Kiners Korner Chronicles, No. 8: The Night Johan Made History

Fifty-one seasons in, the Mets finally have their no-hitter — Citi Field, June 1, 2012

Welcome to the Kiners Korner Chronicles.

This site is dedicated to Ralph Kiner and the legacy of the greatest sports postgame show ever, Kiner's Korner.

While researching our book, Down on the Korner, my co-author Howie Karpin and I tracked down as many surviving episodes of Kiner's Korner as we could find. Now, you can watch those treasured broadcasts right here on this site and relive the conversations, the characters, and the unforgettable moments that made Ralph's show so special.

But our search also taught us something heartbreaking: for every conversation we recovered, dozens more were lost — taped over, thrown out, or gone forever.

So we're doing the next best thing. Through the power of AI and deep research into the old games, we hope to recreate a little bit of that magic. The game recaps are real, built from the box score. The interviews that follow are our best imagining of the conversations that were lost — what Ralph would have asked, and what his guest might have answered.

The Game

FLUSHING, N.Y. — The New York Mets played their first game in April of 1962. Fifty-one seasons and 8,019 games later, they were still waiting for a no-hitter. Tom Seaver had taken three into the ninth. Dwight Gooden, David Cone, Nolan Ryan — Ryan threw seven of them, all for somebody else. On the night of Friday, June 1, 2012, in the franchise's 8,020th regular-season game, Johan Santana finally finished one, beating the defending World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals 8-0 at Citi Field in two hours and thirty-five minutes, before 27,069 witnesses who sounded like three times that many by the end.

It was a miracle with a medical chart. This was Santana's eleventh start since anterior capsule surgery on his left shoulder cost him the entire 2011 season, and his second straight shutout — he had blanked San Diego on May 26. Manager Terry Collins had a plan to stop him around 110 to 115 pitches. Santana's final count was 134, a career high, 77 of them strikes. He walked five and struck out eight. The walks made the second inning the only real stress test: David Freese and Yadier Molina walked back to back, putting two Cardinals on — the only time all night a St. Louis runner reached second base — before Matt Adams and Tyler Greene struck out to end it.

The Mets' bats gave him room in stages, all of it against Adam Wainwright. In the fourth, Kirk Nieuwenhuis singled to shortstop, David Wright doubled him to third, Lucas Duda's sacrifice fly made it 1-0, and Daniel Murphy tripled home Wright for 2-0. In the sixth, Nieuwenhuis singled, Wright walked, and Duda drove a three-run homer to right-center — his eighth of the season — for 5-0. In the seventh, singles and walks did the rest: Omar Quintanilla singled, Santana sacrificed him to second, Andrés Torres and Nieuwenhuis walked, Wright walked with the bases loaded to force in a run, and after Duda struck out, Murphy singled to left to bring home Torres and Nieuwenhuis. Eight runs, eight hits, no errors — by either team.

Two plays will live with this game forever. Leading off the sixth, Carlos Beltrán — in his first game back at Citi Field since the Mets traded him the summer before — drove a 1-0 fastball down the third-base line. The ball kicked up chalk behind the base, which would have made it fair, a double, and the end of the no-hitter. Third-base umpire Adrian Johnson called it foul. It was not reviewable in 2012, the call stood, and Beltrán grounded out to Wright on his way to a 1-2-3 inning. An inning later, with one out and nobody on, Molina drove the ball to deep left. Mike Baxter — a Queens kid from Whitestone, minutes from where he grew up — ran it down on the warning track at full speed, held the ball, and slammed into the wall with no time to brace himself. He left the game with a bruised shoulder, in the record book forever as the man who paid for the no-hitter with his body.

The ninth took three pitches' worth of breath held across a borough. Matt Holliday flied to Torres in center on the first pitch of the inning. Allen Craig flied to Nieuwenhuis, now in left. That left Freese, the 2011 World Series MVP, who worked the count full — and struck out, Santana's eighth strikeout of the night, on pitch number 134. Catcher Josh Thole, who had come off the disabled list that very day and caught every pitch, met him halfway. The Mets had their no-hitter at last — the 275th in major league history, and the first ever thrown against a defending champion since Nolan Ryan beat Oakland in 1990. Final score: Mets 8, Cardinals 0.

