Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

The Glorious Rarity of a No-Hitter

In baseball as in life, true greatness is fleeting.

May 8, 2019 at 5:20 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

Now he has two.
Photographer: Greg Fiume/Getty Images North America

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Maybe you didn’t jump for joy when Mike Fiers of the Oakland Athletics pitched the 300th no-hitter in Major League Baseball history the other night. Nobody cheers when a freelance coder finishes her 300th gig; or when a pundit publishes his 300th column; or when a politician makes his 300th gaffe. (OK, maybe that last one some do.)

Nevertheless, a no-hitter remains a rare and wonderful gem. As regular readers know, I consider baseball the finest and most pure of professional sports. But you needn’t agree, or even be a sports fan, to admire both the rarity and the wonder of a game in which a pitcher throws nine innings without allowing the other team a single hit. And that rarity and wonder contains an important lesson about life.