September 27, 1998: Rookie Roy Halladay ends Blue Jays season in nearly perfect fashion

Heading into their 163rd game of 1998,1 the Toronto Blue Jays knew they weren’t going to the postseason, but players and fans alike were certain they would be there soon.

A month earlier, the team was fourth in the American League East Division, just a game over .500 and trailing the Boston Red Sox by 12½ games for the league’s wild-card slot. But since August 26, they’d been the best team in baseball, winning 20 of 28 games. While that wasn’t enough for the Blue Jays to nab a postseason berth, it did give Toronto a sense of hope for the future.

“I look at it as a big turning point,” outfielder Shawn Green said. “We have a great mix of players here and the last couple of months, people have learned what it takes to win ball games.”2

“I wish we were going a little further,” said Toronto ace Roger Clemens, who weeks later unanimously won his second consecutive and fifth overall AL Cy Young Award. “But now, again, you can let your shoulders down and just kind of reflect.”3

At the other end of the standings, it’s doubtful the Detroit Tigers or their fans wanted to reflect much on their last-place year. Twenty-four games behind the AL Central Division-winning Cleveland Indians, Detroit needed a late-September surge – winning four of its last five games and 10 of its last 14 – just to avoid a 100-loss season and ensure that they wouldn’t finish behind the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Another reason for optimism in Toronto was on the mound. Starter Roy Halladay, the club’s 1995 first-round draft pick (17th overall) and its top overall prospect,4 had debuted a week earlier against the Devil Rays in St. Petersburg,5 and for most hometown fans, this was their first chance to see the right-hander in person.

Halladay opened his second career start strong, notching his first of eight strikeouts on leadoff hitter Kimera Bartee. As Bartee walked back to the visitors’ dugout, manager Tim Johnson and rookie Tom Evans emerged from the home dugout to make a defensive change. Evans trotted out to third base, giving veteran Tony Fernández an opportunity to tip his hat to the Skydome crowd of 38,036 and get a round of cheers, a routine that would be repeated for most of the other Jays starters through the first four innings.

Halladay retired the next two hitters, including striking out Juan Encarnación to end the inning.

Justin Thompson, a year removed from an All-Star Game appearance, had been one of the Tigers’ more reliable contributors throughout 1998. Making his team-leading 34th start, he walked leadoff hitter Shannon Stewart but retired the next three hitters, disappointing fans who’d come looking to witness some statistical milestones.

Shawn Green, who came into the game with 99 runs batted in, belted a fly ball deep to left-center field, but only deep enough for center fielder Bartee to snag it for an out. José Canseco was sitting on 46 home runs, one shy of the Toronto franchise record set by George Bell in 1987. He also had 29 stolen bases, leaving him one away from his second 30-30 season, but Canseco went 0-for-4 in the game and fell short of both marks.6

In the second inning, Halladay got Tony Clark to ground to second, then waited as Kevin Witt replaced Carlos Delgado at first base. Witt fielded a grounder by designated hitter Luis Gonzalez and flipped it to Halladay at first for the second out. And both waited while Halladay’s batterymate, Darrin Fletcher, left for substitute Kevin Brown.

Halladay and Thompson retired the next eight hitters until Toronto’s Alex Gonzalez hit a line-drive solo homer down the left-field line with one out in the third inning. Staked to a lead, Halladay continued to shut down Tiger bats in the fourth while more starters hit the showers.

Bartee flied out and shortstop Alex Gonzalez headed for the dugout in favor of Tomás Pérez. Frank Catalanotto flied out to center and Felipe Crespo relieved Craig Grebeck at second base. Finally, Encarnacion grounded to short for Halladay’s fourth three-up-three-down inning.

Those defensive switches may have come at a cost. Leading off the fifth, Clark hit a grounder to Crespo, who overthrew Witt at first for a two-base error, ending Halladay’s perfect-game bid. “Right around the fifth inning, the guys started talking about being no-hit and tried to push a little harder,” recalled Bobby Higginson, who was watching it all unfold from the Detroit bench.7

Clark, however, was stranded at second as Halladay went back to mowing down Tigers for three more outs in the fifth. then returned for another perfect sixth.

To be fair, both pitchers owed at least some credit for their success to its being a meaningless season finale. Looking to wrap things up quickly, most batters swung at the first pitch every time. “You see early in the game that the umpire has a liberal strike zone, so you go up there with the idea of swinging at the first pitch,” explained Luis Gonzalez. “[In two at-bats], I saw three pitches and I swung at all three.”8

The Tigers weren’t the only ones getting stirred up by the potential no-hitter. In the Toronto bullpen, reliever Dave Stieb was reliving the past. “The memories started coming back around the fifth inning,” he said later. Eight years earlier, Stieb had thrown Toronto’s only no-hitter to date, but his memories turned not only to that game but to four previous instances in which he’d lost no-hit bids in the ninth inning, three of them with two outs.9

In the bottom of the sixth, Halladay got some insurance, and Green got a chance to celebrate. Leading off the inning, Green smashed Thompson’s second offering deep to left field and over the fence, giving him 30 home runs and 100 RBIs for the first of four times in his career. After retiring the next two batters, Thompson surrendered a single to José Cruz Jr. before getting Evans to pop out, marking the only time either pitcher allowed multiple baserunners in an inning.

