Double no-nos: Stewart, Valenzuela reflect on 25-year no-hitter anniversary
On June 29, 1990, Oakland A's pitcher Dave Stewart and L.A. Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela pitched no-hitters on the same day ... a feat that has only once in modern baseball history.
Stewart was up first, and he overcame a "really, really bad" pre-game warm-up and a wobbly first inning to no-hit the Blue Jays in Toronto. Stewart sensed he had no-hitter stuff in the fifth inning -- and said so much to Oakland pitching coach Dave Duncan: "I told Dunc I'm going to no-hit these guys."
Valenzuela, in the last season of his fabled 11-year tenure with the Dodgers, took the mound against the St. Louis Cardinals at Dodger Stadium not long after Stewart completed his no-no, but before doing so, according to manager Tommy Lasorda, "Fernando turned to some teammates and he said, 'That's great, now maybe we'll see another no-hitter."
And so it became the only day with two no-hitters in modern baseball history. The dead-ball era had produced one previous occurence: by Cincinnati's Ted Breitensten and Baltimore's Jim Hughes on April 22, 1898.
As fate would have it, the 25th anniversary of the Stewart-Valenzuela came on a night when the Los Angeles Dodgers were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks. Stewart is now the general manager of the Diamondbacks, and Valenzuela is a Spanish-language analyst for the Dodgers. Stewart's manager back in 1990, Tony La Russa, is now his boss in Arizona.
