The Saint Louis Dispatch front page calls for an asterisk next to the Johan Santana no hitter. Kind of ballsy since they’ve had the biggest cheat of all time.
Like Vic said in one of the comments.
I wonder if there’s an asterisk next to Mark McGwire’s franchise record for home runs in their PR guide?
That’s all there is to say about that.
Baseball goes above and beyond to protect the games human element and for once the Mets catch a break, when usually they’re on the receiving side of it.
The no-hitter is ours, we celebrate and move on!
Been a Met fan since the late 70′s and I’m a big Santana fan, but here was my take on it:
http://voices.yahoo.com/santana-chalks-first-no-hitter-mets-history-11419276.html?cat=14
Picture it this way… top of the 9th, 2 outs, no-hitter still intact. Same play, goes foul by an inch, wrongly ruled a hit, Santana strikes the next guy out. Are Met fans still saying the human element is just “part of the game?”
When it’s something you want badly, even if it’s not exactly legit or you know you got a huge, undeserved break, it clouds objectivity.
In my mind, we still don’t have a true no-hitter yet and Armando Galarraga DID pitch a perfect game – regardless of what the record bookk say.
That said, I don’t believe Santana completely deserved a no-hitter because of the Beltran foul ball even though he was gutty and masterful. However, the Mets as a franchise, did deserve it because they have had they share of bad luck where they should have had a no-hitter – especially John Maine against the Marlins. That one was an even better performance (14 K’s, completely dominant, and that LUCKY dribbler up the third base line ruins it).
Jon,
Thanks for your comment. Nice article. I respect your take on this but mine is different. You are correct that if this happened in the 9th inning, and if Beltrans ball was actually foul but called fair, Mets fans would be in an uproar against the ‘human element’ of the game. But that’s not what happened. If that would have happened it would’ve felt normal since those are the things we expect as Met fans. We are expecting something to go very wrong and they usually do with this team.
But this is one time that things went in our favor and we should accept that just like we accept and move on from every bad call that umpires make. And they make them every game whether it’s a fair/foul call, or a ball/strike call, or something else.
So, if you are really a Mets fan, take a seat, relax, and enjoy the no-hitter.
John Maine, really? Yes great game, but a dribbler hit counts just as much as a rocket home run, counts just as much as a bad call does….It is what is is my friend….A NO-HITTER!