The old Dave Stieb special

Way back when the Blue Jays ace was a man named Dave Stieb, it was a simpler time; no steroids, PEDs or greenies were on anyone’s mind, just good ol’ fashioned baseball.

During the late-80’s, Stieb had become the go-to guy on the Jays and was well deserving of the extremely rich contract Toronto threw his way at the time. It was a very unique one too; basically it consisted of ten years of team options with increasing pay amounts. But that’s not the point of this post.

Stieb became notorious for failing to get a no-hitter after carrying bids into the ninth inning. In 1988, during consecutive starts he actually had two outs in the ninth with two strikes on before giving up hits. In 1989, he lost a perfect game in the ninth inning with two outs on. He would eventually get his no-no in 1990, the only in Jays team history, but that’s not entirely relevant to this, again.

Yesterday in Oakland, trying to avoid a sweep, the Boston Red Sox’s Curt Schilling pulled what has commonly been called, “The Dave Stieb special”. Carrying his bid for a no hitter – the first of his career – in the ninth, he seemed on cruise control getting the first two batters to ground out meekly. Enter Shannon Stewart. After leaving one pitch a bit too much on the plate, Schilling kissed his no-no goodbye after a liner into right field dropped.

So after hours of hard work, Schilling won’t go down in history for anything more than bloodying up a perfectly good sock.