No No No

I was at the Giants game on Friday night to witness Jonathan Sanchez throw a no-hitter. I'm going to do a retro-running diary of this game soon, so stay tuned for that. But for now, I'll just say this: I was pretty certain that I would never, ever, ever see a no-hitter live and in person. No-hitters are, of course, extremely rare. There have only been 220 in baseball history since 1900; a rate of essentially two a year. Those are already pretty poor odds to see one happen.

On top of that, you have to actually attend the game that the no-hitter is going to be thrown in. I've gone to probably close to 10 games this year so far, which puts me on pace for around 20 this season. I consider that a lot for one baseball season. But the Giants play 81 home games, and 162 overall.Not the best odds. And don't forget that there's no guarantee that a no-hitter is going to happen during the season at all, or that it'll even happen to the Giants. Remember, the last time a Giants pitcher threw a no-hitter was 33 years ago -- 10 years before I was even born.

Sure, you can try and up your odds by going to a game being pitched by the team's ace. But Jonathan Sanchez was far from the ace on this team; his ERA was in the 5.30 range, he boasted a 2-8 record, and had been recently demoted to the bullpen because he had been pitching so poorly. I think everyone coming to the park on Friday night was preparing for the worst, just proving that you can never predict how it's going turn out.

So back to the point: attendance at a no-hitter is pretty much just dumb luck. You need a whole combination of forces working at once, and fortunately it all came together on this night. Congratulations to Jonathan Sanchez.

Also, find the video of Jonathan Sanchez's postgame news conference. You can see the top of my head at the bottom of the screen -- the black haired person on the left. Hollerrr.