Combined no-hitter broken up by home run in ninth inning
When South Carolina pitcher Michael Roth heard coach Ray Tanner tell him good night, he knew his outing against Elon was over.
Roth asked Tanner if he was sure, and he was. Tanner said he should have made that call an inning earlier. And so with no hits allowed through seven innings, Roth took a seat while Nolan Belcher pitched the eighth without allowing a hit.
Junior Patrick Sullivan came out for the ninth, getting the first two outs on a ground ball to second and a fly ball to centerfield. Then, on a 1-0 count, Garrett Koster, a South Carolina native, sent Sullivan’s pitch out of the ballpark to mid-leftfield, breaking up the no-hitter in dramatic fashion.
The Gamecocks would still leave with an 8-1 win, and despite letting the first no-hitter since 1975 slip away, the mood was light.
“I do have to blame it on (pitcher) Joel Seddon,” Belcher said. “I got back to the dugout and he mentioned it.”
The superstition in baseball is that when a no-hitter is in progress, no one is supposed to talk about the no-hitter or it’s a jinx. Roth said that Erik Payne was a candidate to be the scapegoat, along with Seddon and one of the batboys, but Sullivan was not responsible.
“Maybe it’s a fault of mine that I wasn’t that engrossed in that,” Tanner said. “I wanted to win the game and if it happens, it happens. I didn’t change anything. We weren’t going to try to do anything differently to see that it happened. I know that our guys would have liked to have seen it, but I don’t get too wrapped up in it.”
Tanner intended to cap Roth at 85 pitches and said that he let him pitch an inning longer than he wanted to, as he finished with 99 pitches. In Roth’s seven innings, he struck out seven and walked three.
While Tanner said pitching was the story of the game, he was pleased with the eight-run offensive output after the Gamecocks only had five runs in their first two games of the season. First baseman Christian Walker had a home run and freshman shortstop Joey Pankake was 2-for-4 and scored three runs.
“I was very happy with Pankake tonight,” Tanner said. “I thought it in his fourth game, he was very comfortable, he made a couple of nice, tough plays. He was on base, got us a run, and scored three runs. I was really pleased with how he looked tonight. That was what we were hoping we’d get from him, and I was particularly proud of his effort.”
In the top of the third inning, Pankake made a grab on a line drive and then made the throw to first in time to end the inning with a double play after a runner was on first with one out. Even with a no-hitter going in his fourth game as a college shortstop, Pankake felt comfortable.
“There wasn’t much pressure on me,” Pankake said. “If I make an error, the no-hitter still stands, but I didn’t want to let them to score any runs. I just tried to make every play.”
Roth’s normal routine was broken up after a rain delay pushed the 3 p.m. scheduled start to 6:15 p.m. The team was able to eat two meals, but Roth was unhappy with the delayed start.
“I normally hate rain delays, and I normally pitch pretty crappy when we get delayed or something like that,” Roth said.
While the superstition of not talking about no-hitters might have to stay, Roth’s superstition about rain delays can be retired.