Corey Kluber was mobbed by his teammates after completing the first no-hitter in Yankee history since 1999 on Wednesday night, but one particular embrace stuck with him.
Robinson Chirinos, with the team in Texas as part of the taxi squad, gave Kluber a reminder of where he’d been, and how much more fulfilling it made his no-hit triumph.
“Congratulations,” Chirinos said. “A lot better than the last time you were on the mound here.”
That last time came in July of 2020, shortly after MLB’s shortened season began. Kluber, coming off a 2019 campaign where he threw just 35.2 innings before being shut down with a fractured forearm after being hit by a line drive, lasted just one inning in his Rangers debut before exiting with a shoulder tear that would end his season.
Kluber got his next chance with the Yanks and less than two months into his debut season with New York, he was back on the mound in Texas, finishing off a no-hitter less than a year after only being able to finish off one inning.
“I think it was cool for me personally to have it happen here,” Kluber said. “I hadn’t thought about it until after the game.”
Kluber wasn’t thinking about his return to Texas as he mowed through the Rangers order, striking out nine and allowing only one walk. He didn’t even think about his active no-hitter until the later innings, and in typical even-keeled Kluber fashion, didn’t feel the anticipation until the final three outs.
“I probably didn’t start thinking about it until after the sixth,” Kluber said. “At that point we had gotten a couple runs, so with a couple-run cushion, it makes it a little easier to kind of pound the strike zone when you have that run support in your back pocket. But even being aware of it, I don’t think until that last inning, I ever, I don’t want to say let it affect my pitch, because I don’t think we changed the way we went about it, but I don’t think I was all in on it I guess until the last inning.”
By the ninth inning, even the typically emotionless Kluber began to sense a chance for history.
“I wouldn’t say I was ‘freaking out,’ I definitely think I had to take a breath after the warmups and calm myself down a bit,” Kluber said. “I would probably compare to making a first playoff start. You have the heartbeat faster, the adrenaline going, things like that. So in that sense I guess I was hopeful that I’ve felt that before and have that to go back on to know what to do in that situation to get myself relaxed a little bit.”
For a brief moment in the ninth, Kluber’s no-hit bid appeared to be in doubt when a line drive to right field off the bat of pinch hitter David Dahl made its way toward the corner, but a speedy Tyler Wade was able to track it down and put Kluber just one out away from history.
“That was one of the few, when they hit it, I was not worried but wondering if it was going to fall in for a hit,” Kluber said. “Wade is obviously not an outfielder by trade so to track that ball down…the fact that he’s not an outfielder makes the play more impressive.”
Kluber finished the job two pitches later, and after wearing his usual stone-faced expression on the mound for nine innings, he let himself celebrate with the teammates who rushed to mob him on the infield grass.
Kluber just doesn’t remember much of the euphoria.
“I do remember after Luke [Voit] caught it, I remember my first reaction was to find Higgy, but other than that, I couldn’t really tell you,” Kluber said.
Kluber may not remember the moments after he became part of baseball history, but the Yankees will for a long, long time.
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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