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With No-Hitter, Strasburg Tops Even Himself
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Strasburg took the mound. His performance, starting with the first pitch -- a 100 mph fastball, fouled straight back -- initially met the impossible expectations, then trumped them. He struck out two in the first inning. He struck out five of the first six, and media members, without sarcasm, were talking about his 22-strikeout pace. He didn't allow a base runner until the sixth inning, and that was a walk.
By the seventh inning, with San Diego State's offense having finally poked in a few runs, Air Force's line-by-line zeroes drew the crowd into a stir. Everybody realized. Even Strasburg. In his college career, he'd thrown one-hitters and two-hitters, but never a no-hitter. He needed just nine pitches to get through the eighth -- his first inning without a strikeout -- and by then, Gwynn didn't even worry about the pitch count, which stood at 103.
"I was like, 'People will kill us if I take him out,' " Gwynn said.
Most no-hitters come as a divined unlikelihood -- a succession of so many things aligning just right. Strasburg's never felt that way. He faced 28 batters, just one above the minimum, controlling them like marionettes. Seventeen struck out. Air Force had no hits and no near-hits.
In the final inning, Strasburg was throwing his best stuff of the game. "I was pretty much giving it everything I had left," he said. His teammates were lined against the dugout railing; his fans stood; Air Force's final hitter, Nathan Carter, faced a 1-2 count. Strasburg threw a slider that swooped in like a bird of prey; Carter watched, frozen. As the umpire pumped his arm, Strasburg took two steps off the mound and spiked his mitt to the ground. His catcher, Erik Castro, rushed to meet him, nearly tackling him by the legs. A full-team mob arrived seconds later.
"You've got the band out here, the cheerleaders, a sellout crowd," Strasburg was saying minutes later. "This is the way college baseball should be."
And that's what he kept talking about: College baseball. Not the future. Not the occasion.
"I don't think he really understands what's happened here," Gwynn said. "And somewhere along the line he's gonna say, 'Damn, I just threw a no-hitter in front of a packed crowd.' And I hope he feels good about it. Because we do. We're elated for him. Because all the press that he's gotten, you build him up, and there are people that want to see him fall flat on his face. And it just doesn't faze him. He knows what he has to do and goes out and does it."
