Let him play! Let him play!
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BOSTON—Red Sox players and staff members arrived at a cloudy Fenway Park for the regular season finale Sunday wanting nothing more than to close the book on 2006 as quickly, dryly and healthily as possible.
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“It’s weird, knowing that you’re basically playing your last game of the year, trying to win a game that even if you win, you’re still going to take third place,” Doug Mirabelli said amidst a locker room dotted by cardboard boxes, suitcases and duffel bags. “But we have 162 games. This one counts as much as the first one and you still have to approach it the same way, as a professional.”
Terry Francona lamented September’s unfamiliarly anticlimactic feel—“There’s nothing that can compare with the nervous energy and excitement of being in a pennant race— pondered the possibility the finale might be delayed by rain and looked forward to ditching his uniform, putting on his sweatpants and heading to his home four miles away.
“My concern is if it rains too hard for me to get that barbeque lit,” Francona said.
But the beauty of baseball is its unpredictability. And even the most outlandishly optimistic observer could not anticipate what would transpire as a damp dusk settled over Boston and Devern Hansack—a 28-year-old rookie pitcher who spent the last two years out of baseball—left his teammates wishing the final and most meaningless game on the Major League Baseball regular season schedule could last four more innings.
Hansack capped a remarkable season by throwing a five inning no-hitter in his second major league appearance as the Sox beat the Orioles, 9-0, in a game that was delayed for three hours and 23 minutes at the start and finally called after at 7:47 p.m. after a 41-minute rain delay.
“Theo [Epstein] and I were kind of laughing after the game [saying] what an end to the season for him,” Francona said. “One day, he’s thumping his chest down in [Double-A] Portland. And a couple weeks later, he’s winning a game and giving up no hits in Boston. Good for him. Good for us.”
Though Hansack receives credit for a complete game and a shutout, his gem is not considered an official no-hitter. In 1991, then-commissioner Fay Vincent ruled that a pitcher must throw nine innings in order to receive credit for a no-hitter.
Hansack is only the second pitcher to throw an abbreviated no-hitter since Vincent’s ruling and the first whose outing was cut short by the weather. Sox hurler Matt Young threw an eight-inning no-hitter in a 2-1 loss at Cleveland Apr. 12, 1992.
“Nobody can stop the rain, you know?” Hansack said. “I don’t know if I would have gone through [with the no-hitter] or not.”
No, but it sure would have been fun to find out if he could have matched the likes of Mike Witt, who threw the only no-hitter on the final day of the regular season when he threw a perfect game for the Angels on Sept. 30, 1984, or Roy Halladay, who threw 8 2/3 hitless innings in his second big league start for the Blue Jays Sept. 27, 1998.
Hansack, who complemented his four-pitch arsenal (fastball, slider, change-up, curveball) with a deceptive motion that included a unique kick on his follow-through, struck out six, didn’t allow anything close to a hit, faced the minimum 15 batters (he walked Fernando Tatis in the second but induced Chris Gomez to hit into a double play) and threw just 61 pitches.
A nine-inning no-hitter would have provided a most unlikely final chapter to Hansack’s astonishing out-of-nowhere success story. Signed by the Sox as a free agent after playing in a tournament in Holland last fall, Hansack—who failed to advance beyond Single-A as an Astros prospect from 2000-2003 and pitched the last two years in his native Nicaragua—went 8-7 with a 3.15 ERA and 124 strikeouts in 132 2/3 innings for Double-A Portland and won the decisive fifth game of the Eastern League Championship Series 15 days ago.
“I was out of organized baseball so long that I just said ‘Well, this is my opportunity, I can’t mess it up,’” Hansack said. “If I didn’t do good, I would be home working hard right now.”
But the rain that drenched Fenway earlier in the afternoon returned with a vengeance around the fourth inning. The umpires met with head Sox groundskeeper Dave Mellor after the fourth but continued to play. Mellor conferred again with the crew as Hansack warmed up for the top of the sixth and the players were motioned off the field.
“The rain, even when I was hitting in the bottom of the fifth inning, was very uncomfortable,” Carlos Pena said. “My bat was slipping out of my hands. The playing conditions were not favorable.”
The Sox, eager to get out of town as soon as possible earlier in the day, were no longer concerned with ruined barbeques or delayed departures. Well aware of what Hansack was trying to accomplish, his teammates created superstitions meant to keep the game and the no-hitter alive.
“I didn’t even want to change my clothes,” catcher Jason Varitek said. “I was freezing out there. Obviously, [it was] pretty wet.”
“I was just waiting for the game to be called officially before I said anything [about the no-hitter],” Pena said with a laugh. “Obviously, you don’t want to say ‘Hey, you’re throwing a no-hitter’ [in case] he goes out there.”
Alas, there would be no Bad News Bears-esque chants of “LET THEM PLAY! LET THEM PLAY!” from either the Sox or the few thousand soggy fans in attendance. Instead of a permanent spot in the Hall of Fame’s no-hitter display, Hansack will have to be content with his first big league win, a signed copy of the lineup card and the knowledge he gave the Sox a jolt of that late-season nervous energy and excitement and a reason to wish the season that wouldn’t end could be extended just 12 outs longer.
“The guy’s got to feel great about it,” Kyle Snyder said. “I would definitely not feel—I don’t know, I guess bittersweet’s the term—that he couldn’t finish the game and give himself an opportunity. This game’s meant to be played outside, in my opinion, and that type of stuff happens. But by no means would I feel the least bit disappointed that I wasn’t able to throw four more innings.”
Maybe not. But was Snyder disappointed he didn’t get the chance to watch Hansack try to complete the no-hitter?
“Doggone right. For sure.”
Diehard managing editor Jerry Beach can be reached at diehardmag@yahoo.com. To receive a free issue of Diehard, call 888-979-0979.
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