I’ve already forgotten what I had for lunch today, but with the help of my local paper, I know where I was 54 years ago yesterday. If you’re a lucky baseball fan, one of your broadcasters consults some version of this day in baseball history. If nothing else, these flashbacks serve as a reminder that the same stuff keeps happening over the course of a 162-game season and decades of baseball. While the Cubs have recently scored 17 runs twice within a week, reading this column you realize it’s not that uncommon.

Back to September 2, 1972. On that final Saturday before the start of another school year, I was at Wrigley Field with Dad and cousin Sloan, who either was being punished, lost a bet, or won a raffle that nobody else entered. I don’t know if she ever went to another ML game after that. Some thirty years ago, I asked her if she remembered attending Milt Pappas’s no-hitter. She acted as if I was speaking gibberish.

Despite her indifference, I remember the day vividly for a guy that can’t recall dinner on Monday. Earlier in the season, I recall watching Burt Hooton no-hit the Phillies. That this particular Cubs team would throw two no-hitters in the same season didn’t register the way it does now. The two pitchers were at completely different points in their respective careers as well. As goofy as I am, I know I never saved anything from the game, which now sounds ridiculous. Anyone of a certain age following baseball over the past 40 years knows a physical keepsake from that game is meaningless because of Pappas.

One friend reading this has a completely different history with the right-handed pitcher who won 209 games during a 17-year ML career. He was famously traded for Frank Robinson, but was more famous for inventing and perfecting the “Get off my lawn” guy. Whenever Pappas was interviewed after (for years) tossing the no-no, all he would do was gripe about the call and Bruce Froemming. At public appearances, he’d steer every conversation that that September afternoon and the boob Froemming.

I stupidly believed that no-hitters were more common even though I recall Dad explaining their rarity as we walked to the EL. I also remember how quickly the game moved (not a rarity in ’72), the crunch of my Cracker Jack and that my favorite player (at the time) played a role in the victory.

Flash forward some 50+ years and hundreds of major and minor league games and I haven’t seen another 9-inning no-hitter in person.

On September 2, 1989, Dave Stieb (Toronto) pitched a no-hitter against Cleveland. It was the 9th no-hitter of the season.