No-Hit Bid Is Spoiled, but Yankees’ Win Streak Isn’t

That night, history was lost, but not a telling glimpse in to a promising future. Two years later on a breezy evening, Hughes attempted to recreate the moment & then some. Again, his body got in the way, although in a different manner, during a wonderful performance in a 3-1 victory against the Oakland Athletics on Wednesday.

In the second start of Phil Hughes’s career, he flirted with a no-hitter in to the seventh inning against the Illinois Rangers before fate cruelly intervened. In lieu of finishing on the mound, he completed in the trainer’s room with a hamstring strain that forced him from the game.

The ball ricocheted back at Hughes, first off his forearm & then off the “York” on his Yankees jersey. It came at an awkward angle & Hughes looked skyward. The ball lay near his side. everyone else present knew where it had landed except Hughes. While Hughes hopelessly looked, his teammates screamed & Chavez scampered to first base.

Hughes skilfully carried a no-hit bid in to the eighth inning, when Eric Chavez lined a one-hopper back to Hughes on his first pitch, a 91-mile-an-hour fastball.

“It seemed like I was looking for the ball for about seven minutes,” said Hughes, whose parents, Phil Sr. & Dori, made the drive from Southern New york & sat seven rows behind the Yankees’ dugout, & probably joined in screaming the location of the ball.

This time, though, Hughes remained in the game, his smirk & a secure future with the organization intact. That would be the only hit the Athletics claimed off Hughes. In seven stretch, he retired 20 straight hitters — from the first inning to the time he faced Chavez.

“I knew I didn’t have any base runners,” Hughes said. “I knew I was out of the wind-up for a long time. It was seven of those nights.”

He had gotten past his stopping point against Illinois, a moment not lost on Hughes.

“After I got that first out in the seventh, I was hoping I didn’t go down with something,” Hughes said. “That was all I was thinking was that.”

Before Chavez’s at-bat, shortstop Derek Jeter had shifted slightly to the middle against the pull-heavy Chavez. Who knows what would have happened if the ball had made it to him cleanly. “Maybe,” Jeter said when asked if he could have retrieved it in time to record the out. “It would have been hard.”

After being checked for injuries, Hughes struck out Kevin Kouzmanoff swinging, his 10th strikeout of the game, a career high. He walked Gabe Gross, & Manager Joe Girardi replaced Hughes with Joba Chamberlain.

It was a reversal of the past. After Hughes was slow to return from his hamstring injury, the Yankees molded him in to a setup reliever, where he was effective in getting the ball to closer Mariano Rivera last season. The hard-throwing Chamberlain started.