Rule on no-hitters is dumb
Posted: Sunday, June 29, 2008 3:43 PM
I’m sure there’s a sillier rule in sports somewhere, but Major League Baseball’s rule about no-hitters has to be near the top of the list.
All the headlines and all the sports shows announced Saturday that two Los Angeles Angels, Jered Weaver and Jose Arredondo, threw a no-hitter. It would be hard to call it anything else. They pitched the entire eight innings allotted to them and gave up no hits.
But they lost the game, 1-0, thanks in part to Weaver’s fielding error. Also, they only pitched eight innings because the Dodgers were leading and didn't have to bat in the ninth. Therefore, according to Major League Baseball, it’s not a no-hitter.
I’d love to know what it is, but MLB is silent on the subject. It’s a loss, and that’s the end of things.
It’s also wrong. No matter what baseball says, the box score tells the truth, and a zero under the hits column says it’s a no-hitter. There’s nothing else to call it.
This illogical definition in which a no-hitter isn’t a no-hitter was concocted in 1991, the year after Andy Hawkins lost a no hitter for the Yankees by the score of 4-0. From the beginning of baseball time, a no-hitter had, quite logically, been defined as any legal game in which the pitcher or pitchers didn’t give up a hit. Pitchers who threw five-inning no-hitters in games ended by weather were credited with not giving up any hits in an official games. And pitchers who lost no-hitters were also credited for what they accomplished.
But in 1991, baseball decided that to be a no-hitter, a game had to go nine innings. Since the Angels were losing on the road, their starters went just eight. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had been at home and pitched the top of the ninth. If they don’t win, it’s not a no-hitter, even though they gave up no hits.
Baseball does change its scoring rules from time to time. There was a time in the 19th century when a walk counted as a hit. There was also a time when sacrifice flies counted as a time at bat, and then another time when batters were credited with a sac fly for moving a runner to third. Today, it’s only a sac fly if a runner scores. But baseball didn’t go back in the books and take away sac flies or add them to the hitters who got them. It let players have credit for what the rules gave them.
But not with no-hitters. In 1991, MLB retroactively erased no-hitters that didn’t go nine innings or weren’t victories.
Baseball doesn’t have a name for these games – at least not one I could find. That’s understandable, because there is no other word for it. A pitcher throws a six-inning shutout and gets the win when rain ends the game, he gets a shut-out. If a batter is working on a hitting streak and loses it in a five-inning, rain-shortened game, baseball doesn’t say that doesn’t count because he should have had two more at-bats. So, why this silly rule about no-hitters? Why is a six-inning, rain-shortened game a complete game for everyone else but not for the guy who throws a no-hitter?
