly trivial minutia of a game that’s defined by numbers. But those numbers, they tell stories that bind moms and dads with their kids.
Click through to read the rest of the post.
