On the verge of being unable to complete his masterpiece, Bud Smith rediscovered the strike zone in the nick of time and got the job done.
On Sept. 3, 2001, Smith pitched a no-hitter for the Cardinals against the Padres.
With his pitch count rising and his command fading, Smith was in danger of getting a mound visit from manager Tony La Russa, who was considering lifting the rookie left-hander.
One pitch away from creating an uncomfortable situation, Smith managed to prevent the conversation neither he nor La Russa wanted to have.
Tapping his potential
Born and raised in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Robert Allan Smith got the nickname Bud from his father, Allan, a construction worker, who would come home from work and ask his son to get him a cold Budweiser from the refrigerator, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Smith was 18 when he was chosen by the Cardinals in the fourth round of the 1998 amateur draft.
His breakout season came in 2000 when he had a 17-2 record in the minors. Among the wins were a pair of seven-inning no-hitters for Arkansas.
A finesse pitcher, Smith was listed at 6 feet, 170 pounds. When Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck got a look at him at spring training in 2001, he exclaimed to Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz, “He’s as thin as soup.”
The Sporting News described Smith as “a Tom Glavine-type: smallish but with a good enough fastball and decent changeup.”
“I create ground balls,” Smith told Miklasz. “I’m not a big strikeout guy.”
Ups and downs
Smith, 21, started the 2001 season in the minors, but was called up to the Cardinals in June. He made his debut for them with an inning of scoreless relief at Denver. Boxscore
On June 17 against the White Sox, Smith got his first big-league win in his first big-league start. Boxscore
He was 2-0 with a 2.25 ERA in July, but 0-2 with a 5.73 ERA in August.
In his last three August starts, Smith gave up 14 earned runs in 14 innings. The last game in that stretch was against the Padres in St. Louis. The Cardinals won, 16-14, but Smith was shelled for seven runs, five earned, before he was lifted in the fourth. Ryan Klesko hit a 472-foot home run against him. Boxscore
Looking good
La Russa was considering removing Smith from the rotation if he didn’t improve in his next start, Sept. 3, in a rematch versus the Padres at San Diego.
The game would be Smith’s first in his home state as a big-leaguer. In attendance were his mother, stepfather, 14 other immediate family members and 10 high school buddies, the Associated Press reported.
“Smith tried to change speeds and use both sides of the plate better than he did in his three previous outings,” The Sporting News reported.
In sync with catcher Eli Marrero, Smith executed the strategy splendidly. “That’s the first time I’ve felt that comfortable in a while,” he told the Post-Dispatch.
Smith retired the first five batters before issuing a walk to ex-teammate Ray Lankford in the second. Rickey Henderson walked in the third. Five of the Padres’ first 15 outs were strikeouts. In five innings, Smith’s pitch count was at 70.
“I was almost rooting for him to give up a hit so we could get him out of there,” pitching coach Dave Duncan told the Post-Dispatch.
Henderson walked again in the sixth, but the no-hitter was intact.
In the seventh, Smith hung a changeup to Bubba Trammell, who drove the pitch deep to left.
“That ball was the biggest scare of the night,” Smith told the Post-Dispatch.
As he watched left fielder Albert Pujols run toward the wall, “I thought the only chance I had was if Albert jumped and robbed him,” Smith said.
The ball didn’t carry as far as Smith feared, and Pujols caught it at the wall.
Mission accomplished
In the late innings, aware a no-hitter was at stake, “I was shaking,” Smith said to the Post-Dispatch. “I was so nervous.”
With the Cardinals ahead, 4-0, La Russa made some defensive changes in the eighth, including shifting Pujols from left to first base in place of Mark McGwire.
In the same inning, Tony Gwynn, 41 and in his last season of a Hall of Fame career, got a standing ovation as he came to the plate as a pinch-hitter. Smith was so focused, “I couldn’t hear anybody in the stands,” he told the Post-Dispatch.
Gwynn grounded out to shortstop Edgar Renteria.
In the ninth, relievers Dave Veres and Steve Kline warmed up rapidly in the Cardinals’ bullpen. Henderson, like Gwynn, a future Hall of Famer, led off and hit a broken-bat grounder to short for the first out.
After getting ahead on the count 1-and-2 to D’Angelo Jimenez, Smith walked him. La Russa sensed trouble. Smith had thrown more than 120 pitches and leaving him in the game “went against La Russa’s instincts,” The Sporting News noted.
The next batter was Ryan Klesko, who had hit the mammoth home run against Smith five nights earlier. When the first three pitches to Klesko missed the strike zone, La Russa said he was tempted to relieve Smith if he walked Klesko, the Post-Dispatch reported.
Asked whether he really would have lifted Smith, La Russa replied, “I probably would have made a trip (to the mound) and asked him to be honest. If he said, ‘I’m toast,’ it would have been better to let the reliever make the mistake.”
La Russa never had to leave the dugout. On the 3-and-0 pitch to Klesko, Smith threw a fastball for a strike. He came back with a curve for strike two. On the next pitch, Klesko sliced a grounder toward short. Renteria grabbed it on the short hop and fired to first in time for the second out.
Next was cleanup batter Phil Nevin. He got the count to 2-and-1. On Smith’s 134th pitch, Nevin smacked a sharp grounder up the middle. Smith snared it, ran halfway to first base and flipped underhanded to Pujols for the final out.
“He hit it right to me, but I didn’t know I had the ball,” Smith told the Associated Press. Boxscore and Video of last 3 innings
Smith was the third Cardinals rookie to pitch a no-hitter, joining Paul Dean (1934) and Jose Jimenez (1999).
The no-hitter was the start of a stretch of 12 wins in 13 games for the Cardinals. Smith was 3-0 with an 0.43 ERA in three September starts, helping the Cardinals finish in a tie with the Astros atop the division and qualify for the playoffs.
Smith’s record with the Cardinals in the regular season: 6-3 with a 3.81 ERA.
In the National League Division Series against the Diamondbacks, Smith started and won Game 4. Boxscore
The next year, Smith was 1-5 with a 6.94 ERA when the Cardinals packaged him in a trade to the Phillies for Scott Rolen.
After the deal, Smith never appeared in another big-league game. The no-hitter was his only complete game in the majors.
RetroSimba 
We might be tempted to think that Tommy John surgery is the worst thing that can happen to a MLB pitcher. It’s actually any shoulder related injury requiring surgery. For Bud Smith it was a torn labrum. It was sweet to watch that video. The Cardinals were evolving into a great team. You can tell that Smith was starting to tire. But man, when he had command of his pitches what wicked stuff he threw! One final thing. The Baseball America Prospect Handbook in 2001 had Bud Smith ranked ahead of Albert Pujols.
Thanks, Phillip. He was a true pitcher rather than a thrower.