No-hitters are never about one player. The Detroit Tigers made history proving that again

It began in the mist, as these things tend to do … in the movies. Really, though, the game began in the wet, and a light rain, and Matt Manning, your Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Saturday afternoon at Comerica Park couldn’t feel the ball.

Not like a big-league pitcher is supposed to. Not like he needs to.

And when the 25-year-old hit Bo Bichette with his fourth pitch of the game and then walked the next batter —Brandon Belt — to put runners at first and second with no outs? It hardly looked like the beginning of history.

But then that mist, and Manning’s slider — a pitch he has been working on — and the fact that he threw it twice to Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to begin the at-bat, induced a harmless grounder to shortstop.

That gave him the chance at a breath.

He took it.

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He coaxed a foul-out from Matt Chapman. He struck out Cavan Biggio. And he was off. Well, he didn’t think so. Not even by the sixth inning, when he hadn’t given up a hit, and his pitching coach, Chris Fetter told him he hadn’t given up a hit.

Everyone else knew, though, including his catcher, Eric Haase, who had been behind the plate the last time the Tigers produced a no-hitter. That was a one-man show, pulled off by Spencer Turnbull, and as unlikely as it was, what happened Saturday afternoon was somehow more stunning.

The Blue Jays are one of the best hitting teams in the American League. They’d hung 12 runs on the Tigers the night before, blasting them by 10 runs.

Yet here was Manning, a potential wonder arm when he was drafted ninth overall out of high school in 2016. A future ace, the scouting report suggested.

But then reports at that age are just suggestions, and don’t — and can’t — account for injury and inconsistency. Manning was making his third start since he’d returned from a broken foot. His manager, A.J. Hinch, had him on a relative pitch count his first two starts back.

He still has a future, and despite the no-hitter he took into the seventh inning, the Tigers still had a game to win —they led just 2-0 at the time. And yet after Manning walked Biggio with two outs, and Hinch walked to the mound to relieve him with two outs — only 91 pitches into his outing — the crowd booed.

They wanted history.

Hinch didn’t blame them. He has been part of history before. Five times, in fact. And he enjoys being part of history, too.

But he knew a few things the crowd didn’t. Like how hard Manning had been grinding to keep getting outs, like the fact that he’d tweaked his side in the second inning, and kept stretching to keep loose. He was laboring.

And, as Hinch told reporters after the game, “My first responsibility is to him.”

His second?

The team.

The Tigers needed a win. They are still in the race in the American League Central. As inconsistent as they’ve been (partly because of injuries), they can’t afford to choose sentiment over the odds, and the odds were that after 91 pitches, Manning was more or less finished.

“Sometimes that doesn’t line up with what everybody wants to see,” Hinch said.

Manning, for the record, had no problem getting pulled. He just wants to win. Now, you might think: “Well, of course he’s going to say that.”

He meant it, though. Besides, he got to be part of history anyway. He just needed to get through that first inning.

“Get through it and get through the rain," he said. "Two guys on, leave them out there, and then we scored. We got the momentum, and it was just preserve that lead as long as I could.”

And he did, until Hinch gave the ball to Jason Foley, who knew exactly what was happening, and when it happened, as did Alex Lange, who closed it in the ninth, though he forgot his filter during an on-field interview by Bally Sports Detroit broadcast through the stadium speakers afterward.

“Holy (expletive), Detroit!!” he said.

“It’s pretty sick,” said Foley.

No-hitters always are, whether solo or combined.

The truth is, no-nos are never solo, right?

The ninth no-hitter in Tigers history doesn’t happen without Kerry Carpenter sliding on his back to track down a flare on the right-field line, or without Javier Baez racing into left field to snag a long and tricky blooper. He had to turn into the sun to catch it.

At some point in every no-hitter, a teammate helps the cause. Saturday, a couple of pitchers did, too.

After the game, the three of them, along with catcher Eric Haase, stood near a podium in the interview room to accommodate the interest and the history. They took turns deferring to each other and pumping each other up.

“We’re not doing this without Haasy,” said Foley, referring to their catcher.

Nor, I’d add, are they doing it without the other seven defenders around them and even, on this day, the designated hitter, who normally plays center field but who was making his return after a leg injury and didn’t want to rush all the way back so quickly.

Still, Riley Greene reminded everyone what he means to the team. He got on base four times. He had the game’s first hit and scored on a double by Spencer Torkelson.

“Welcome back,” Hinch chuckled, when asked about Riley’s return and importance. “He's really fun to write in the lineup.”

No-hitters need his kind of fun, too.

They need everyone, really, even if they don’t always need more than a single pitcher. The accomplishment, though, should be the same, and the Tigers celebrated like they’d made history.

Because they did, from the mist to the rain to the sun, where the starter found a rhythm in slippery conditions and a couple of relievers picked him up, and the three of them, heck, all of them, combined to do something no Tiger team ever had.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers prove that no-hitters are never about just one player