June 21, 1975: ‘A no-hitter is a no-hitter’ — even with 11 walks

If you were looking for one word to summarize Tom Norton’s no-hitter of June 21, 1975, you might choose “imperfect.”

Pitching for the Triple-A Tacoma Twins, Norton issued 11 bases on balls to the opposing Hawaii Islanders. But the Hawaii lineup, made up entirely of past or future major leaguers, couldn’t solve him for a hit. It was a remarkable turnabout for the power-packed Islanders, who were coming off five straight games with 10 or more runs scored, piling up 56 runs on 73 hits during that span.1

On this night, a home run by Tacoma’s Bob Gorinski gave Norton a hard-fought 1-0 victory. It was a sloppy performance, but it still occasioned a tip of the cap from one Honolulu sportswriter, who wrote: “A no-hitter is a no-hitter is a no-hitter.”2

Norton had signed with the Minnesota Twins organization before the 1969 season as an amateur free agent out of a Michigan community college. A strong spring-training performance in 1972 landed the Ohio-born righty an unexpected spot in the Twins’ bullpen, where his uniform number, 22, matched his age for much of the season.3 An elbow injury cost Norton all of July and August,4 and he ended 1972 with an 0-1 record and a 2.78 ERA in 21 games. It was Norton’s only major-league experience.

The elbow continued to ache in 1973, leading to postseason surgery,5 and Norton spent all of 1974 and the beginning of 1975 with the Twins’ Double-A affiliate in Orlando, Florida. In June of 1975, the now 25-year-old hurler finally seemed to be regaining his momentum. He was summoned to join manager Cal Ermer’s staff at Triple-A Tacoma after throwing consecutive shutouts in his last two Double-A starts.6 In 10 starts at Orlando, he’d posted a 6-4 record and a 3.29 ERA.

Norton joined the Tacoma club in Hawaii, but not for a vacation. He was scheduled to start the fourth of a five-game series in Honolulu, where manager Roy Hartsfield’s Islanders, the top minor-league affiliate of the San Diego Padres, had steamrolled their way to wins in the first three games. Tacoma had arrived in Hawaii in second place behind the Islanders in the Pacific Coast League’s West Division; by the time Norton took the mound, Hawaii had added three games to its division lead.7

In addition to a developing pennant race, Ermer’s and Hartsfield’s teams were also locked in an unusual rules-related tussle that summer. On June 8, Ermer successfully protested Tacoma’s loss to Hawaii, saying umpires violated league rules when they checked Hawaii pitcher Gary Ross for illegal substances. The teams replayed the end of the game on June 11, and Hawaii won again – but Ermer filed a second protest, this time claiming that Hawaii hitters had batted out of turn in the replay. As of Norton’s start on June 21, the second protest was still under deliberation. The league’s president ruled in Ermer’s favor six days later, and the end of the game was replayed for a second time on August 3, with Hawaii finally claiming the victory for good.

With 4,293 fans on hand at Honolulu Stadium, Norton faced off on a Saturday night against Hawaii starter Jim Shellenback. A California-born lefty, Shellenback was 31 years old and had already made 160 big-league appearances over parts of eight seasons.8 He was the nephew of former major-league pitcher and pitching coach Frank Shellenback. Jim Shellenback spent the entire 1975 season with the Islanders, posting a 10-6 record and a 4.50 ERA in 32 games, including 23 starts.

The Twins mustered almost no offense off Shellenback, who pitched a complete game. The veteran gave up only two walks and four hits – two by left fielder Gorinski and one apiece by center fielder Lyman Bostock and designated hitter Mike Poepping. (Bostock, in his rookie season in Minnesota, had been briefly sent to Triple A to get back into shape after a series of early-season injuries. He hit .391 in Tacoma, was recalled to the majors on June 26, and never returned to the minors during his tragedy-shortened career.9)

Gorinski, a 6-foot-3 righty swinger, hit 20 or more home runs five times in his minor-league career, including a combined 20 in 1975 between Tacoma and the Chicago White Sox’ Triple-A team in Denver.10 In the fifth inning, he belted his eighth home run of the season deep into the left-field seats for the only run of the game.11

