For all the accolades, adoration and applause Greg Maddux has received in his two celebrated decades as a major-league pitcher, the one feather still missing from his Hall of Fame cap was the elusive no-hitter.
But on Thursday night, two days after he was traded to Los Angeles in a deadline deal, the legendary right-hander came tantalizingly close in his Dodgers debut, to the point that he needed just nine more outs to etch his name in the last remaining book of baseball history where it can't already be found.
And then, Mother Nature did what the flailing Cincinnati Reds couldn't, effectively driving a Maddux pitch back through the middle and into center field.
As Maddux took the mound for the bottom of the seventh inning of what for the Dodgers would become a 3-0 victory over the Reds before 26,053 at Great American Ball Park, the skies opened up for the second time. The game already had been delayed for more than an hour at the start, and now, the umpires were signaling for the tarp again.
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