A’s pitcher Sean Manaea trotted out to the mound to start the eighth inning. As he did, something caught his eye.
“I looked and saw that there was a still a zero (on the scoreboard),” he would say later, “and I was like, whoa, weird.”
Error 0:
Manaea had been unaware he was pitching a no-hitter.
As often happens when an athlete has a seminal moment, there is a story behind the story. Here is Manaea’s.
He was MVP of his high school baseball team. He pitched for Indiana State, setting a single-season strikeout in his sophomore season.