Baseball’s playoffs–generally the best games of the year–got off to an amazing start as the Phillies’ Roy Halladay pitched the second no-hitter in the history of postseason play. (The first was in 1956.):
In the last 54 years of baseball history prior to Wednesday night, there had been 952 postseason games played, all of which shared two common traits of omission: None had ever included a no-hit game, and none had ever been graced by Harry Leroy Halladay.
But on a chilly, drizzly night at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park, first one historic hole was filled, and then the other. At 5:08 p.m., Roy Halladay, the Phillies’ brilliant right-hander, threw the first postseason pitch of his career, and at 7:42 p.m. baseball’s first postseason no-hitter since 1956 was complete.
Halladay, 33, turned his postseason debut into the most impressive pitching performance in half a century of baseball history – holding the Cincinnati Reds hitless in a 4-0 Phillies victory in Game 1 of the National League Division Series.