An Overview of Johan Santana's No Hitter
One of the most unbelievable games I have ever witnessed was back on June 1st, 2012 in Flushing, Queens. My childhood team, the New York Mets sent their ace lefty Johan Santana to the mound to take on the defending world series champion St. Louis Cardinals, unknowing that history would be made by the former Cy Young award winner.
All it took was a meager 51 years for a New York Met to throw a no-hitter, one of the rarest feat’s one can accomplish in baseball, but after an 134 pitch outing that would eventually be questioned regarding Santana’s future, he stuck out postseason hero David Freese to record his 27th and final out of a historic performance. This game was obviously covered by many people over the course of the following days, as it was a national event occurring in arguably one of the most important cities in the entire world. Three beat writers who covered this game were Steven Miller with MLB.com, Tim Rohan with the New York Times, and Michael Nargi with Bleacher Report. The three writers covered the event with different style, as Miller used a more “feature” approach to the story, Rohan was more analytical and used a “hard news” style, and Nargi used a “feature” approach.
Miller’s coverage of the Johan no-hitter was a bit in depth, as he took the time to note sound-bits heard in interview with many people involved in the game from both sides. Miller notes the long-standing history of fabulous Mets pitchers who had never reached the pinnacle of performance on a baseball mound in a Mets uniform, and precisely calls out several pitchers who had achieved a one-hitter, not nearly as astounding as Johan’s no-hitter. He discusses Terry Collins, the second year manager for the New York Mets and his decision to keep Santana in the game regardless of pitch count, a major issue for the veteran who was returning from surgery to repair his torn anterior capsule in his throwing shoulder. This controversial decision to leave Santana in to finish the no-hitter very well may have led to the demise of the once-dominant ace of the Twins and the Mets. Miller notes how there were multiple opportunities for the Cardinals to get a base hit in the game, as in the sixth inning Carlos Beltran hit a ball that hit the chalk of the foul line, which should have been a fair ball and base hit, but the third base umpire Adrian Johnson ruled the ball foul, keeping the no-hitter in check. Mike Baxter also sacrificed his playing career, more-or-less, to keep the bid alive on a Yadier Molina fly ball to left in the seventh inning. Overall, Miller does a good job incorporating all aspects of the game into his article, and you can really feel what the atmosphere must have been like inside the ballpark on that night.
A more hard-news style approach to covering the game would be the one taken by Tim Rohan of the New York Times, who bores you to death with his over-elaborated log of the events of the game, which many aren’t even important to the outcome Santana achieved. Rohan prefaces the game with some interview with Terry Collins, similar to the one noted in Miller’s article where they discuss pitch count as a possible issue that may come into play for Santana. However, once he begins to cover the game, Rohan continuously places emphasis on small events that took place, saturating the reader with useless information. While it may have been a good account to use thirty years back when the internet didn’t exist, in today’s age, even five years ago, attention span’s were not looking to delve into the useless information that took place in a sporting event. This is the internet, not radio, and it is unnecessary to note all the information you can find in video to match the game.
The final article covering the Johan no-hitter was done by Michael Nargi with Bleacher Report. Nargi certainly implements an opinionated method of covering this game, as he declares the no hitter one of the “best pitched games in recent memory”, which is a ridiculous statement as Santana walked five batters in the game and reasonably should not have even had a no-hitter. His ridiculously high pitch count also warrants confusion regarding Nargi’s take. He tries to make the argument that the no hitter was better than the perfect games thrown by Phillip Humber and Roy Halladay, which is absurd as there are fewer than thirty perfect games ever recorded. Nargi tries to back his statements up with the fact that Santana was coming off of serious injury, but it is just a ridiculous take when you take into account how unbelievable other pitching performances were. While I didn’t exactly like this article based on the content of it, as a fan I emotionally connected with this article. I can understand his excitement, and as him and I are clearly lifelong Mets fans, we want to bask in the glory of how wonderful that June 1st night truly was in what we all thought we’d never see as Mets fans.
Read: Miller Article
Read: Rohan Article
Read: Nargi Article