Neutral no-hitter
MILWAUKEE — Big Z’s big moment was unprecedented — a no-hitter at a neutral site.
The crowd, however, was about as neutral as Harry Caray in his heyday.
Carlos Zambrano pitched the Chicago Cubs’ first no-hitter in 36 years Sunday night, returning from a sore rotator cuff to shut down the Houston Astros 5-0 in a game relocated from Houston to Milwaukee because of Hurricane Ike.
It was baseball’s first neutral-site no-hitter, the Elias Sports Bureau said. But it seemed like just about everyone in the crowd of 23,441 who saw it happen followed the Cubs up I-94 to turn Miller Park into Wrigley North, chanting “Let’s go Z!” as each out brought Zambrano closer to a sliver of baseball history.
“Playing here in Milwaukee, we knew the crowd would be on our side,” Zambrano said. “In the same way, we feel bad for the Astros, for the hurricane and all that’s been happening in Houston. But we have to continue and we have to keep playing baseball.”
The storm forced baseball to move two games from Texas to Miller Park, and Astros manager Cecil Cooper acknowledged that the ordeal took a toll on his team.
Cooper acknowledged Zambrano’s strong performance but was quick to point out that his team has spent the past few days hunkered down with their families to ride out the storm and its aftermath. They arrived in Milwaukee only hours before the first pitch.
And while the Astros batted last as the “home” team, the game’s atmosphere was a few ivy strands short of the full Wrigley experience. The crowd was so pro-Cub that a fan wearing a Brewers jersey was booed when he appeared on the video board in center field.
“This is not a home game,” Cooper said. “This is definitely an advantage for the Cubs and that’s saying it as mildly as possible.”
The Cubs took a 7Z\x-game lead in the NL Central over the fading Brewers, who were swept in a day-night doubleheader at Philadelphia.
The Astros fell two games behind the Brewers and Phillies, who are tied in the wild-card race. Houston had won six in a row and 14 of 15.
Zambrano’s performance was as unexpected as it was unprecedented.
Zambrano (14-5) hadn’t pitched since Sept. 2 because of shoulder inflammation and rotator cuff tendinitis — a sign, fans fretted, that rotten Cubbie luck had struck once again. The fact that the Cubs had won only three of their last 11 games going into Sunday didn’t do much to quell their angst.
“We needed that,” Cubs manager Lou Piniella said. “We had been struggling. And to do this, it’s special.”
With Zambrano’s health so closely tied to the Cubs’ playoff chances, Piniella just wanted a solid outing from his ace.
“You want him to get some good work in and obviously to win a baseball game,” Piniella said. “But you don’t expect a masterpiece like this one.”
Piniella planned to limit the 27-year-old Venezuelan to 100 pitches in his return to the rotation. Having recently had an anti-inflammatory shot, Zambrano managed to come close — he threw 110 pitches, 73 for strikes.
