How I Missed a No-Hitter

May 5, 2007:  It was a Saturday morning and I was in class (oh, how I hated Saturday morning class).  When I got out of class, I got a message from my friend John saying that he had an extra ticket to the Yankee game.  When I didn't answer my phone he stopped by my house, but nobody was home.  He had to leave for the game, but he still had the ticket if I wanted to get myself to the Bronx.  So I drove myself to the Bronx (incidentally, I'm pretty sure that was the first time I ever got in a car on Long Island and drove it off of Long Island).  Anyway, I met John and his then girlfriend (now wife) Liz in the Bronx.  Our seats were in the right field bleachers (I sat in the left field bleachers several times, but I'm pretty sure that was the only time I sat in the right field bleachers).  As the game went on, Chien-Ming Wang was not allowing any hits or walking anybody.  At some point, the crowd started getting very excited with every out.  I remember Liz noticing that the crowd reactions were different, but not realizing what was going on.  When she asked us, we did the whole superstitious can't talk about the no-hitter thing and just told her not to worry about it.  Hideki Matsui made a nice running catch on a ball hit by Ichiro to start the seventh inning.  At that point, I thought Wang was going to do it.  With one out in the eighth, Ben Broussard hit a homerun and the perfect game was over.

Seeing a no-hitter in person would be the coolest thing I could experience during the regular season.  Unless you had season tickets for a team with Sandy Koufax or Nolan Ryan on it, you need to get really, really lucky to see a no-hitter.  I was five outs away from a perfect game, but I'll gladly settle for a no-hitter.

That brings me to Friday.  A group from my school was going to the Mets game.  There was a large group of parents and students and some teachers.  So I easily could have gone, but at no point did I ever consider going to the game.  I can live with it.  I stayed home, caught the last six outs for Santana, and watched the Celtics beat the Heat.  Then I went over to my friend Vin's house to enjoy some Sam Adams Summer Ale.  So it was still a good night.

P.S.  I retract the second thing I conceded in my last post.  Go Celtics!