“Yamamoto has a perfect game thru 1 inning,” I texted my son. We have a running joke. Every time one of my favorite pitchers takes the mound, I immediately count the innings of perfect or no-hit baseball. It never lasts long, but I love to imagine that any moment might be the one when entertainment becomes history. The first innings of a ball game open with infinite possibilities: Anything can happen.
Anything can happen, but baseball is a game of averages and probabilities, and the odds are increasingly favoring pitchers. Batting averages have been declining across the league for a quarter-century, from an average of .270 in 2000 to a paltry .246 today. Oddly, home runs have not declined (1.17 per game in 2000 vs. 1.16 today). What has declined are old-fashioned singles, doubles, and triples. Baseball is becoming a game of strikeouts and dingers.
“Two innings [of] a perfect game,” I texted 15 minutes later. It was September 6, the Los Angeles Dodgers were in Baltimore, and Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto was on the mound. Yamamoto was already a legend, having pitched seven seasons in Japan and won the Eiji Sawamura Award (akin to Major League Baseball’s Cy Young Award) three times before coming to the United States and signing with the Dodgers before the 2024 season. We were in right-center field amid a sea of orange at Camden Yards. My son was a half-dozen seats away with a group of friends, while I was in a row of dads. Even though we were in the stadium, I felt the need to text him updates of the game unfolding right in front of him.
Why is baseball dominated by strikeouts and home runs? The “Moneyball” era of big data changed the game. Managers and analysts armed with reams of numbers on pitch speed, spin rates, launch angle, and exit velocity geared their team’s coaching and training to optimize for a few key skills that correlate with runs and wins. “Small ball,” the strategy that relies on bunts, singles, and stolen bases, almost vanished.
“There goes the perfect game,” I texted after Yamamoto walked two batters in the third inning. “Still a no hitter.” The Dodgers had scored one run in the top half of the inning after a double, walk, and sacrifice bunt set the table for Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani to bat in a run, giving the team a tenuous lead on an unusual spurt of small ball.
It’s not just analytics and data aiding pitchers: Major League Baseball changed the construction of the ball itself for 2025. This year’s balls feature higher seams, the red stitching that holds the pads of leather together. Higher seams create more drag, which makes curveballs curve harder and batted balls fall shorter. Football fans might remember “Deflategate,” a 2015 scandal in which the New England Patriots deflated footballs to make them easier for Tom Brady to grip and throw. When the ball changes, the game changes in ways that have nothing to do with skill or athleticism. Lower seams in the 1990s and in 2019 contributed to spikes in home runs. It feels cheap.
“We have 5 innings of a no hitter going,” I texted my dad. He was at home in West Virginia trying to get the game on the radio. At that point, the Dodgers led 2-0 after another round of small ball involving a double, single, and sacrifice bunt set Mookie Betts up for an RBI single. “Six innings,” I updated him minutes later. An Orioles fan swathed in orange near me squinted at the scoreboard above us. “Dodgers have 8 hits so far and we have … zero?” He looked around. “Zero? Is that right?” I nodded and smiled in my Dodger-blue jersey. I caught an undercurrent of murmuring in the bleachers. Watching a no-hitter is funny. The first four or five innings are quiet, even boring, but when the crowd wakes up, the tension ratchets up with every pitch. The energy shifted.
“History was calling. Yamamoto, among the most decorated pitchers in Japanese baseball, would earn his first major laurel in the U.S. He would pitch a no-hitter, the team would come alive, and they would rediscover the team they were last year.”
The moment felt emblematic of the season. The most notable achievements in baseball in 2025 have revolved around pitchers. In July, veteran Dodgers hurler Clayton Kershaw became just the 20th pitcher in history to record 3,000 strikeouts. A month later, Justin Verlander of the San Francisco Giants reached 3,500. Paul Skeenes of the Pirates, who won last year’s Rookie of the Year award, is poised to win this year’s Cy Young for having one of the best pitching seasons ever: At 1.98, he has the lowest career ERA after 52 starts of any pitcher. In the American League, the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal is going to win his second consecutive Cy Young in a stretch of dominance that is beginning to look like Greg Maddux in the late 1980s or Randy Johnson in the late 1990s.
