A night to forget as well as remember

By Bill Plaschke

June 29, 2008 7 AM PT

It was a no-hitter.

No, it wasn’t.

It was a no-kidding.

It was a no-way.

It was a nahhh-hitter.

On a warm, wacky Saturday night at Dodger Stadium, the Freeway Series experienced what could only be called one heck of a SigAlert.

The Angels threw a no-no and went “Uh-oh.”

The Dodgers had zero hits and 50,000 cheers.

For only the fifth time since 1900, a team gave up no hits and lost, the Angels falling, 1-0, to the Dodgers despite Jered Weaver and Jose Arredondo combining to give up no hits in eight innings.

The Dodgers did not bat in the ninth inning, thus they did not get 27 plate appearances, thus it is not an official no-hitter.

But a nahhh-hitter, indeed.

“Wow,” said the Angels’ Chone Figgins afterward, shaking his head, speaking for the thousands who gave a prolonged standing ovation to the odd history. “You come to a game, you never know what you’re going to see.”

In the end, we saw the Angels’ Reggie Willits striking out against Takashi Saito to finish the top of the ninth, and heard the crowd roar with quite possibly the biggest cheer of relief in baseball history.

The Dodgers fielders danced across the field in stunned joy.

The Angels hitters leaned over their dugout railing in pained disbelief.

Then came the most amazing quote of the night, from official scorer Don Hartack.

“The scoreboard totals are correct,” Hartack announced in the press box.

Angels, no runs, five hits, two errors.

Dodgers, one run, no hits, two errors.

“This is the craziest,” the Angels’ Torii Hunter said. “I’ve never a part of a game that had no hits and they still won.”

Mike Scioscia, when asked if he had ever seen anything so crazy, did not go so crazy.

“What, losing a game?” said Scioscia. “It’s a strange line score to say the least, but it’s a loss.”

How nuts was it?

Scioscia, Angels manager, put in a pinch-hitter for Weaver in the seventh inning even though he was throwing a no-hitter at the time.

There was a runner on second and two outs and the Angels were desperate. But Figgins, in his first pinch-hitting appearance of the season, grounded out.

“Yep, kind of weird, what are you going to do?” Weaver said of the night.

He disappeared into the clubhouse almost immediately after being removed from the game. But he returned to the dugout to confirm on the scoreboard that, indeed, he had been part of a no-hit outing, yet was the losing pitcher.

“I looked up on the board and saw it,” he said. “It doesn’t mean a lot when they have the lead.”

How maddening was it?

Great defense saved the nahhh-hitter, but it was great defense by the team without any hits.

In the top of the ninth, with the Angels threatening to tie the score and give the Dodgers at least three more batters in the bottom of the ninth, second-baseman Luis Maza made a diving stop of a Casey Kotchman grounder.

If Kotchman reaches base, and is running with two out, he might have scored on Howie Kendrick’s ensuing double into the left-field corner.

So much for Weaver’s six-strikeout, changeup-working magic in his six innings, and Arredondo’s two innings with three strikeouts and no walks.

“I’m sure you guys are going to eat this up a lot more than I am,” Weaver said to reporters. “I don’t consider it a no-hitter for me.”

It was generally bad news for the Angels, whose wondrous night of pitching was marred only by Weaver’s fielding error in the fifth inning, which led to the run.

“It stinks, we’re not swinging bats well at all, I hate it,” Hunter said.

However, it could even be worse news for the weak-swinging Dodgers, who might now start to believe they can actually win games without worrying about those pesky hits.

The Dodgers’ offense never even got close to touching Weaver for six innings, and had their biggest threat in their final at-bat in the eighth inning, when Andre Ethier drove a ball deep to left field. Garret Anderson ran it down to end the inning and catch what would be the final out.

But then again, this was the first time in 30 games this season that the Dodgers have won while scoring fewer than two runs.

And their run came on aggressiveness by Kemp, who, in the fifth inning, batted a ball to the right of the mound and hustled to first while Weaver failed to pick it up.

Then two pitches later, he stole second and raced to third when catcher Jeff Mathis’ throw sailed into center field.

One pitch later, he scored on a fly ball by Blake DeWitt.

One run on no hits, and the Dodgers got no more of either, but didn’t need them.

“It was bizarre,” Dodgers Manager Joe Torre said, later adding, “It was magical.”

On a night that both teams may want to forget immediately but remember forever, both words worked.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Hits: zero

It might not go down as an official no-hitter, but there’s no denying that Angels pitchers gave up no hits Saturday night, and Dodgers batters had no hits. Previous instances of those occurrences:

NO HITS GIVEN UP BY ANGELS

* May 5, 1962 -- Bo Belinsky defeated Baltimore, 2-0.

* July 3, 1970 -- Clyde Wright defeated Oakland, 4-0.

* May 15, 1973 -- Nolan Ryan defeated Kansas City, 3-0.

* July 15, 1973 -- Nolan Ryan defeated Detroit, 6-0.

* Sept. 28, 1974 -- Nolan Ryan defeated Minnesota, 4-0.

* June 1, 1975 -- Nolan Ryan defeated Baltimore, 1-0.

* Sept. 30, 1984 -- Mike Witt defeated Texas, 1-0.

* April 11, 1990 -- Mark Langston and Mike Witt defeated Seattle, 1-0.

NO HITS COLLECTED BY DODGERS

* Aug. 9, 1976 -- John Candelaria, Pittsburgh, defeated Dodgers, 2-0.

* Sept. 26, 1981 -- Nolan Ryan, Astros, defeated Dodgers, 5-0.