Jake Arrieta’s no-hitter last night brings back memories of past Cubs no-hitters. There have been six I remember. (I don’t remember Sam Jones’s in 1955.) I didn’t hear much of Kenny Holtzman’s first no-hitter. I got out of work (making truck bumpers in the summer is a good incentive to get through college) about 3:30 pm. I turned on the radio in my car. I didn’t know what was happening for sure (it was the top of the ninth), but from Vince and Lou’s voices, I could tell it was something big. Obviously, it was.
I think perhaps the no-hitter I remember the most, though, was the one I didn’t hear any of. In 1972, I was living in Connecticut. It was the first time I wasn’t in Illinois for the beginning of the season. Sunday, April 16, 1972, was the second day of the season (the season was starting late because of a players’ strike), and I was trying to find out how to find out how the Cubs had done. (If we had only had the Internet back then – or ESPN.) I turned on the national news on TV to see if they would have sports. They didn’t – except this day they did.
Burt Hooton had started for us that day. He was a rookie, and he had a special pitch, a knuckle curve. He had pitched three games in 1971, one a three-hitter and one a two-hitter. But what he did that cold spring Sunday went beyond that.
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