Written by Jerry Crasnick at ESPN.com
Rich Hill treated the Pittsburgh Pirates to a 99-pitch clinic Wednesday night. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say he subjected them to it. Hill overwhelmed Pittsburgh hitters with his 90 mph fastball, alternately froze and made them wave at his curveball, and flummoxed them for nine innings in the most Tom Browning- and Mark Buehrle-esque of ways.
The outing was a real treat for connoisseurs of pitching craftsmanship, and what remained of the announced crowd of 19,859 at PNC Park had to feel for Hill when pitch No. 99 cast a blot over the proceedings. He caught too much of the plate with an 88 mph fastball in the bottom of the 10th inning, and Josh Harrison drove it over the outstretched glove of Curtis Granderson and beyond the left-field fence to give the Pirates the 1-0 victory over Hill and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
With that single misplaced pitch, Hill lost his bid for a no-hitter. According to Elias Sports Bureau research, he also became the first pitcher since Lefty Leifield of the 1906 Pirates to lose a decision despite throwing at least nine innings with one or fewer hits and no walks allowed.
It’s natural to assume that the gut-wrenching and sudden nature of the defeat would prompt Hill to curl up in a ball next to his locker stall. But when the clubhouse door swung open and reporters and cameras gravitated to his spot, there was Hill, standing tall with an ice pack on his shoulder and dissecting the night’s events with clinical detachment.
He threw his support behind teammate Logan Forsythe, whose ninth-inning error ended his perfect-game bid. He raved about Chase Utley’s acrobatic diving catch in the eighth inning and said the image is “burned in [his] head now.”
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