A little while ago I "celebrated" the Oakland A's combined no-hitter from the last game of the 1975 season.
With that in mind, I just had to go ahead and celebrate the other
combined no-hitter of the decade, the Chicago White Sox combined gem
spun against, who else?, the Oakland A's not even a year later!
Take a look at my card design:
White Sox pitchers John Odom (an Oakland A's pitcher up until the
prior season), and Francisco Barrios teamed up to stifle the A's on July
28th, 1976, with Odom keeping Oakland hitless for the first five
innings, and Barrios wrapping it up the final four.
While it was a no-hitter, it certainly was not perfect, as Odom
managed to walk NINE A's batters in his five innings of work, and future
Hall of Famers Billy Williams scoring the lone A's run in the bottom of
the fourth inning when Claudell Washington
stole second, allowing Williams to score on a bad throw from catcher
Jim Essian.
All told, Odom and Barrios walked a combined eleven batters, while striking out five and allowing three stolen bases.
But in the end it was (and is) an official no-hitter, and would end up
being the last combined no-hitter until the California Angels pulled
the trick on April 11, 1990 when Mark Langston and Mike Witt combined
to no-hit the Mariners.
Just a year later in 1991 there would be TWO more combined
no-hitters, spun by the Baltimore Orioles and then the Atlanta Braves.
Since then there have been two more combined no-no's, the July 12th
effort by the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Houston Astros in 1997,
and the June 11, 2003 no-hitter thrown by SIX Houston Astros against the
New York Yankees.
Ironically enough, the 1976 combined no-no would end up being one of Blue Moon Odom's
last Major League games, as he was out of the Majors after only eight
games in 1976, finishing off a 13-year career.
