{"id":262862,"date":"2026-04-23T15:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T15:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/262862\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T15:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T15:22:11","slug":"how-a-houston-astros-pitcher-threw-a-no-hitter-and-still-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/262862\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Houston Astros pitcher threw a no-hitter\u2014and still lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

In their history, the Houston Astros have thrown 17 no-hitters.\u00a0They have the earliest<\/a> and latest no-no in a season, they used a then-record six pitchers in a combined no-hitter at Yankee Stadium in 2003, and they threw one in the 2022 World Series<\/a>. But none of those feats are as weird as the one thrown early in the team’s existence when on April 23, 1964, the starting pitcher for the Houston Colt .45s, Ken Johnson, no-hit the Cincinnati Reds only for the Colts to lose 1-0.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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A new frontier for baseball\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Astros’ early history was sort of a fever dream. Then called the Colt .45s, the team joined MLB as an expansion franchise in 1962 and lived a hapless, near comical existence. Before moving to the Astrodome they played their games at nearby Colt Stadium<\/a>, a janky little ballpark that a journalist once called “a barn-like thing.” It was open to the unbearably humid Houston summers, players were often swarmed by mosquitoes, and rattlesnakes could at times be found in the outfield. (Colt Stadium was later disassembled and moved to Mexico, which is a story for another time).\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The team’s roster was nearly as shambolic as their home. It was cobbled together in the 1961 expansion draft, in which the newly-established New York Mets and Colt .45s pulled players from established MLB teams. That included Johnson, a fine but not great starter who had bounced around the league before the Colts selected him from the Reds in the draft.<\/p>\n

Johnson was solid in his Houston tenure. In 1963, he posted a career-high 2.65 ERA with 148 strikeouts despite going 11-17. It was perhaps for that reason that in 1964, Johnson would be named the Colt .45’s Opening Day starting pitcher against the Reds. Johnson was on a roll. He beat the Reds on Opening Day, extending a six-win streak going back to the previous season. When Houston found themselves back in Cincinnati on that fateful April 23, Johnson again was on the mound.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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A team photo of the 1964 Houston Colt .45s, who would move to the Houston Astrodome that year and become the Houston Astros.<\/p>\n

eBay<\/p>\n

\n“Stay loose and keep going.”\n<\/p>\n

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On a warm evening in Houston, in front of 5,426 fans at Colt Stadium, Johnson was rolling. He struck out reigning Rookie of the Year Pete Rose and future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. By the seventh inning, Johnson knew he had something special going. He turned to his teammate, Don Nottebart, who had thrown the Colts’ first-ever no-hitter in 1963 against the Philadelphia Phillies.<\/p>\n

“How’s a guy supposed to feel, Notty? What do you do?” Johnson asked Nottebart between innings. “Stay loose and keep going,” Nottebart replied, per the local Ohio newspaper, Portsmouth Times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Baseball:<\/p>\n

Baseball: Houston Colt .45s fans in stands during game vs St. Louis Cardinals. Colt Stadium on April 24, 1964.<\/p>\n

Hy Peskin\/Sports Illustrated via Getty Ima<\/p>\n

As Johnson twirled his gem into the ninth inning, the rest of his team was playing forgettable baseball. Despite Reds pitcher Joe Nuxhall giving up five hits and walking one, the Colts couldn’t score and had no man on second base until the seventh inning. As the game’s end approached, the Reds and Colts stayed tied at nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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“I was anxious, because I knew how important it was and I knew we weren’t getting any runs,” Colts catcher Jerry Grote said at the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the top of the ninth inning, Johnson got the first batter to ground out before things became pure tragicomedy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Costly errors and “a real weird one.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Up next was Rose, who bunted. Johnson scooped up the ball as it trickled towards him. But his throw to first baseman Pete Runnels was wild and flew wide, allowing the notoriously speedy Rose to reach second base on the misplay. Johnson’s error had put a man on second with just one out, imperiling his scoreless masterpiece.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The next batter, Chico Ruiz, grounded out, but Rose advanced to third base. With just one out needed to finish his shutout and send it to extras, Johnson threw his first pitch to Reds outfielder Vada Pinson. Pinson hit a ground ball to Nellie Fox at second base. Fox, in the 18th season of his star-crossed major league career, had fielded that ball countless times throughout his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Fox, a future Hall of Famer, bobbled it, and Rose scored easily. Thanks to Johnson and Fox’s errors, the Reds led, 1-0. In audio you can still listen to today<\/a>, Colt .45’s radio broadcaster Gene Elston began the bottom of the ninth by remarking on the game’s strangeness.<\/p>\n

“This is a real weird one tonight,” Elston remarked. “Never in the history of baseball has a pitcher lost a nine-inning no-hitter.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

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View of scoreboard at Colt Stadium during Houston Colt .45s vs Los Angeles Dodgers game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hy Peskin\/Sports Illustrated via Getty Ima<\/p>\n

In the bottom of the ninth, the Colts mustered just one baserunner when the first baseman, Runnels, reached on an error. The final batter, John Weekly, struck out looking to end the game. The Colt .45s made history. Johnson gave up no hits, struck out nine, induced 12 ground balls and three popouts on the infield while walking just two. But he lost the game anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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According to the Houston Chronicle<\/a>, Fox was inconsolable after the game. He apologized profusely to Johnson, saying, “I’m sorry I had to mess it up.”<\/p>\n

“It was my fault,” Johnson reportedly said, later patting Fox on the back. “I put the runner on or we’d have been out of the inning.”<\/p>\n

\n“What a way to get in the book.”\n<\/p>\n

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For a guy who pitched fabulously in a game he lost, Johnson was remarkably positive. He confessed that even if the game had gone to extra innings, he wouldn’t have been able to pitch much longer; Johnson had taken a line drive off his shin earlier in the game from Ruiz.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“What else can I do? I pitched the best game of my life,” Johnson told reporters after the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At that point, nine other pitchers had thrown no-hitters but lost the game, but only in extra innings. Johnson was the first, and as of today, only, pitcher to lose a no-hitter in a regular nine-inning game. This oddity would give Johnson some notoriety; he’d tell the story on the popular game show I’ve Got A Secret a few days later that same year.<\/a> Baseball, with its long seasons and infinite randomness, makes strange, meaningless statistics of all who play the game in one way or another. From the game’s final out, Johnson was well aware that his odd, losing no-hitter would make him a piece of baseball trivia for all time.<\/p>\n

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“Say, I guess that will put me in baseball history?” Johnson apparently said to the Chronicle after the game<\/a>. “What a way to get in the book.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In their history, the Houston Astros have thrown 17 no-hitters.\u00a0They have the earliest and latest no-no in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2466,16469,1704,56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-262862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-chronculture","9":"tag-chronsports","10":"tag-chronstaff","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-headlines","13":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}