Of course, they have competition. The longball hitters are still here. Between 2024 and 2025, Yankee slugger Aaron Judge put together one of the best offensive stretches of all time, rivaling Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle at their best. Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners broke the record for most home runs by a catcher with almost a month left still to play. The Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber became just the 21st player ever to hit four home runs in a single game. Ohtani might get his second consecutive season with 50 home runs.
But none of those players’ home runs have led their respective teams to greatness. The better teams still managed to mix in some small ball, as if they have found the weakness created by the fixation on strikeouts and home runs—and as Los Angeles seemed to be doing on this night. The Milwaukee Brewers are the best team in baseball this year, and they are doing it without a home run champion. They have no single marquee superstar, like Ohtani or Judge. What they have is a team that is so consistent at doing the small things right that the Brewers won an astounding 70 percent of their games in July and August. Not my Dodgers. The defending World Series champions collapsed in midsummer, winning barely 40 percent of their games over that stretch.
Not tonight. Magic was in the air. “7 innings” I texted my son. He took a photo of me, watching with pride as the Dodgers were finally snapping out of their long slumber. Tonight would change everything. History was calling. Yamamoto, among the most decorated pitchers in Japanese baseball, would earn his first major laurel in the U.S. He would pitch a no-hitter, the team would come alive, and they would rediscover the team they were last year. It would also signal that small ball was a viable strategy, that baseball didn’t have to be a monotonous cycle of home runs and strikeouts. “Special night,” my dad texted in the eighth inning. “This is so stressful!” yelled a Dodger fan a few rows below us, “I love it!”
I am not superstitious, but in some things I am irresistibly romantic. I love the drama of a big moment or a historical achievement. In 150 years of baseball, there have been only 326 no-hitters. Getting to see one unfold, live and in person, is almost indescribable. A Reddit user recounted seeing Kershaw pitch a no-hitter in 2014 as “the most magical game we’ll ever see.” He was watching with his son. “I remember telling him after ‘You’ll never see another game like this.’”
“Magical” is the word that comes to my mind. You could go to a dozen games every year your entire life and not see an achievement like this. Even with pitchers holding the upper hand, no one has thrown a no-hitter in 2025—the first season in 20 years without one. Tonight, it was time. The stars had aligned. This was mythological. We felt touched by the baseball gods.
I stood for the last three innings. Every Dodger fan was on their feet by the ninth, when Yamamoto struck out the first batter on three pitches. The next batter flew out to center field on one pitch. Yamamoto had thrown 108 pitches, already a career high, and he was still throwing a 96 mph fastball. The magic was within reach.
Jackson Holliday’s drive hit the top of the wall 20 or 30 yards to my left. The ball looked playable to me, but the outfielder didn’t even try. The no-hitter was over. Even worse, something broke in the Dodgers’ dugout. I was so shell-shocked I hardly noticed when Yamamoto left the game, and the next two Dodger pitchers combined to give up a double, hit a batter, and issue a wild pitch, a walk, another walk, and a single. The Orioles won, 4-3, in one of the most shocking and heartbreaking losses in the Dodgers’ 142-year history. The home run that ended the no-hitter shattered the magic for the Dodgers.
“One more magical moment in time, on September the 6th, in Baltimore!” the Orioles TV announcer boomed. Orioles legend Cal Ripken Jr. was in the audience to mark the 30th anniversary of his Iron Man record, for playing more consecutive games than any other player in history. How could Baltimore lose, let alone be no-hit, with Ripken there? Inconceivable. The stunning reversal made it the game of the year, a comeback for the ages. A part of me—a small part—could appreciate the drama, the grandeur, and the shared memory. It was the magic of baseball in all its glory—for Baltimore, but not for Los Angeles, not for Dodger fans, and not for Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
