Anniversary of the No Hitter to clinch the NL West. Mike Scott finished an unbelievable three game stretch of baseball. Deshaies - 2 hit Shutout and k's first 8, Nolan Ryan 1 hit Shutout, and then the unbelievable no hitter to clinch. Let the memories flow... <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GXuYJZe79L4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
listened to Milo call all three of those on the radio. Such an awesome three days. I remember the manager pinch hitting for his pitcher so Deshaises wouldn't set the record (no one has ever started a game with 9 consecutive Ks except a guy in 1884, back in the deadball era). I remember the magic number being 1 to eliminate the Giants, and all we had to do is beat them and we're in. A no-hitter is special. Clinching is special. Clinching head-to-head is special. But all three in one night? Damn, that was awesome.
Whenever the game is brought up, I always tell this story: my birthday is September 22 and in 1986, I wanted to be able to skip school and go to an afternoon Astros' game as my present. In those days (I'm old), tickets were physically allocated to Ticketmaster locations (like Foley's). So my mom and I went to buy them that summer for the September 25th game; I held those tickets in my hand, literally, before my mom decided she wanted to see my school schedule first and so we didn't buy them. Well, I ended up with a really piss-poor progress report that first semester and was grounded. I'm still angry. BTW, mention of Scott/1986 also means I must mention how unbelievably dominant he was.
I was in high school and we had marching band practice while the game was going on. Our director let us take a break and go listen to the last few innings in our cars. That was a fun day. My dad was at the game. He always tells me it was really kind of creepy because it was so loud that the rafters were literally shaking. He thought the whole dome was going to implode. He said his ears were ringing after the game and that is the loudest he's ever heard any crowd for any game ever. And, oh yeah... Spoiler
That's pretty surprising, considering the attendance was realtively small (less than 40,000, iirc - I want to say... 37K?)
My Mom and I were two of those 32K. I remember not wanting to leave the Dome. We probably stayed a good thirty minutes after the game was over. I even kept some of the confetti that was dropped from the rafters!
