Twenty-four years ago, the Miami Marlins made a trade with the New York Mets that just might be unique in MLB history.
Happy Miami Marlins No-Hitter Day baseball fans!
What’s that? Not a thing you say? Ah, yes, I’m being told yet another year has passed without that becoming the national holiday it deserves to be. Apparently the majority of fans remain more excited about today being Babe Ruth‘s birthday for some reason. But what if I told you that twenty-four years ago today, something happened in MLB that has proven to be even rarer than hitting 700-plus career home runs? Because it’s true, and the Miami Marlins are at the center of it.
To be honest though, even without this unique occurrence, Miami is still arguably worthy of a no-hitter themed holiday.
Currently, there isn’t a team in MLB that has thrown more no-hitters than they have had winning seasons. However, up until the last week of the 2020 season, that wasn’t the case. In fact, for much of the last twenty-five years, that hasn’t been the case either- because of the Miami Marlins.
Seven winning seasons, six no-hitters. It’s an impressive feat, well the no-hitter part anyway. Nine MLB teams trail Miami by that metric, with a slew of much more storied and established franchises joining the other three expansion franchises in looking up at the Marlins. Case in point, you’d have to add the no-hitters of the Mets and Rangers together to equal their total. As for those three other expansion franchises? Colorado, Arizona, and Tampa combined come up one no-hitter short.
But none of that is why Miami Marlins No-Hitter Day needs to be recognized.
On February 6th, 1998, the Miami Marlins kept the ball rolling on their famed postchampionship firesale when they shipped Al Leiter off to the Mets in exchange for a trio of prospects. Most prominent among them? One A.J. Burnett. Plenty of reasons abound for those two being household names for Marlins fans, what with Leiter helping Miami win their first World Series and Burnett being…well being Burnett. However, what they are most remembered for are their no hitters.
Leiter threw the franchise’s first no-no on May 11, 1996. Almost exactly five years later, Burnett tossed the franchise’s third on May 12, 2001. That’s right, the Miami Marlins ended up trading one pitcher who threw a no-hitter for their team in exchange for another pitcher who threw a no-hitter for their team.
As near as I can tell, that kind of trade has happened just once in MLB history. Once.
Certainly, it hasn’t happened in at least a century- no promises something wasn’t missed from the days of a young Cy Young. But colleague Bill Felber and I took a pretty close look at a ton of transaction pages, and just couldn’t come up with a trade that equaled what the Marlins achieved twenty-four years ago today.
Seems worthy of a holiday to me. Happy Miami Marlins No-Hitter Day to you and yours.