Tom Seaver never pitched a no-hitter for the Mets. Dwight Gooden never did, either. No one wearing a Mets uniform has pitched one.
But on a sun-splashed, chilly, windy Easter Sunday, Jon Niese, a 25-year-old home-grown southpaw who had just signed a five-year, $25.5 million extension, was making his pitch for history.
Niese had thrown 88 pitches over six innings when he took the mound in the seventh with a 7-0 lead. The line score on the scoreboard blared: BRAVES 0 0 0 METS 7 8 0.
Only two existing franchises have not had one of its pitchers toss a no-hitter. The Padres have gone 41 years without a no-hitter. The Mets, eventual 7-5 victors to complete a three-game sweep of the Braves, have now gone 7,971 regular season games, and 74 postseason games without a no-hitter.
Niese, an adrenaline rush threatening to sabotage him, had walked three batters in the first two innings so this was not a perfect game, and no one at Citi Field, already so accustomed to imperfection from its team, particularly cared. The tantalizing vision of catcher Mike Nickeas jumping into Niese’s arms a la Yogi-Don Larsen was simply too seductive for the 27,855 fans.
Niese’s fastball, 92 mph at the start, was still humming along between 88 and 91 mph.
“I felt good,” Niese said. “I just wanted to execute pitches.”
But he needed outs, and he needed them quickly. Because Terry Collins planned to remove him after 115 pitches, no-no or no no-no.
“You don’t sacrifice his health for an inning,” Collins said.
Dan Uggla led off the seventh. Niese walked him on a full-count backdoor cutter.
In stepped Freddie Freeman, a left-handed bat.
And on the very next pitch, the 99th pitch, Niese surrendered a line single in the hole between first and second base on a first pitch he failed to locate inside.
No no-no.
“It was a two-seam fastball that just was over middle of the plate,” Niese said.
Citi Field, taught by old Shea Stadium how to handle these cruel teases, applauded for Niese.
Lucas Duda lost a flyball in the sun and Niese would lose his shutout and Citi Field was standing and cheering him as he headed slowly for the dugout.
“The fans have always been good to me here in New York. … For me, I think that helps out a lot, just to have a solid backing of the fans and knowing that they believe in me and they trust me,” Niese said.
Niese had thrown a five-inning perfect game as a Defiance (Ohio) High School senior against Wauseon.
“We were up 10-0, so if you’re up 10 runs after five, that’s a run rule,” he said.
Niese chuckled at the caricature of himself in a bunny outfit holding a large carrot inside his locker accompanied by Happy Niese-ter at the top.
“Whoever did it, that’s pretty clever,” Niese said.
Someone wanted to know when he started thinking about the no-hitter, and he joked: “Um, I guess the first inning.”
If Niese had taken the no-hitter into the eighth, he would have lobbied Collins to let him continue.
“I’da ran back out there,” Niese said, and chuckled. “It’d been hard to take me out, that’s for sure.”
Third-base coach Tim Teufel, the former World Series champion, used to go to the ballpark many days and nights from 1986-91 wondering whether Gooden had a no-hitter in his raging right arm.
“He’s a guy that had the stuff to pull something like that off,” Teufel said, “and really Niese today, he had really good stuff today.”
Good stuff. Good movement. Good enough for Nickeas to be thinking no-hitter.
“I think those last nine outs are really tough to get,” Nickeas said, “but, you know, just an awesome job.”
Every Mets catcher from Jerry Grote to Gary Carter to Mike Piazza to Nickeas has been forced to rue those last nine outs … or last six outs … or last three outs … or last two outs … or last one out. Seaver had a pair of no-hitters (one of which was a perfect game) ruined in the ninth, and didn’t pitch a no-no until 1978 when he was a Cincinnati Red. Nolan Ryan hurled seven no-hitters only after he left the Mets.
“We’re still waiting. … It could be somebody on this staff, you never know,” Teufel said. “If we play good defense, and somebody’s on that evening, it can happen.”
It didn’t happen on Niese-ter Sunday. Might never happen, unless and until the modern-day version of Casey’s 1962 Mets is at the bat some day.