A Party for No

Giants fan favorite Tim Lincecum tossed a no-hitter on Wednesday in front of 41,500 in San Francisco.  In their radio postgame, the announcing team talked about the drama and excitement in the stadium during this game against the San Diego Padres.  Despite this being the second no-hitter this month, and Lincecum's second in a year, given the number of games played over the years it is a rare event. He's only the second pitcher for the Giants to have thrown two no-hitters--the others were by legendary Christy Matthewson in 1901 and 1905.  Fans gave Lincecum several ovations in the later innings.  After the game the team broke out the champagne--that's how special this is.

In fact Lincecum was one batter away from a perfect game.  He gave up one walk, and there were no Giant errors.  On top of that, he had two hits and scored twice.

This bolt from the blue event was all the more dramatic given Lincecum's starts this year, and particularly the morass of losing the Giants have been sunk in for weeks.  Lincecum's starts this year have been an adventure, with lots of walks and hits, though the Giants were scoring well enough to win most of those games.  In recent weeks, the Giants have found every which way to lose: for awhile their hitting and starting pitching was fine but late inning relief pitching--one of their strengths--simply fell apart.  More recently their most reliable starters have faltered while their hitting fell off.  One of those starters, Tim Hudson, made a statement about it that's pure 21st century San Francisco--he suggested it was regression to the mean.  The Giants had been winning games they probably should have lost, and then lost games they should have won.

In their Techtown broadcasting booth, the game announcers also talked about the role of tech --the news of Lincecum pitching a no-hitter into the late innings spread around the world via social media and various sports aps via smartphones etc. so by the ninth inning there was global attention on this game.

Playing second base in this game was the Giant's rookie phenom with the great baseball name of Joe Panik.  He'd been called up from his minor league team, as usual without warning, and managed to make a phone call that woke his parents at 3 a.m., but they got on a plane and were in the stands for his first start--and his first major league hit.  Now learning the big league ropes, he fielded the ground ball that ended the no-hit game.

Meanwhile the Pittsburgh Pirates have the best winning percentage this month in the National League.  Their super-rookie, Gregory Polanco, hit safely in his first 11 games, and got on base in his first 15, both club records.