A White Sox hat waved in the air. Fans clad in Chicago’s black pinstripes and Dodger blue alike rose to their feet.
Rooting interests didn’t matter as they watched Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto embrace his teammates on the mound. The brilliant performance they’d just witnessed deserved to be celebrated.
In the Dodgers’ 7-1 win against the White Sox on Saturday, Yamamoto carried a perfect game into the eighth inning until Mookie Betts booted a grounder at short, and a no-hit bid into the ninth before Chicago’s Tristan Peters homered to end it.
Perhaps even more astounding, dating to Yamamoto’s previous start against the Angels, he retired 45 straight batters, one shy of the major league record set by Yusmeiro Petit in 2014.
In an eventful game, which included Shohei Ohtani returning to the lineup to homer in his first at-bat, a two-homer performance from Max Muncy and a team bounce-back after getting blown out the night before, Yamamoto’s performance on the mound stole the show.
“I do feel a little bit [of regret], because I went into the ninth inning and I was not able to achieve a no-hitter,” Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. “But how I was pitching, I was pretty satisfied.”
It marked the second time in about nine months that Yamamoto fell just short of his first major league no-hitter. Last September, he was one out away in Baltimore when he surrendered a solo homer to Jackson Holliday.
“Every time he takes the mound we feel he’s got a pretty good chance to do something special,” pitching coach Mark Prior said.
That feeling only grew stronger as Yamamoto cruised through seven innings. The only thing that slowed his roll was the mound itself. Yamamoto asked for the grounds crew to fix it in the sixth. And then he kept rolling.
“He can attack the plate on both sides from ball-to-strike better than anybody I’ve ever seen,” Prior said. “He has that ability to do that when he’s on. And that makes it tough on hitters. You don’t know if the ball is coming at them, from the right side or the left side, and going in. He did a lot of really good things to keep guys off balance.”
Read more:Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani returns with a bang after day off
Yamamoto also had help from a steady defense behind him for much of the game.
The sixth inning included two highlight plays. Peters hit a sharp ground ball up the line, and first baseman Freddie Freeman made a sliding stop, tossing the ball to Yamamoto at the bag to get the out. Then left fielder Alex Call ran into the retaining wall in foul territory to catch Edgar Quero’s fly ball for the final out of the inning.
The hardest contact against Yamamoto came the third time through the lineup. In the seventh inning, he pumped a heater to the top rail against Miguel Vargas, who stayed on top of the pitch to send a line drive to left field — and right to Call.
In the eighth, Yamamoto fell behind Colson Montgomery 3-and-1. But Yamamoto worked back to a full count. Montgomery then scorched a line drive up the first base line — into Freeman’s glove.
Yamamoto’s perfect game ended two batters later.
“I’m not making any excuses,” Betts said. “I should have made the play.”
It looked like Yamamoto had tied the record for consecutive batters retired when he got Chicago’s Chase Meidroth to chase a slider and hit a routine grounder to Betts.
But the last hop was higher than Betts expected. The ball ricocheted off him to his left, where second baseman Santiago Espinal made a last-ditch effort to salvage the play but couldn’t pick up the ball cleanly.
“I thought I got him, but that was kind of an irregular bounce,” Yamamoto said. “So it was just what it is. I didn’t really think much.”
An inning later, the no-hit bid was next to fall.
Peters led led off the ninth, and on a 1-and-0 count, Yamamoto put a high fastball over the plate. Peters turned on it and drove it into the stands in right, craning to see it stay to the left of the foul pole.
“I was a little heated in the ninth inning,” catcher Dalton Rushing said. “Jumped on a pitch that was really decently executed.”
Yamamoto stayed in for one more batter, inducing Quero to fly out, before handing the ball to manager Dave Roberts.
Yamamoto wasn’t the only one feeling mixed emotions on the mound as he embraced Rushing, tapped Muncy on the back in a side hug and bumped fists with the rest of the infielders.
“I was still frustrated,” Rushing said. “He’s such a great teammate, he’s one of my good friends. You can talk to him just about anything, and he’s just a good dude. So you want to see good things happen to guys like that.”
Rushing made a prediction: “I know we’re going to have more opportunities with Yoshi like that, and I’m looking forward to it.”
After coming so close to a no-hitter twice, maybe the third time will be the one Yamamoto completes.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
