June 27, 2007: Tom Glavine throws rain-shortened one-hitter as Mets blank Cardinals

Rain delayed the final game of a three-game series between the New York Mets and St. Louis Cardinals on June 27, 2007. The teams had split the first two games of the series. New York won the opener, 2-1, on Shawn Green’s 11th-inning walk-off home run. St. Louis came back to win the next night, 5-3, behind Brendan Ryan’s tiebreaking 11th-inning homer.

The Mets and Cardinals had met in the National League Championship Series in 2006, which St. Louis won in seven games before beating the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. But the Cardinals were struggling in 2007. Starting with three straight home-ballpark losses to the Mets, including an Opening Night defeat at the hands of 41-year-old lefty Tom Glavine, they entered play on June 27 with a 34-40 record, 9½ games behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central Division.

The Mets were first in the NL East Division with a 42-33 record. They held a 2½-game lead over the Philadelphia Phillies despite a stretch of 13 losses in 16 games earlier in June.

Glavine was the Mets’ starter for the final game of the Cardinals series – making him one of seven major-league pitchers in their 40s scheduled to start on June 27.1 In his fifth season as a Met, after 16 years with the Atlanta Braves, the two-time NL Cy Young Award winner and 10-time All-Star had a 296-196 overall record, including a 6-5 mark in 2007.

Earlier in the season, Glavine had won four straight decisions, but he had just one win in his last six starts. An eight-inning, one-run performance against the Oakland A’s on June 22 had left him just four wins from 300.

Glavine had napped before the Cardinals game on a couch in the middle of the Mets’ clubhouse. Someone even turned down the lights to create a relaxing atmosphere for him.2 A crowd of 40,948 fans waited for the rain to let up. Despite some lightning flashes in the area, the umpires decided to start the game at 8:04 P.M., 54 minutes after the scheduled first pitch.

Glavine retired the first two batters of the game on a groundout and a lineout to center. He walked first baseman Albert Pujols, but the frame ended when catcher Paul Lo Duca threw out Pujols attempting to steal second.

Anthony Reyes took the mound for St. Louis. The 25-year-old right-hander was in his second full season in the majors. Reyes had started 17 games in 2006, finishing 5-8 with a 5.06 ERA. He made two starts in the 2006 postseason, earning one win and one no-decision, but Reyes had lost all nine of his decisions so far in 2007. He had especially struggled in the early innings. Coming into the June 27 game, he had given up 44 earned runs, with 24 of them tallying in the first two innings.

The Mets’ offense was inconsistent in June, scoring two or fewer runs 12 times in 23 games, but it provided Glavine all the run support he needed in the first inning. Leadoff batter José Reyes struck out, then Lo Duca hit a groundball single to left field. After Carlos Beltrán flied out to right, third baseman David Wright drove a Reyes pitch over the right-center-field wall for his 13th home run of the season. The Mets were in front, 2-0.

Glavine began the second by setting down Juan Encarnación on a grounder to Wright. Future Hall of Famer Scott Rolen, who had missed the first two games in the series with a bruised foot, then came to bat. Rolen had batted .351 against Glavine in 72 lifetime plate appearances. With a 2-and-2 count, he hit a sharp groundball down the third-base line. Wright’s off-balance throw was off the mark and Rolen reached first on what was ruled a single.

Gary Bennett flied out to left for the second out. Glavine then walked Aaron Miles to put Rolen in scoring position, but he was stranded there on Ryan’s groundout.

Glavine retired the next 12 Cardinals batters. He had only one strikeout – Anthony Reyes swinging and missing in the third. The Mets defense helped out, especially rookie left fielder Carlos Gomez, who made two catches on the warning track in the fourth. The first was a leaping catch of Encarnación’s hit into the left-field corner. The second came when Rolen sent Gomez to the warning track for the catch.

Play was halted when rain began to fall heavily in the middle of the sixth. The umpires eventually called the game after a 90-minute delay to give the Mets a 2-0 win.

Anthony Reyes, for his part, did not allow another hit after the first. The loss was his 10th of the season, making him the first pitcher begin a season with at least 10 straight losses since Anthony Young, who went 0-13 for the Mets in 1993.3

“He gave up two runs in five innings,” Wright said. “Got kind of a tough-luck loss.”4

Reyes was sent back to the minors after the loss. When he returned to the Cardinals at the end of July, he got his first win of 2007 in his next start, on July 28. Reyes earned just one more win in 2007 and finished 2-14 with a 6.04 ERA,5 as St. Louis came in third in the NL Central with a 78-84 record.

