Odrisamer Despaigne's Fantastic Machine

His head looks something like a pumpkin. Thick ears stick out from under his hat, twisting down so that the side of his face looks as battered as a boxer's. There is a Halloween quality about Odrisamer Despaigne, and that is appropriate, because some of his pitches belong in a sideshow.

Despaigne throws a corkscrew fastball and a maddening cutter that doesn't dart away from right handed bats so much as it sidesteps them. He has a slow curveball and an even slower one that loops in at around 67 MPH—it wouldn't even get a speeding ticket were it traveling down a California freeway. His goal seems to be not just getting batters out, but to make them look stupid. Despaigne is like a kid with a Swiss Army knife who insists on showing you every prong. In his first four starts for the San Diego Padres, the 27-year-old Cuban defector has emerged as a bright light in a dark season. And in his fifth, against the Mets on Sunday, he flirted with history while carving the New Yorkers to pieces.

For six innings, the only way the Mets got on base was by taking one of those Eephus curves to the foot. They seemed to be batting on the bottom of a swimming pool, swinging helplessly as endless breaking balls snuck around their bats. Despaigne pauses in the middle of his wind-up for an Orlando Hernandez leg-kick, and on Sunday he did El Duque proud. It was like watching a mad scientist comb a junkyard for spare parts, and then build it into a creaking, steam-spouting killer robot—the sort of contraption that shouldn't be able to walk, yet somehow can run.

But thanks to the Padres' flaccid offense, the Mets remained just one run behind. If just one of them could make solid contact, the game could be tied. Despaigne, carnival pitcher that he is, was on a tightrope, and his performance brought something unlikely to a mid-July game between two dead-in-the-water teams: gut-twisting, teeth-grinding tension. It was a beautiful thing.

There are no-hitters that spring up by accident—the sort where you glance up after five or six innings and are surprised by the zeroes on the board—and there are those you can smell from the first inning, when it's clear the pitcher is going to reduce the other side to little leaguers. For six innings, Despaigne's was the latter. But in the seventh inning, he tired. His pace flagged. He hit one batter and walked another, putting the go-ahead run on first. He stepped off the mound, unzipped his pants, re-tucked his shirt and adjusted his belt, then walked the bases loaded. Ruben Tejada grounded softly back to the mound; Despaigne made an easy throw to first, and the no-hitter survived.

Skill had carried him this far. From here, it would take luck and guile to break the franchise's 47-year no-hitter drought. In terms of the tangible stuff of baseball—playoffs, trophies, flags to hang in the outfield—no-hitters mean nothing. But to the franchise that has almost none of them, their importance grows every year. As a Met fan, I understand this—I remember, distinctly, how Johan Santana sacrificed his shoulder on June 1, 2012, to give the Mets their first no-hitter.

So I listened to the Padres game on the radio in my bedroom, wearing a Mets jersey and gulping down a Brooklyn Pennant Ale between each inning. I paced. I grimaced. I shook with frustration and chewed on my knuckles and finally fell to my knees—the first time the franchise has ever made me do that in thanks, rather than in rage. It was the most fun I had all summer. And somewhere in San Diego, I knew, there were people enjoying the same mix of terror and glee, chugging San Diego beer and muttering San Diego things. I did not want to take that away from them, and so my allegiance turned.

For several innings, I had been quietly rooting for Despaigne. By the eighth, I was fully in his corner. I whispered to him through my television screen, reminding him that Kirk Nieuwenhuis swings at everything, that Curtis Granderson is a sucker for low pitches. He struck them both out, getting Nieuwhenhuis on an absurd curveball—a miss that exemplifies just how silly he made the Mets look—and the no-hitter seemed certain. I was already imagining the smile that would cross Despaigne's grim, hard mouth when he finished the game, when Daniel Murphy—the Mets' lone all-star—buried a double into deep center field.

The crack of Murphy's bat woke me from my hypnosis, ending my brief life as a Padres fan. Despaigne was pulled after David Wright tied it, and instead of being mobbed at the mound, his only reward was a tip of his cap. Reality had been restored, which meant the Mets lost in the ninth when their pitcher fell down trying to field a groundout, and the Padres were denied their no-hitter. History would have to wait. But for three hours on a summer Sunday, a few thousand Padre fans—and some Met fans too—bit their nails and felt their stomachs twist. Despaigne is a wizard, and he had pulled a magnificent trick. He made baseball matter in San Diego.

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