Interview #54: All about No-Hitters
Author Kevin Hurd talks about his 2-volume "From Randy Johnson to Dallas Braden: No-hitters Beyond the Box Score"
Kevin Hurd is a recently retired Air Force navigator who has a lifelong love of baseball and fascination with no-hitters, so much so that he spend the last few years researching, interviewing and writing a two-volume book that was published last fall: “From Randy Johnson to Dallas Braden Volume I+II: No-hitters Beyond the Box Score”
We talked about the Giants, Cal Poly SLO (the Harvard of the west, where he graduated the same year as my dad) and what makes no-hitters so unique in the sports world.
You're a Bay Area native? What part?
Silicon Valley. I grew up in Los Altos. I went to high school with Steve Jobs, although he was a senior and I was a freshman, so I wasn't exactly best buds with him.
How long did you live in the Bay Area? Did you go to Giants games?
From 1957 to ’84. Yeah, I went to about 20 games. My two favorite ones I had was Ed Halicki’s no-hitter in 1975, and the game where Willie McCovey hit three home runs, including a game-winner in the bottom of the 10th inning against the Mets in 1966.
Is that what drove your lifelong no-hitter fascination?
Pretty much it did. I mentioned in the book, in 2014, before I left the Air Force, I saw on ESPN.com, they were talking about the no-hitter that Clayton Kershaw threw. And they said that Vin Scully had just witnessed his 21st no-hitter. That was 9% of all no-hitters up to that point of all time. I thought that was interesting.
So you did every no-hitter that's ever been thrown in this book?
I went from 1900 to present. Some of my tables were from 1900 to 1950. The Dead Ball Era, which went up to about 1920, guys were throwing 400 innings every year. The top 20 pitchers, a lot of them come from the Dead Ball Era.
Oh yeah, I'm looking at the table now. It says 1893 is the first no-hitter at modern pitching distance. Everything before them was-
It was like 50 feet instead of 60 feet.
That would be a little easier. So you started with Noodles Hahn then?
Some of these guys had real discouraging nicknames, so I just put their regular name.
There’s been a lot of no-hitters. Which ones stick out to you the most?
In the first volume I talked about the best pitched no-hitters of all time. The second volume, I talked about the most unlikely no-hitters. Some of the best ones were Randy Johnson throwing a perfect game at the age of 40 against Atlanta in 2004, and Atlanta had a very good team that year. Arizona had a horrible team, they were like 51-111. Atlanta was like 45 games better. I saw games like that, David and Goliath games.
Or pitchers who were journeymen who threw unlikely no-hitters. Or guys who are actually good pitchers, were drafted very high because they did incredible in high school or college, threw a no-hitter, then they wrecked their arm.
Tim Lincecum had a huge pitch count in his, what did he throw like 150 pitches?
Yeah. Both no-hitters were against the Padres.
For a while that was a yearly occurrence for my Padres to get no-hit by the Giants. It happened three years in a row.
Oh yeah, Jonathan Sanchez threw one. I included that game. When Sanchez threw his no-hitter, himself and Eli Whiteside were both last minute replacements. Whiteside was the catcher because Bengie Molina, who was the normal starter, his wife was having a baby. And Randy Johnson, who was going to be the starter that night, had a hurt arm, so he wasn't able to make it, so they put in Sanchez and then he wound up throwing the no-hitter.
Did you have a rule about whether to include combined no-hitters or not?
We included them. I almost didn't include them several times and I go, oh yeah, I got to go look at the combined no-hitters, too.
The first one was when Babe Ruth was ejected after the first pitch.
Oh yeah, that was the first combined no-hitter.
Oh yeah I forgot we recently had a combined one in the World Series.
The Houston pitchers, yeah.
What are what are your thoughts on them? To me, they’re not special. A starter had a good start and then the relievers have good outings, but nothing amazing about them.
They're in a different category. Individual no-hitters, there's been about 300, and there's been 20 combined. One thing I found funny when I went through Jonathan Sanchez's game against the Padres in 2009, I went to look at his statistics, his career statistics on baseball-reference.com. I saw that he had 137 starts in his career and one complete game, and that was the no-hitter. And then I made a list of all pitchers who threw no-hitters, who had the smallest percentage of complete games to their starts. I’ve listed the top 10 pitchers for that. Sanchez had the lowest percentage.
