Lee Allows Two Baserunners
in Nine Innings of Nothing

Bill F. Lee threw his first pitch of Saturday afternoon, and Brett Butler hit it into right field for a clean single. It was the worst possible start to what became the most dominant outing of Lee's season. One batter in, one hit allowed, and the rest of the line still blank. It stayed that way for eight more innings.

Lee's final line read like something that should have included a no-hitter: nine innings, one hit, zero runs, one walk, four strikeouts, 100 pitches. Twenty-nine batters faced. Twenty-seven outs recorded. Only two men reached base in the entire game, and one of them was immediately erased on a double play. Seven of nine innings were perfect, three-up-three-down affairs. The Challengers put a ball in play 24 times after Butler's single. None of them found open grass.

Two total baserunners in nine innings. One hit. One walk. Both erased before they could matter.

After Butler singled to open the game, Lee got Mark McGwire on a flyout, struck out Gabby Hartnett, and retired Matt LeCroy on a grounder. The hit was already behind him. The second inning was spotless: Kevin Mitchell grounded out, Charlie Hickman grounded out, Woodie Held struck out. The third was the same sequence in different order: Dan Uggla struck out, Andruw Jones grounded out, Butler grounded out. The man who had singled 20 minutes earlier went down on a routine grounder. The pattern was set.

The fourth inning was the only other half-inning where a Challenger stood on a base. McGwire grounded out to start the frame, and Hartnett drew a walk — Lee's lone free pass. LeCroy promptly grounded into a double play. The walk existed for exactly one batter. It was the kind of inning that barely registers in the memory: a baserunner appeared and vanished in the same breath.

From there, Lee locked into something close to autopilot. The fifth was three groundouts. The sixth was three groundouts. The seventh was three groundouts. The eighth was three groundouts. The rhythm was numbing. Plymouth's hitters walked to the plate, swung at something near the zone, and sent the ball into the dirt. Lee was not overpowering — four strikeouts in a complete game is modest — but the contact he allowed was uniformly weak. Ground ball after ground ball found gloves at their expected coordinates.

The ninth began the way the previous four innings had ended. Uggla struck out for some variety. Jones grounded out. Butler, the only man to reach base via a hit all afternoon, grounded out to finish it. Lee needed 100 pitches, 62 of them strikes. Efficient does not begin to cover it.

The Perfect Plan's offense did just enough, which in this case meant three runs against Ben Cantwell. Jack Cust walked in the first inning, Tip O'Neil punched an infield single, and Ken Boyer singled to center to drive Cust home. In the second, Joe DeBerry reached on an error, Jimmy Smith doubled, and O'Neil doubled to left center to plate DeBerry. O'Neil added his second double in the seventh, this time to right center, scoring Smith. Three runs on seven hits, each run coming on a different swing by a different hitter. It was enough by a wide margin.

Cantwell deserved better than the loss. He went eight innings, scattered seven hits, and gave up three runs. His ERA sat at a respectable number. But he was pitching opposite a man who allowed two baserunners in a complete game, and there is no version of that matchup where the other pitcher gets remembered.

Lee's ERA after the shutout: 2.98. His record: 11–4. The numbers were already good before this start. What Saturday added was a game that sits at the outer edge of what a pitcher can do without throwing a no-hitter — one hit, one walk, both rendered meaningless by the 25 outs that surrounded them.