Baseball is a beautiful sport and Mike Fiers now has a unique place in history books after pitching the second no-hitter of his career.
The May 7th game began an hour and a half late due to an issue with the Oakland Coliseum lights but Fiers took the mound as scheduled and threw nothing but, well, fire.
The affirmation of baseball’s beauty came from the unique stats surrounding the game. For starters, Fiers needed 131 pitches to complete his no-no which is the most pitches required since August 21, 2015, when it took 134 pitches to complete a no-hitter. The pitcher that day? Mike Fiers. Further, Fiers has only thrown two complete games in his entire career and both were no-hitters. He is the first pitcher in history to carry that stat.
Add this gem of a stat, as pointed out by Adrian Garro on Twitter, regarding the date of the no-hitter in relation to other Athletics pitching feats.
Mike Fiers threw a no-hitter tonight, May 7, 2019.
Catfish Hunter threw a perfect game May 8, 1968.@DALLASBRADEN209 threw a perfect game May 9, 2010.Wild. @Athletics pic.twitter.com/zsfKiwMLE5
— Adrian Garro (@adriangarro) May 8, 2019
Both of his no-hitters came in inter-league play while pitching for the home team in an American League park (Astros vs Dodgers, Athletics vs Reds).
The Reds came into Oakland after going 2-2 against the Giants over the weekend. In the four-game series leading up the no-hitter, Cincinnati scored 37 runs (an average of 9.25 per game). There’s no real connection to his first no-hitter in terms of this stat. The Dodgers were 2-2 in their four games prior to being no-hit but they averaged only 4 runs per game and the games were split between, wait for it, Cincinnati and Oakland.
Fiers became the 35th pitcher to throw multiple no-hitters, threw the 300th no-hitter in major league history, and threw the first no-hitter of the 2019 season. The first no-hitter of the 2018 season was also thrown by the Athletics (Sean Manaea) in April.
As is always the case, it took some solid defense behind the mound to preserve the feat including a home run robbing catch by Ramon Laureano.
[the_ad id=”11148″]Topps has issued a commemorative baseball card in honor of Fiers’ historic night as a part of their Topps Now series. A full checklist can be found under the “Associated Hub” button at the top of this article but the Mike Fiers card is number 193 of the set and is his first of the season. Autographed parallels are also available.
Ramon Laureano’s catch is captured on card 192 while Justin Turner, Hyun-Jin Ryu, and Pete Alonso round out the day’s offerings.
These cards are available for purchase online for 24 hours and print runs are limited to the number purchased in that time frame. Click any of the links to be directed to the purchase page.
