“What’s the big deal?” the two teenagers wondered as people told them what they had accomplished. The battery of pitcher Ron Necciai and catcher Harry Dunlop had won a Class D League game in which Necciai struck out 27 batters.
“They’ve been playing this game for 100 years. Somebody else has done it. And, of course, to find out that nobody had — and no hits, no runs, no nothing, this and that,” Necciai said recently.
“You’re trying to get them out, that’s all,” said Necciai, now 89 and living in Western Pennsylvania, where he grew up.
“We figured somebody had to do it before,” said Dunlop, who lives in California. “Then the Associated Press called and we learned it had never been done.” (Accounts of the game appeared in more than 120 newspapers across the country.)