Ralph's Guest

The left-hander himself — 9 innings, no hits, five walks, eight strikeouts, 134 pitches on a surgically repaired shoulder, and the answer to a trivia question Mets fans had been failing for fifty years.

The Interview (imagined)

What follows is a dramatic recreation. The game was real. The conversation is our imagining of the Kiner's Korner segment that might have aired that night — a 2012 game under our series' "lost tapes" conceit, reconstructed here in the spirit of Ralph's show.

Ralph: Johan, fifty-one seasons. Eight thousand and nineteen games before tonight, and this franchise had never had one. You threw the first no-hitter in the history of the New York Mets. Let that settle for a second — how does it feel?

Santana: Ralph, I don't think it has settled yet. I know what this club waited for. Seaver, Gooden, Cone — great pitchers, and it never happened for them here. To be the one, after missing a whole year with my shoulder — I am grateful. That is the word. Grateful.

Ralph: Let's talk about that shoulder, because the whole ballpark was counting with you. Terry Collins had you on a limit of about a hundred and ten, a hundred and fifteen pitches. You finished at a hundred and thirty-four — a career high. When Terry came out in the eighth, after Rafael Furcal walked, what was said?

Santana: He wanted to know how I felt. I told him the truth — I felt good, and I wanted to finish what we started. This was not just my game. Josh came off the disabled list today and caught every pitch. Mike Baxter gave his shoulder for an out. You do not walk away from that.

Ralph: The second inning was the tightest spot of the night. Freese walks, Molina walks — the only time a Cardinal reached second base all evening — and then you struck out Adams and struck out Greene looking. What were you telling yourself out there?

Santana: Slow down. When you walk two in a row, you are trying to be too perfect. I told myself, trust the changeup, let them hit it if they can. The changeup has carried me my whole career. That night, it carried me again.

Ralph: Your teammates built you a cushion in pieces — two in the fourth on Wright's double, Duda's sacrifice fly and Murphy's triple, then Duda's three-run homer in the sixth. Five to nothing. And then came the play this game will be argued about forever. Sixth inning, Beltrán leads off, and on a one-and-oh pitch he lines one down the third-base line. It kicked up chalk. Adrian Johnson, the third-base umpire, called it foul. Johan — from the mound, what did you see?

Santana: I saw a ball hit hard down the line, and I saw the umpire's call. That is baseball, Ralph. The call is the call — Carlos said he thought it was fair, and maybe it was, but umpires miss them for you and against you over a long season. What I could control was the next pitch. He grounded out to David, and we moved on. I was not going to give the moment back arguing about a foul ball.

Ralph: Then the seventh. One out, Molina drives one deep to left, and Mike Baxter runs it down at the wall — full speed, no chance to brace — and holds on. He leaves the game with a bruised shoulder. A kid from Whitestone, Johan, a few minutes from his own home.

Santana: That catch is part of this no-hitter forever. Every no-hitter has one play like that — the play where a teammate decides it is going to happen. Mike decided. He ran into a wall for us. When people remember tonight, I hope they remember his name with mine.

Ralph: The ninth inning. Holliday flies to center on your first pitch. Craig flies to Nieuwenhuis in left. And then Freese — the World Series MVP last October — takes you to a full count. Pitch number one hundred thirty-four. Take me there.

Santana: I was not counting pitches. I was counting outs, and there was one left. Three and two, the crowd standing — I could feel the mound shake a little, or maybe that was me. I threw the pitch, he swung, and Josh was coming toward me before I even saw it clearly. Fifty years, Ralph. It was worth the wait — for the fans most of all.

Ralph: Johan Santana — nine innings, no hits, and a place in Mets history that nobody can ever take the "first" away from. Thank you, and congratulations.

Santana: Thank you, Ralph. This one belongs to New York.

Recreation of the lost Kiner's Korner interview — not an authentic broadcast still. Box score: Retrosheet. Game accounts: SABR Games Project and the Associated Press. The audio companion to this article — the Flag of Victory Polka, the disclaimer, and the full imagined interview — is available with this post.