Brush with Perfection
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS
RAFU SPORTS EDITOR
Saturday, July 12, 2008

Hiroki Kuroda faces just one batter over the minimum in a masterful one-hitter Monday night.

MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS/Rafu Shimpo
Fans applaud as Dodgers catcher Russell Martin hugs Hiroki Kuroda after the last out of their 3-0 win over the Atlanta Braves on Monday.

DODGER STADIUM.—Baseball immortality can be tantalizingly close, but Hiroki Kuroda was reminded Monday night how difficult it can be to cross the threshold.

The Dodgers starter was all but perfect against the Atlanta Braves Monday, July 7, pitching seven flawless innings before giving up a leadoff double in the eighth to first baseman Mark Teixeira. That was Kuroda’s only blemish as he regained his composure and went on to a one-hit complete game victory, 3-0.

“You can’t get much closer to being perfect than that,” said Dodgers Manager Joe Torre, who as skipper of the New York Yankees witnessed perfect games by David Cone and David Wells. “He worked fast and threw a lot of strikes, as evidenced by his pitch count at the end of the game. That was about as robotic as you’ve ever seen any pitcher just throw one strike after another. He was like a machine. He kept us on the edge of our seats.”

Kuroda (5-6) established an efficient rhythm early and didn’t reach a 3-ball count all night, striking out six along the way. He threw 91 pitches, 61 for strikes in his bid to join Sandy Koufax as the only Dodger to hurl a perfect game. The last L.A. no-hitter was turned in on Sept. 17, 1996, by Kuroda’s countryman Hideo Nomo, who did the unthinkable by not allowing a hit at Coors Field in Denver.

After the last out of the fifth inning, the buzz in the stadium began to grow about a possible perfect game. Fans were murmuring and reporters in the press box began looking up statistics on no-hit games. When Kuroda got two strikes on Teixeira in the top of the eighth, the crowd was roaring, which Kuroda later admitted may have added some extra pressure.

“I was mostly concerned with the leadoff hitter in that inning, it was a 2-2 count and I didn’t want to walk him because we didn’t have that big of a lead,” Kuroda said through a translator.

“I wasn’t really nervous, but I felt the pressure from the fans because they were expecting something big. I was concentrating more on not allowing any runs.”

The slider he threw to Teixeira stayed up just enough for the left-handed hitter to hook a clean hit into the right field corner.

Afterward, the crowd of 39,896 gave Kuroda a standing ovation, which they repeated after the game’s final out.

The Dodgers did all their scoring in the fifth on Nomar Garciaparra’s two-run homer and an RBI single by Matt Kemp.

Kuroda’s gem comes in his second start after coming off the disabled list July 2. He said the soreness in his pitching shoulder appears to have cleared up nicely.

“I’ve been in that situation before, where a no-hitter was possible,” said Kuroda, who pitched 11 seasons for the Hiroshima Carp in Japan before signing with the Dodgers. “I knew it wouldn’t be easy.”