Blake Snell’s no-hitter last season was the first time he’d ever pitched into the 9th inning.
I could believe that. They won't even do that for shutouts now. The guy gets a no-hitter, that’s his only complete game. Mike Fiers, he used to pitch for Houston and Oakland, he got two no-hitters, and those were the only two complete games he ever got in his career out of 316 starts.
It comes down to the pitch count now, even with a no-hitter. Like if they walk someone the bullpen comes in anyways.
The pitching coach (Dave Righetti) and Bruce Bochy, the manager, talked and said, OK, he hadn't pitched for a while, so they said they were gonna let him go 60 pitches and they were gonna take him out unless he had a no-hitter going. So they never took him out. He kept the no-hitter going.
Had you done any baseball research projects like this before this book?
This is the first one. There is one something I did back in 2010 after the Giants won the World Series, but I did this for all sports. What managers played what position when they were players? And that was interesting. There's logic to it that more were catchers, which makes perfect sense, but there have been a couple successful pitchers who went on to be a Hall of Fame manager, like Tommy Lasorda.
So are you still a Giants fan?
Yeah, I am.
You bounced around after leaving the Bay Area, right?
I went to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, NE. Went to Michigan, near Detroit, Selfridge Air National Guard Base. I followed the Tigers during the time I was there, I was there for 9 years. And then came here where the Rangers are back in 2001 and I was hired in 2014.
So you went to Cal Poly. I went to Cal Poly for business, too. When did you graduate?
December ‘79 is when I graduated.
My dad was ’79, too.
Oh, I might have been in class with him.
(note: it turns out that they did not remember each other, but then again it’s a big campus)
So you went to school for business and then joined the Air Force?
No, for four years I screwed around, really didn't know what the hell I wanted to do. It was 1982, I was driving home from work and I heard an advertisement on the radio about joining the Air Force as a navigator. I had an older brother who was in the Air Force, the one who helped me with the book, and I said is this something I can do? He said, yeah, absolutely. It took me like a couple years to get in.
Your brother must have been into baseball too, then.
Oh yeah, absolutely. From 1965 to ‘69, from ages 8 to 12, I played Little League. It didn't go past that.
So what got you into baseball to start? Why are you a huge baseball fan?
I was the youngest kid in the family and my brothers were all baseball players, and were totally into the Giants. I just fell in line, basically. I followed the Giants late in 1965 and then after the season ended, we used to get those almanacs, you know, at the end of the year, Information Please Almanac from the New York Times. I saw the information there, all facts, it was great, there wasn't any opinion. I got to the point where I had memorized all the World Series winners from 1901 to 1965 and how many games the series went. It was interesting to memorize that stuff.
I got good at working on numbers and I could do multiply 2-digit numbers in my head and I can do it really fast. I could do division and multiplication to figure out batting averages, for basketball, points per game, rebounds per game, for football, yards per attempt for the quarterback. So that was very interesting.
Are you into all the more advanced stats that have come up?
I'm into OPS. Bill James was the one who got that it's better to have a high OBP than a .300 average. If you have a .300 average and you don't walk any, a guy with .400 OBP is better. I tend to think that those guys with over .400 OBP who don't have any power should probably have them bat 7 to 9, or 1 and . The top two guys and the bottom three guys. Guys who are batting 3, 4, 5 and 6 should have power.
So you're not totally old school. Kind of in between.
In between. I don't get into the ERA+ and all that. I didn't know what WAR was before I started the book. I wound up doing the best 10 no-hit games ever thrown. Well what's the best 10? The guy who struck out the most? Perfect games? By logic, they would be the best ten since they didn't allow anybody on base. But I went with game score, which is something that Bill James came up with. So I based best no-hitters based on game score.
Didn’t Kerry Wood have the record for game score with his 20-strikeout game?
He has the highest game score, but he didn't throw a no-hitter. One hit allowed and 20 strikeouts and no walks.
NOTE: The formula for Game Score from the baseball-reference main site is: Start with 50 points. Add 1 point for each out recorded, (or 3 points per inning). Add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th. Add 1 point for each strikeout. Subtract 2 points for each hit allowed. Subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed. Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed. Subtract 1 point for each walk.
In the book, do you go into any stories and anecdotes? Beyond-the-box-score type stuff?
I did 23 games. Some of the games, I was able to interview both the pitcher and the catcher, some just the pitcher or the catcher, and some I didn't get an interview on either one.