The one-hitter was the second of Glavine’s career. Both were with the Mets. He threw a complete-game one-hitter against the Colorado Rockies on May 23, 2004. The one-hitter against the Cardinals was the 27th in Mets history and their 22nd complete-game one-hitter.

“I tried. If I knew it was going to be a rain-shortened game I would have tried a little harder,” Wright joked after the game. “Besides, Tom doesn’t want a no-hitter that way. He wants it the hard way.”6

“It just goes to show you have to go out on every play and he didn’t try hard enough,” responded Glavine with a smile after hearing Wright’s comment.7

“They would’ve put an asterisk next to his name if David would have made that play,” added Mets manager Willie Randolph.8 Major League Baseball had stopped counting rain-shorted no-hit games as official no-hitters in 1991.9

Glavine’s win left him three away from 300. He told sportswriters after the game that he felt he was on back on track, saying, “My location is better, and I’m making better pitches. What happened is I’ve had two bad games in a row. In the games against the Tigers and Yankees [that he lost earlier in June] I was trying to throw too hard because I felt so good. I was muscling up on my pitches.”10

Glavine became the 23rd major-league pitcher to record 300 wins in the Mets’ 8-3 win over the Chicago Cubs on August 5.11

The Mets stayed at the top of the NL East until the middle of September. They had a seven-game lead over the Phillies on September 12. But they went 5-12 in their last 17 games. New York was tied for first with Philadelphia going into the final day of the regular season, but the Florida Marlins scored seven first-inning runs to knock Glavine out, and the Phillies clinched the division by defeating the Washington Nationals.

Glavine finished 2007 with a 13-8 record and a 4.45 ERA, then returned to the Braves for 2008, his final big-league season. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014. His two one-hitters with the Mets were the closest he ever came to a no-hitter in the majors.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Tom Glavine, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for the box score and other material.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN200706270.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2007/B06270NYN2007.htm

Notes

1 Besides Glavine, the New York Yankees’ Roger Clemens (44 years old), Philadelphia’s Jamie Moyer (44), Detroit’s Kenny Rogers (42), San Diego’s Greg Maddux (41), Houston’s Woody Williams (40) and Atlanta’s John Smoltz (40) were  set to start on June 27. When the Tigers game was postponed, Rogers pitched the next day.

2 Don Burke, “Glavine Happy With the Help,” Staten Island (New York) Advocate, June 28, 2007: B1.

3 Young did not start all the games he lost. He started the season in the Mets bullpen. When he joined the rotation in June, he lost seven straight games. His 13th loss came on July 24. Young finally won a game on July 28 when he pitched the ninth inning in relief for the Mets’ 5-4 win over the Florida Marlins.

4 David Picker, “Glavine Wins No. 297 in Game With Rain, but Little Thunder,” New York Times, June 28, 2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/sports/baseball/28mets.html.

5 Reyes pitched slightly better when he was used as reliever in 2008. He was 2-1 with a 4.91 ERA in 14 2/3 innings. He was traded to the Cleveland Indians on July 26, 2008, and made six starts for his new team. Reyes went 2-1 with a 1.83 ERA for the Indians. He struggled again in 2009. Reyes was 1-1 with a 6.57 ERA when his season ended because of an arm injury.

6 Burke, “Glavine Happy With the Help.”

7 John Delcros, “Glavine, Weather Lifts Mets Over Cardinals,” White Plains (New York) Journal News, June 28, 2007: C1.

8 Picker, “Glavine Wins No. 297 in Game With Rain, but Little Thunder.”

9 In 1991 the Committee for Statistical Accuracy, chaired by Commissioner Fay Vincent, had amended the definition of a no-hitter to include only those games that last at least nine innings and end with no hits. 

10 Delcros, “Glavine, Weather Lifts Mets Over Cardinals.”

11 As of 2025, the only other major-league pitcher to join the 300-win club after Glavine was Randy Johnson, who on June 4, 2009, became the 24th pitcher to record 300 wins.