Mike Couzens has been named manager of broadcasting and media relations, the Fort Wayne TinCaps announced today.
By now the Noise Meter on the city’s largest outdoor TV screen had been buried far to the right, and 6,267 throats were in sweet harmony inside Parkview Field as Bowling Green’s No. 2 hitter Ty Morrison stepped into the left-handed batter’s box.
For 8 2/3 innings, five TinCaps pitchers had played a splendid game of keep-away with the Bowling Green bats.
No runs.
No hits.
And nobody in his seat when Morrison, a .238 hitter who had flied to center, popped out to the catcher and watched a third strike go by in his three previous visits to the plate, got in the way of history in what still turned out to be a 2-0 TinCaps win Monday night.
It was Fort Wayne’s eighth straight win and 15th in its last 18 games overall.
On the first pitch from TinCaps reliever Jackson Quezada, Morrison ruined a bid for a five-man no-hitter with a two-out single that unquestionably fell inside the left field line.
Eager to turn one hit into two bases, and maybe unaware at the time that a home run from the .314-hitting Tyler Bortnick standing on deck would have tied the game, Morrison was cut down at second base on a game-ending throw from left fielder Everett Williams.
And like horseshoes and slow dancing, close also counts in no-hit thrills.
“As soon as (Morrison) hit it – and I had the perfect spot because of where I was standing – I just knew, like, ‘Man, there it goes,’ ” TinCaps manager Jose Flores said. “But at the same time I was more worried about the win.
“To throw a no-hitter, I’ve never been a part of one, so I was playing in my head, ‘What if we do get this? How will the guys act?’ It was a five-pitcher outing like Houston did against the Yankees, but a no-hitter is still a no-hitter.”
The order of pitching went this way: Jose De Paula got the start, and threw three perfect innings. Enter left-hander Josh Spence, who walked the first and third batters he saw, had a Hot Rod reach third base when first baseman Nate Freiman didn’t catch a pickoff attempt, but wriggled out of trouble on Freiman’s first-to-short-to-first double play.
Spence, with the painting precision of Van Gogh and the velocity of a broken van, struck out the last four Hot Rods he faced.
Even though the Australian says his top speed is around 87 or 88 mph, he rarely uses it.
“When I pitch, I pitch off my off speed, where a lot of people pitch off their fastballs,” said Spence, who was making his second appearance with the TinCaps (27-16 second half, 63-50 overall). “I’m trying to base it more on control rather than throwing it by hitters.”
The rest were one-inning jobs by Jeff Ibarra, Stiven Osuna and then Quezada.
“To be honest, I didn’t know we had a no-hitter until I looked at the scoreboard after I pitched,” Ibarra said. “Nobody said anything until we won the game, actually.”
Except for the bottom of the third inning, it would be a scoreboard full of zeroes.
Danny Payne hit a one-out single into left field, and Jeudy Valdez, after fouling off four pitches with a 3-2 count, drilled a home run deep into left field for the only runs that DePaula & Co. would need.
