This is a very sad picture. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

I got home from dinner last night and, during some confusion about how to operate a voice-controlled remote control, Righty pulled up the Gamecast for last night’s Red Sox-Angels game to see what was going on. “Wow, Miley’s pitching great! No walks, six strikeouts…he’s a got a no-hitter going!” As a jinx myself, I don’t have any legs to stand on, but I went in on him anyway: “What are you doing? Why would you say that?” And I knew what was coming on the other end of the conversation, since Righty had noted that Miley hadn’t given up any walks: “It’s a perfect game!” So that was obviously out the window.

Lo and behold, as so often happens in these situations, I pulled up Gamecast on my own phone to check out the situation, and Chris Iannetta was standing on first base. “You idiot,” I said, glad that I, for once, was not the one who had jinxed an important sports moment. Iannetta had walked, so that meant the no-hitter was still going, but I knew it was only a matter of time. Kole Calhoun connected on a DEEP double over Mookie Betts’ head to lead off the 7th inning, and Miley gave up a second walk to David Freese, the first batter of the 8th inning, before giving up the mound to Junichi Tazawa, who got the Angels to go 1-2-3.

Miley had gone over 100 pitches during Freese’s walk. He pitched great, and obviously deserved better than the complete lack of run support he got. C.J. Wilson also pitched pretty well, but the Sox should’ve got something across the plate. Remarkably, though Boston tallied 5 hits and 3 walks, each of those baserunners came in a different inning from the 1st to the 8th. The 9th was the only Red Sox inning without a baserunner. Talk about hard luck.

When Koji Uehara came out to get the Red Sox into extra innings, I was confident. He looked good, forcing a pop out and getting Kole Calhoun to strike out. And then Mike Trout came up. I was still confident, somehow. We were going to extras, and I’d have to stay up, and it would be miserable, but we would go to extras. I pushed all thoughts about Koji’s tendency to give up solo home runs out of my head. I did the same to thoughts about how Mike Trout is probably the best baseball player of his generation. And then this happened:

And there was nothing to say but, “Welp, time for bed.” Koji missed his spot by inches, bringing what was supposed to be an outside pitch back toward the middle of the plate. And Trout took it deep to center. I wasn’t even mad. That’s just what happens sometimes when you’re up against the best player in the world.

Notes:

• Even when Mike Napoli should get a hit, he doesn’t. As soon as the ball kicked off Smith’s shin, I knew he’d be out at first.
• According to Christoper Smith of MassLive, Koji was “a little surprised to enter the game in a no-save situation.” I’ll look up the stats one of these days to see how much worse he is when a save isn’t on the line, because I’m 90% sure he’s much worse when there’s no save opportunity.