By John Skipper

 

The night of Aug. 21, 1973, was a memorable one in Cleveland where the Chicago White Sox were playing the Indians in Municipal Stadium.

 

The White Sox, having lost five in a row and eight of their last nine, were in desperate need of a win. They sent one of their aces, Stan Bahnsen to the mound.

 

Bahnsen, at age 28, was by now a Major League Baseball (MLB) veteran, the pride of Council Bluffs, where he was born and raised and was a star pitcher for Abraham Lincoln High School just 10 years earlier. Now he was in the big leagues and pitching one of the greatest games of his career.

 

The opposing pitcher was Dick Tidrow. Two weeks earlier the same two pitchers met in Chicago and Bahnsen had his worst outing of the year, allowing six runs before being knocked out in the first inning of a 13-1 Cleveland win.

 

Now he was called on to try to end the White Sox tailspin. Bahnsen, known as “The Bahnsen Burner” back in his college days at the University of Nebraska, retired the Indians without a hit through the first eight innings. He was three outs away from a no-hitter.

 

John Lowenstein led off the ninth for Cleveland and lofted a fly ball to centerfielder Johnny Jeter for the first out. Buddy Bell, the next hitter, hit a pop up caught by third baseman Bill Melton. The next batter was Walt Williams, nicknamed “No Neck” because of his stocky build, leaving little room between his shoulders and his face. Williams and Bahnsen had been teammates in previous years and knew each other well.

 

Williams was one of the best bunters in the American League. Third baseman Melton moved a few steps in to guard against Williams breaking up the no-hitter with a bunt single. Bahnsen threw him a breaking ball that he got on top of and grounded it to the left side, a routine out on most nights. But this time the ball scooted past Melton and went into left field for a base hit. Had Melton been playing at his normal depth, he most certainly would have fielded the ball and thrown Williams out. But it didn’t happen that way. The no-hitter, just inches away, had eluded Bahnsen.

 

“I thought I had it,” said Bahnsen, recalling the game years later. “I thought Bill was going to get it, but with him playing in, it got past him. I really wanted it and naturally I was disappointed when it didn’t happen.”

 

Williams said after the game he had no intention of bunting because that would be “breaking one of the unwritten rules of baseball when a guy has a no hitter going.” Bahnsen retired the next batter and the White Sox won, 4-0.

 

Bahnsen didn’t get the no-hitter but had a stellar MLB career that began when he was named Rookie of the Year in 1968 as a member of the New York Yankees. He won 17 games and lost 12 for a Yankee team that wasn’t the powerhouse it had been in years past, or he might have won 20. He had a 2.05 ERA (Earned Run Average) in that first year.

 

Bahnsen played for five other MLB teams in a 16-year career that began before there was a designated hitter rule, playoffs prior to the World Series, player strikes, or free agency.

 

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