So of all the interviews you did, what was one of the more eye opening things you learned from the people directly involved in the games?
I found it interesting how when I was talking to the catchers how so many of these guys… I mean, Johnny Bench was groomed to be a catcher by his dad. But a lot of these guys, they wound up being like catcher on their Little League team 'cause nobody else wanted to do it, and there were better guys on the team who are playing shortstop or pitching. Some of the guys got drafted as a third baseman or second baseman, but they weren't hitting well enough when they were in the minor leagues and somebody from the front office came down and said, if you want to get to the big leagues, switch to being a catcher; you can get there much faster than if you stay at third base.
One guy, his dad bribed him to play catcher. The dad was a coach and gave him like $50 to be the catcher for the whole season.
Do you have a pilot's license, or were you in the back seat?
Navigator. I didn't need a pilot's license. I did my training at a base that no longer exists. Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento. Shut it down in the early 90s.
Did you get stationed anywhere overseas?
I want temporary duty in several places. Mildenhall, which is about 20 miles north of London in England. And I went to a base that shared their field with the civilian airport in Athens, Greece. And in Okinawa, at Kadena Air Base. Fairbanks, Alaska. A lot of the stuff I did was Greece and Okinawa.
You didn't get sent to Kuwait?
Oh yeah, I did. I was in the Gulf War, the very, very first one in ‘91. Also did stuff that happened in Kosovo in 1997, went there for a couple weeks. We were scheduled to go there anyway. The crews swapped out from another base. About a week before I went there, the stuff broke open and we were dropping bombs. I wound up going there for two weeks and then came back.
Were you involved in any missions?
I didn't fly on that one. I was a staff guy, put together all the kids for the crews when they were out flying.
But you flew in Kuwait?
Oh yeah, definitely flew in Kuwait. Working a 20-hour day every other day.
Who was your favorite player growing up?
Willie Mays and Willie McCovey.
Is there anybody since Willie Mays that you feel is similar when you watch him?
Trout. He's pretty damn good. Ohtani's good too, but I don't watch that many games on TV anymore.
Are you still a baseball fan?
Yeah. I got really into the no-hitters from 1900 to 2021 for the last four years. I’ll start watching baseball games again.
Burned yourself out a little?
Yeah.
So you're still a Giants fan, even though you're in Ranger country?
I didn't mind seeing the Rangers win the World Series because Bochy’s their manager. I think Bochy should be going to the Hall of Fame for World Series wins in two leagues.
Were you able to follow baseball when you were in the Air Force?
Somewhat, but even if I wasn't TDY, I was at home and I was flying long missions to Central America. That was just a long-ass day. We’d fly three of them in a week and I wasn't following anything.
That was in the 80s and 90s, so that wasn't as easy as turning on the computer and getting all the info I take it. Did you follow the Giants when they won all their World Series?
Oh yeah. 2010 to ’14. I mentioned that in the book, the World Series in 2014 where the Royals were making a rally in the bottom of the ninth off Madison Bumgarner. One guy hit a ball to left field and it got past the left fielder. Center fielder threw it in, and luckily the runner stopped at third. I was thinking, oh my God, they're going to blow it. The next guy popped out, so they won. I was like yelling, and my wife and my daughter came into the room wondering if I was having a heart attack or something.
What's something an avid baseball fan will appreciate most about your book?
For one thing, the David and Goliath contrast. Where the average pitcher can get a no-hitter. In basketball and football and hockey, that doesn't really happen. The closest equivalent is in hockey, rookie goalkeeper could get in there and get a shutout, but still that isn't still the same. In the NBA, a 6th man or 7th man can come in and score 50 points. That doesn't happen a hell of a lot either. There's 150 guys that have scored fifty or more points in a game, and like 130 out of 150 were either Hall of Famers or have been at least in one All Star Game. Whereas the pitchers, the bottom 40 or 50 pitchers, I think there was about five guys that went to All Star games. The human arm can only take so much, you can't pitch everyday. No other sports says, oh, well, your soccer goalie can play once every four games, you have to play somebody else in the other three games, that doesn't happen. That I found very interesting.
But I also saw you said there's no such thing as a bum who throws a no-hitter. Which is true, but then you have the guys who had lesser careers like Dallas Braden or Philip Humber. Didn’t a guy throw one in his first start? Bud Smith?
