For The New York Mets, A No-Hitter Remains An Equally Singular And Collective Achievement

Josh Thole’s phone buzzed throughout the night of April 29, when the Mets’ no-hitter club either doubled or quintupled in membership, depending on one wants to calculate such matters.

“I was getting a bunch of messages that we’re all chopped liver now that there’s a second one,” Thole said with a chuckle Tuesday afternoon, when he appeared at Citi Field with Johan Santana to commemorate Wednesday’s 10th anniversary of Santana throwing the Mets’ first no-hitter.

Of course, a no-hitter is still both an accomplishment uniquely singular and collective, especially when the Mets are the ones throwing it. The combined no-hitter on Apr. 29 — when Tylor Megill started and tossed five innings before Drew Smith, Joely Rodriguez, Seth Lugo and Edwin Diaz combined to finish the 3-0 win over the Phillies — actually made Thole’s words from barely a month earlier sound prescient.

“I’ll say this: From a catching perspective, to call a game and be part of that — I don’t care if it was eight pitchers or one pitcher,” Thole said on a Zoom call on Mar. 28, when the Mets announced he and Santana would appear at Old-Timers Day on Aug. 27. “I think the idea of whether it’s one or five (pitchers), 10, whatever it is, I think it’s still a cool feat for all parties that were involved.”

That much was apparent Tuesday, when Santana returned to Citi Field for the first time since he threw his final big league pitch in 2012 and joined Thole and Mets manager Terry Collins for a pregame press conference in which Collins recognized perhaps the most important person in Santana’s gem.

“He’s not here, but Mike Baxter had a big part of that,” Collins said of the Queens native and left fielder who suffered a career-altering shoulder injury slamming into the wall to rob Yadier Molina of a double. “You talk about who sacrificed himself — I don’t know if he ever bounced back from the injury, did he? Pretty serious. And it just shows you the thought process — as Johan talked about, the thought process on the entire club (was) hey you throw it over the plate, we’re going to catch it.”

The thought process for manager Buck Showalter — who never considered letting Megill, making his 23rd career start, chase the no-hitter after throwing 88 pitches in the first five innings — was much different than Collins’ famously tortured thought process. Collins was committed to letting Santana — who missed all of 2011 recovering from shoulder surgery — try and complete the no-hitter even as his pitch count soared to 134.

“What’s the number of pitches you threw?” Showalter asked as he took a seat with reporters Tuesday.

“Oh God, please, no,” Collins said.

The ever-honest Collins has called managing the no-hitter one of the most stressful experiences in a professional baseball career that stretches back to the early 1970s. He sounded slightly less pained Tuesday, though he still spoke with a tinge of regret.

“Who he is and what he meant in the clubhouse and how he went about his career, he did it right,” Collins said. “I just wish he could have done it right in 107 pitches instead of 130 pitches. Certainly fun to watch and fun to witness and I think about it all the time. I’ve had some nightmares. But I’ve had some good dreams, too.”

“Listen, let me tell you something,” Santana said as he patted Collins on the back. “Better memories than that. You’re going to have better sleeps from now on. Don’t worry. We’re here and nobody’s going to take that away from us.”

The quintet of pitchers who combined to no-hit the Phillies last month are similarly linked, even if the gem developed so gradually that the only reliever to know what he was trying to complete was Diaz, who got the final three outs. Smith, who returned to the mound Tuesday after suffering a dislocated right index finger Sunday, wore a T-shirt commemorating the five-pitcher no-hitter as he spoke to reporters Monday afternoon.

“It’s always nice to be a part of it when you’re in the bullpen because we never have that chance, unless the starter doesn’t go the full game,” Smith said following the no-hitter. “It was awesome.”

The five pitchers, as well as catcher James McCann, posed for a picture near the mound Tuesday night with Santana, Thole and Collins after Santana’s son threw the ceremonial first pitch to Thole’s son.

“The game has changed, for sure, but you still have to throw it you have to catch it you have to hit it — the essence of the game is the same, the way you play is different.” Santana said. “The way it is, to get a single performance like that, it’s going to take — I don’t know, the right guy. But I say ‘we’ as a team even though I was the one who showed up in the record (books), We did it as a team. You have a combined no-hitter, it’s a we, it’s a team. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.”