Although the Islanders never came close to having a hit fall in, Norton began to create drama for himself early on.12 In the second inning, the Islanders loaded the bases with two out on two walks and an error by shortstop Dave McKay. Shortstop Bill Almon batted next for Hawaii; he’d been the first overall pick in the June 1974 amateur draft and had played 16 games with the Padres that same season. Norton struck him out.13

In the sixth inning, Norton recorded two outs, then walked the bases full, issuing free passes to Bob Davis, Randy Elliott, and Dave Roberts. Next up was Steve Huntz, the Islanders’ 29-year-old third baseman. He’d played 237 big-league games across five seasons and had appeared with the parent club in San Diego as recently as June 4.14 Huntz flied out to Bostock in center field.

An inning later, still another veteran got a chance with runners in scoring position. Islanders designated hitter Jim Fairey had played in 399 major-league games over six seasons and contributed 15 homers and 54 RBIs to the ’75 Hawaii team. But hitting with one out and two runners on base, he grounded into an inning-ending double play.15

To add still more drama to Norton’s rocky no-hitter-in-progress, he suffered a recurrence of a chronic blister problem, starting in the seventh inning, that only worsened his control. Ermer said after the game that he considered taking Norton out several times.16 Norton said he appreciated Ermer’s patience: “I kept hoping that [Ermer] would stay with me, because if I lost the game, I wanted to lose it myself.”17

As the no-no moved into the ninth, Ermer continued to struggle with that decision. Norton nearly walked Roberts before getting him to ground to McKay. Then he issued his 11th walk of the night, to Huntz.18 Islanders first baseman Gus Gil, a veteran of four big-league campaigns, went down on strikes for Norton’s eighth strikeout. Finally, Almon flied to Bostock in center, wrapping up the unlikely no-hitter in 2 hours and 7 minutes.19

Norton’s teammates mobbed him on the field.20 His catcher, Tom Epperly, praised Norton’s sinking fastball and changeup, adding, “It didn’t seem like he walked that many. Some of his pitches were awfully close.”21

Hawaii players shrugged off the one-day setback, according to center fielder Rod Gaspar, who’d been a reserve member of the 1969 World Series champion New York Mets. “I remember in 1969 with the Mets we were really smoking, getting a lot of base hits, and then Bob Moose of the Pirates pitched a no-hitter against us,” Gaspar told a reporter. “But the next night we kept on smoking again. That’s baseball.”22 Indeed, the Islanders rebounded with 16 hits and a 7-2 win in the final game of their series with Tacoma, with Gaspar collecting two doubles and a single.23 In their four wins, the Islanders outscored the Twins 42-8.24

Hawaii had the last laugh at the end of the season. The Islanders won the West Division with an 88-56 record, 14 games ahead of second-place Tacoma, then beat the East champion Salt Lake City Gulls for the league title.

The Islanders also enjoyed a small measure of revenge against Norton on August 4, when the teams met again at Tacoma’s Cheney Stadium. Summoned in relief in the ninth inning of a tie game, Norton walked two Hawaii hitters to force in the tiebreaking run. The Islanders piled on more runs and won 12-7. As the Honolulu Star-Bulletin put it: “The Islanders finally caught up with Tom Norton, although they still don’t have a hit off the Tacoma righthander.”25

Norton finished the season with a 5-6 record and a 4.22 ERA in 20 games with Tacoma, including 12 starts. In 79 innings, he walked 55 batters while striking out just 38. He divided the 1976 season between Double A and the Mexican League, and then left professional baseball.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Jim Sweetman and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team and season data.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the June 22, 1975, edition of the Honolulu (Hawaii) Star-Bulletin and the June 23, 1975, edition of the Tacoma (Washington) News Tribune published box scores.

Image of unnumbered card from 1973 Caruso Tacoma Twins set downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Ferd Borsch, “No-Hitter Against Islanders,” Honolulu (Hawaii) Star-Bulletin, June 22, 1975: E1.

