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This Day In Sports…May 13, 1952:
“Rocket” Ron Necciai of the Bristol Twins in the Class D Appalachian League sets an unmatched record by striking out 27 Welch batters in a nine-inning no hitter. Four batters reached base in the 7-0 Bristol victory. It’s the only time in professional baseball history that all 27 outs for one team came via the strikeout. A Pittsburgh barber took note of Necciai and recommended him to the Pirates, and he would be called up by Pittsburgh later in the season. But Necciai would play only that year in the majors, going 1-6 with a 7.08 ERA.
Nobody had so many as 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning major league game until April, 1986—not Cy Young, not Walter Johnson, not any of the old-time greats. It was 23-year-old Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox who fanned 20 Seattle Mariners in a 3-1 victory. Not many can say they saw it. It was a cold night at Fenway Park, and only 13,414 fans were in the stands. It wasn’t on TV beyond a local NESN telecast, and it competed with a Boston Celtics playoff game across town (the Celtics were playing the Atlanta Hawks on their way to an NBA championship).
Clemens tied his own record against the Detroit Tigers in 1996, and two other pitchers have since joined him in the exclusive club. Kerry Wood of the Chicago Cubs fanned 20 batters in a complete game one-hitter, a 2-0 victory over the Houston Astros in 1998. Some still consider it to be the best single-game pitching performance of all-time.
Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks did it in nine innings, but it wasn’t a nine-inning game. The Big Unit struck out his 20thCincinnati Red in the ninth in 2001 before being lifted—he got a no-decision in an eventual 11-inning 4-3 D-Backs win. And Max Scherzer of the Washington Nationals hit the 20K mark in a 3-2 win over the Detroit Tigers in 2016.
By the way, the overall record for strikeouts in a game is 21, held by Tom Cheney of the Washington Senators in 1962. But it took him an extra seven innings to do it. Cheney pitched all 16 innings of a 2-1 win over the Baltimore Orioles (he had 13 strikeouts through nine innings). Cheney’s major league career was a lot longer than Necciai’s, but his accomplishment was a similar aberration. Cheney pitched eight seasons in the bigs for three teams, going 19-29 with a 3.77 ERA…and 345 strikeouts.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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