Today is the 39th anniversary of Kenny Holtzman's no-hitter vs. the Braves, an unusual no-hitter because there were no strikeouts. The wind was blowing in on a cool August day and that helped Holtzman, as a ball hit by Hank Aaron that normally would have been on Waveland was blown back and caught in the well by Billy Williams in the 7th inning. Paul Sullivan has a nice recap article in today's Tribune which also contains the text of the game stories written at the time.
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Reminder, the above stat line is Harden's numbers with the Cubs only. See the pitcher box for his full-season stats.
Johnny Cueto beat the Cubs in Cincinnati on May 5, and they beat him at Wrigley Field on July 9. Cueto is 1-3, 5.63 in his last 7 starts and is second in the NL in HR allowed. Aramis Ramirez homered off him in the July game and Geovany Soto took him deep in the May game.
Rich Harden let Lou know that he likes pitching at night and in cooler weather, so that's the main reason he was pushed back from the Marlins series to start tonight. He did start once vs. the Reds in interleague play with Oakland, but that was in 2004 -- there's only one player who was in that game who's still on the Reds (Javier Valentin). Valentin is 1-for-3 lifetime vs. Harden, who threw five shutout innings in Atlanta last Wednesday, although he walked five.
Today's game is on cable in Chicago and Cincinnati. Also see the MLB.com Mediacenter.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
Once again, a reminder that you can find the overflow comment threads, including the first pitch thread, on the right sidebar of both the front page and any interior page in the box headed "RECENT STORIES IN GAME THREADS". Today's first pitch thread posts at 7 pm CT, and the overflow comment threads will post at 8 pm, 9 pm and 9:45 pm CT.
Discuss amongst yourselves.