Bud Smith was close, it was like his fifth start. Bobo Holloman in 1953 with the St. Louis Browns against the Philadelphia A's. The Browns were the last place team, the A’s were 7th out of 8 teams.
Bobo Holloman, the previous six years he'd been in the minors, and he pitched winter ball every year, and he pitched over 1,300 innings in six years. I think his arm just went out. So he had a short career, he was a 30-year-old rookie and his first start, he throws a no-hitter. You could say he was lucky, but he had a good game. I wouldn't call him a bum. He had a sore arm and that led to his career being short. And Philip Humber, same kind of thing.
Who was your favorite pitcher?
For the 23 games, I would say, well I'm a Giants fan and I like the story with Jonathan Sanchez’s no-hitter. I love stories like that. Ed Halicki’s game, he had funny stories. I think that's one of the best chapters. When he was playing in the minor leagues and had Rocky Bridges as his manager, who was a very funny guy, Halicki was pitching and four runs had come in and the bases were loaded. There were no outs. Then Rocky Bridges came out. And he looked at the scoreboard and there was an orange moon above the scoreboard. He goes to Halicki and says, ‘heck of an orange moon, isn't it?’ Then he just turns around and starts walking to the dugout. And Halicki goes ‘is there something you want to say to me?’ He goes, ‘let's just get this son of a b**** out.’
Philip Humber, he psyched himself out after he threw the perfect game. It's like after he did that, he felt like every game had to be a perfect game after that. And there was another pitcher I tried to interview, Joe Cowley for the White Sox in 1986, he threw it against a good California Angels team. He never won a game after the no-hitter. That was the end of the 1986 season. In 1987, he was with the Phillies, and he never won a game. He was 0-4 with a 9.00 ERA, he couldn't throw the ball over the plate. It was like Steve Blass disease on steroids. (0-4, 15.43 ERA, 17 walks in 11.2 innings)
How were you able to track down these players for your book?
I looked at all these numbers on peoplefinder.com and yellowpages.com. A couple guys said, ‘how did you get my number?’ One, I got a hold of his wife. She was very suspicious and I just said I wanted to talk about the no-hit game your husband caught. And she goes, oh, yeah, Dave Stieb’s no-hitter in 1991. So then her husband came back from a trip, at first he said was tired. We did the interview in 25 minutes and he was getting more hyped about it the longer we were going.
One of his friends went to the game with his girlfriend that day. It was the second game of a double header, and his girlfriend was getting cold so they left early. And this friend, when he was a kid his dad had season tickets to the Yankees. So he saw about 600, 700 Yankees games and never saw a no-hitter. And he didn’t see a no-hitter this time, either, 'cause his girlfriend wanted to leave 'cause it was cold.
I bet he never let her forget that.
They had the radio on the whole time they're driving back and he pulled into her driveway and there was the final out.
Do you have any other upcoming projects or that you have in the back of your head?
Well, possibly I might do it a Volume 3. There's other no-hit games like Dock Ellis where he was on LSD. I wanted to include that in this one, but I had 39 chapters. We pared it down to 23 and it was still two 300-page books. If we had 39, it would have been 1,200 pages and four books. I don't know if we'd ever have gotten done with it.
I've never seen a no-hitter. A few one-hitters, but nothing magical. I remember during the awful Padres seasons from 2012-14, it was the one thing we had to look forward to, getting no-hit by the Giants. My favorite no-hitter memory is one day, I was flying to Cooperstown to visit the Hall of Fame with my dad. Well there’s no direct flight, so I was delayed a couple hours in Chicago and finally landed around 1am in Albany, with still a couple hours to go to drive into town. It was too late, so my dad was still in Cooperstown and I was supposed to rent a car at the airport and drive myself. Only one rent-a-car stand was even open, and then my credit card kept bouncing when I tried to reserve one since they thought someone stole it and was spending money in upstate New York. I called my dad, no answer. Called him two more times with no answer. Finally ten minutes later he called back and said, sorry, was watching Matt Cain finish his perfect game. So I learned about that one in the lobby of Hertz, and eventually rented a car and got into town shortly before sunrise.
It’s an impressive volume of books Kevin put together, with tables and inside stories. I liked his stories of cold-calling these ex players and how excited they’d get talking to a complete stranger about a career highlight like that. Hopefully you’re able to check the books out, and also get to see one in person one day!