After Halladay struck out Catalanotto to start the seventh inning, Green was replaced by Pat Lennon, allowing him a curtain call after his homer. The next two Tigers went down, as did all three in the top of the eighth.

In the bottom of the eighth, Detroit reliever Doug Brocail struck out Lennon and Canseco. Interim manager Larry Parrish then signaled for Todd Jones, even though it wasn’t a save situation. The Tigers closer had called the dugout and requested an opportunity to face at least one batter to lower his 5.00 earned-run average, and Parrish indulged him.

Jones threw one pitch, Witt popped it into foul territory, catcher Robert Fick caught it, and Jones’s ERA dropped to 4.97. “I guess you know it’s a bad year when you’re hoping to get your ERA under five,” Jones admitted.10

With three outs left, Higginson was getting restless. “I’ve never been involved in a no-hitter and sure didn’t want to be on the losing end of one,” he later explained.11 “I told [Parrish] that I wanted to hit in the ninth and have a chance to break it up.”12

Higginson got his chance, but not before Halladay sat down rookie Gabe Kapler and pinch-hitter Paul Bako. Higginson, batting for Bartee, headed to the plate, ready to swing at the first pitch.

“I went up there looking for a fastball and that’s what I got,” Higginson proclaimed. “I knew I hit it pretty good and was happy to see it go out.”13 With one swing, the no-hitter and the shutout were gone. The ball soared 379 feet over the left-field fence and caromed off a wall near the bleachers, falling into the Toronto bullpen.

Dave Stieb was there to catch it.

“I told myself in the sixth and seventh innings not to be disappointed if I didn’t get the no-hitter. But when Higginson’s ball went out, I couldn’t help it,” Halladay said.14

Halladay regrouped and needed only one more pitch to end the game on a lineout by Catalanotto. His teammates surrounded the rookie to congratulate him, including Stieb with the ball. On the other side of the field, there was also praise, but with a few grains of salt thrown in.

“I’m not taking anything away from the kid,” Parrish said, suggesting that if it weren’t the last day of the season, the results would have been different. “He’s got a good arm and had good stuff today, but he didn’t have no-hit stuff today.”15

Halladay went on to become the Blue Jays’ ace, winning the AL Cy Young Award in 2003. He threw another one-hitter in 2009. Before the 2010 season, he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, where he threw both a perfect game and a no-hitter in the National League Division Series, making him the only pitcher with no-hitters in both regular and postseason games.

The Blue Jays did not make the playoffs until 2015, two years after Halladay retired from baseball.

Acknowledgments

This article was reviewed by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Roy Halladay, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR199809270.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1998/B09270TOR1998.htm

Notes

1 On April 26 the Blue Jays and Chicago White Sox were tied 5-5 after six innings when the game was rained out. Since the game had gone longer than five innings, it was an official game, but since there was no winner, it was replayed in its entirety as part of a July 15 doubleheader. The tie didn’t count in the standings, but all the statistics from the game stood. This is how White Sox slugger Albert Belle was credited with playing in 163 games in 1998, the only player to do so.

2 Geoff Baker, “Halladay Fashions Near-Perfect Finish,” Toronto Star, September 28, 1998: C2.

3 Geoff Baker, “No W, but Clemens is O-K,” Toronto Star, September 27, 1998: C1.

4 Baseball America ranked Halladay as the top prospect in the Jays system, 38th in all of baseball, and the 14th-ranked pitcher. The next year, he would be 12th overall and the fifth-ranked pitcher.

5 Halladay threw five innings and handed the bullpen a 5-3 lead, but the Devil Rays tied it in the ninth, costing him the win in what became a 7-5 Toronto victory in 12 innings.

6 José Bautista broke Bell’s record in 2010 with 54 homers. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. would also surpass Bell’s total with 48 in 2021. With his 30th homer on September 4, 1998, Green became the Blue Jays’ first-ever 30-30 player, finishing the season with 35 home runs and 35 stolen bases.

7 Gene Guidi, “Higginson Homer Averts No-Hitter vs. Tigers,” Detroit Free Press, September 28, 1998: 1D.

8 Guidi, “Higginson Homer Averts No-Hitter.”

9 On August 24, 1985, Stieb pitched eight no-hit innings against the Chicago White Sox, but surrendered back-to-back solo home runs to Rudy Law and Bryan Little to lead off the ninth inning and was relieved before getting an out. On September 24, 1988, Julio Franco of the Cleveland Indians broke up Stieb’s no-hit attempt with a two-out single in the ninth. Less than a week later, on September 30, Baltimore Orioles pinch-hitter Jim Traber singled with two outs in the ninth to cost Stieb another no-hitter. On August 4, 1989, Steib gave up a two-out, ninth-inning single to New York Yankee Roberto Kelly and Steve Sax followed with an RBI double before the third out.

10 Guidi, “Higginson Homer Averts No-Hitter.”

11 Guidi, “Higginson Homer Averts No-Hitter.”

12 Baker, “Halladay Fashions Near-Perfect Finish.”.

13 Guidi, “Higginson Homer Averts No-Hitter.”

14 Guidi, “Higginson Homer Averts No-Hitter.”

15 Guidi, “Higginson Homer Averts No-Hitter.”