Roy Halladay, one of two pitchers in Major League Baseball history to toss a playoff no-hitter and a two-time Cy Young Award-winner, died in a plane crash Tuesday at age 40.
A former ace for the Toronto Blue Jays and later the Philadelphia Phillies, Halladay is still one year away from being eligible for the baseball Hall of Fame. There will be more appropriate days to banter about his qualifications for the famously exclusive fraternity. This one will recall his community spirit, generosity to reporters, popularity among teammates, and his career highlights—which were never more dazzling than seven years ago, when he became the fifth hurler to win a Cy Young in both leagues and began a postseason run by flabbergasting the Cincinnati Reds with nine virtuoso innings.
The performance elicited self-described “hyperbole” from Joey Votto: the National League MVP that year, 2010, and widely recognized as one of the toughest outs in the game.
“I don’t think anything we did would have mattered,” said Votto.
Halladay’s line in this, the first game of a National League Divisional Series: 8 Ks, 1 BB, 0 H, and 79 strikes on 104 pitches. He threw first-pitch strikes to 25 of the 28 batters he faced; a fifth-inning walk of Jay Bruce on a 3-2 count was the only blemish on what would have been a perfect game.
He began the at-bat with a swinging strike.
“Doc,” as he was nicknamed, sparked Philly to a series sweep, before they fell to the eventual Series champion San Francisco Giants in six games. He never captured a ring himself—the year the Phillies won it all, 2008, Halladay finished second in Cy Young voting in the American League for the Jays. 2010 was his first season with the National League club: a statement debut during which he also threw a perfect game in May against the Marlins.
He pitched more than 200 innings in a year eight times. In the latter seven of those seasons, he finished first, third, fifth, second, fifth, first, and second in Cy Young balloting, encompassing a stunning decade-long run during which he was widely recognized as one of baseball’s best. The last of those years, when he was 34, was the best of his career: He struck out 220 batters, walked just 35, and surrendered an insignificant 10 home runs. His fielding-independent ERA of 2.20 that season—accounting just for what Halladay could control—is one of the best in modern history. It also was not enough to win him a third Cy Young: a feat that would have put him in the company of Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Steve Carlton, Pedro Martinez, Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, Sandy Koufax, and his contemporary Clayton Kershaw.
“I hate to use hyperbole, but he’s an ace among aces,” Votto added after the 4-0 no-hitter defeat.