2 Bill Kwon, “Monday Miscellany,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, June 23, 1975: C1.

3 Tom Briere, “Twins Win in 11th; So Does Norton,” Minneapolis Tribune, March 27, 1972: 1C. Norton was 21 when he made the team in spring training. He turned 22 on April 26, 1972, eight days after his big-league debut. Baseball-Reference also indicates that Norton was issued uniform number 41 for part of the 1972 season.

4 “Twins Topics,” Minneapolis Tribune, September 2, 1972: 3B.

5 Associated Press, “Rain Puts Stopper on Twins,” Tacoma (Washington) News Tribune, June 26, 1973: 16; Ed Hayes, “Big Jump for Palat,” Orlando (Florida) Sentinel Star, October 31, 1973: 1C.

6 Greg Boeck, “Rebs’ Baldwin Spoils SS Night for O-Twins,” Orlando Sentinel Star, June 18, 1975: 1C.

7 Earl Luebker, “Twins Face Solons After ‘Paradise’ Trek,” Tacoma News Tribune, June 23, 1975: B1.

8 Shellenback went on to make five more big-league appearances with the 1977 Minnesota Twins. Although he was a Padres farmhand at the time of this game, he never appeared in a major-league game with San Diego. While pitching for the Washington Senators in July 1969, Shellenback listed the street address of Robert F. Kennedy Stadium as the home address on his marriage certificate, according to his SABR Biography Project article, written by Paul Geisler Jr.

9 Ed Honeywell, “Bostock Gets Call from Twins,” Tacoma News Tribune, June 27, 1975: A17. Bostock was shot dead near the end of the 1978 season, aged just 27.

10 In his only major-league action with the Twins in 1977, Gorinski hit three home runs in 54 games while batting .195.

11 Borsch, “No-Hitter Against Islanders.”

12 In the Tacoma paper, Luebker wrote that the Islanders “never got anything close to a hit,” while Borsch of Honolulu reported that “there was not a single difficult out for the Twins in the field.”

13 Borsch, “No-Hitter Against Islanders.” Almon played another six games for the Padres in 1975 and went on to play parts of 15 major-league seasons.

14 The June 4 appearance for San Diego, in a game against the Philadelphia Phillies, was Huntz’s final major-league game.

15 Luebker, “Twins Face Solons After ‘Paradise’ Trek.”

16 Borsch, “No-Hitter Against Islanders.”

17 Luebker, “Twins Face Solons After ‘Paradise’ Trek.”

18 Because of the large number of minor-league no-hitters – some of which have limited documentation – the author of this story did not try to determine whether 11 walks is a record for a minor-league no-hitter. As of the end of the 2023 season, the most walks allowed by a pitcher in a major-league no-hitter is 10, in a 10-inning no-hitter by Jim Maloney of the Cincinnati Reds against the Chicago Cubs on August 19, 1965. The most walks allowed in a nine-inning major-league no-no is 9, by A.J. Burnett of the Florida Marlins against the San Diego Padres on May 12, 2001.

19 Borsch, “No-Hitter Against Islanders.”

20 Kwon, “Monday Miscellany.”

21 Luebker, “Twins Face Solons After ‘Paradise’ Trek.” Epperly, a third baseman, catcher, and outfielder, played six minor-league seasons between 1972 and 1977 but did not reach the majors.

22 Kwon, “Monday Miscellany.” Gaspar’s memory was correct: The day after Moose no-hit the Mets on September 20, 1969, the Mets swept a doubleheader from the Pirates, 5-3 and 6-1. Gaspar played in the second game, going 1-for-3 with a double.

23 Luebker, “Twins Face Solons After ‘Paradise’ Trek;” Ferd Borsch, “Islanders Get Back in the Groove,” Honolulu Advertiser, June 23, 1975: C1.

24 Chuck Stewart, “Buddies Hurl 1-Hitters,” Spokane (Washington) Chronicle, June 23, 1975: 15.

25 “Hawaii Ups West Lead,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, August 5, 1975: D1.