A striking performance

Today marks the 72nd anniversary of arguably the greatest pitching performance in history as right-hander Ron Necciai strikes out a record 27 batters while pitching a no-hitter for Bristol, the Pittsburgh Pirates' affiliate in the Class D Appalachian League.

While beating the Welsh Miners 7-0 before a Tuesday night crowd of 1,183 in Bristol’s Shaw Stadium, the 19-year-old native of Gallatin, Pa., allows four runners to reach base with a walk, hit by pitch, error and wild pitch on a third strike.

The wild pitch eluding catcher Harry Dunlop occurs on a third strike in the ninth, allowing Necciai the opportunity to record four strikeouts in the last inning.

Dunlop later insists that he had no chance to grab that wild pitch.

Ron Necciai with Pittsburgh

“(Necciai) had a great curveball, an old-fashioned drop,” Dunlop later tells baseball historian extraordinaire Jerome Holtzman. “A lot of them dropped in the dirt. He wasn’t easy to handle.”

The only non-strikeout comes on a second-inning grounder.

The no-hitter is part of a 1952 season in which Necciai goes 4-0 in six appearances for Bristol with a 0.42 earned-run average and an astounding 109 strikeouts in only 43 innings.

Necciai is promoted to the major leagues for the final weeks of the 1952 season, but goes 1-6 record with a 7.08 ERA for Pittsburgh before being drafted into the military.

Alas, he never again pitches in the majors, retiring in 1955 after a handful of appearances in the minors. He is only 23 years old at the time.

“There are has-beens and never-wases,” Necciai tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette three decades after his retirement. “I’m a might-have-been. I lived a lifetime in one night.”