The wrong season for history

CC Sabathia left Saturday's nationally televised game in Tampa with a ten run lead, four outs to go, and 111 pitches on the scoreboard. Rays' catcher Kelly Shoppach was on first base with the Rays' first hit of the game, a clean single to left. And the fact that Shoppach was on first might have been the best thing for Sabathia's year, and the Yankee season.

Yankee manager Joe Girardi said afterwards that if his ace had kept the no-hitter, he wasn't coming out, regardless of the pitch count. Which on some level makes sense, as Sabathia is well-paid, remarkably durable (last three years: 241, 253 and 230 innings pitched), at the peak of his powers at age 29, and had never gotten this close to history before.

But the game wasn't close. It was also happening on April 10, on the road, in a game where the Yankees could have put Kei Igawa in and still won going away. The chance at history is always a little bit selfish, and in this time and place, it was more than that.

To be truly fair to Ceec, you can also blame home plate umpire Wally Bell, who started squeezing Sabathia in the late innings and added at least a dozen pitches to what was a nice and low pitch count into the middle innings. You could also point the finger at third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who saved the no-no with a diving stab, or the other Yankee fielders who kept the try alive. Finally, you can blame Ceec's catcher, Francisco Cervelli, and the rest of the Yankee hitters for making the big lefty wait for thirty minutes while they blew the game open in the top of the eighth, and probably messed up his rhythm.

So Shoppach's clean single to left saved a lot of trouble, really. It got him out of there on a reasonable pitch count, with full honor and no controversy. And when the big man takes the ball again later this week, it will be in a situation where no one is giving him any undue attention or press coverage, with no more wear and tear on his arm than what is normal for this time of year, and no one bringing up Johnny Vander Meer, aka the only guy to do the no-no in back to back games.

Instead, Sabathia will be trying to win a game for his team, rather than make history for himself. And if that means no hitters happen less often, along with the usual feeling about how pitchers are so babied in the modern era, so be it. Because games in April really don't matter all that much, especially to the Yankees, no matter how historic they might become.