Matt Garza On Matt Garza’s No-Hitter

So how did Matt Garza feel about the biggest moment of his career? I’d say he wasn’t took broken up about it.

“Great night, great win,” Garza said. “We played great defense. Whenever the ball was hit on the ground, these guys were there. And we had timely hitting.”

“We wanted to establish [the fastball], make it known that’s what we were going to use,” he said. “We mixed in a breaking ball here and there.

“I just went out there and attacked the zone. That’s the thing they’ve stressed to me: ‘Your stuff is good enough.’ Tonight it was good enough.”

“That ninth inning,” Garza said, “I kept telling myself, ‘Just finish it, just finish it, just battle, battle. If it’s meant to happen, it’s going to happen.”’

Garza said his teammates didn’t leave him off by himself in the dugout during the late innings. He noticed several of them standing in the same spot, however, adhering to superstition.

“I recognized it and didn’t want to look up. I was like, ‘Just keep looking down and stay focused and get ready for the next inning,”’ he said.

Garza surpassed the one-hitter he threw against the Marlins on June 26th, 2008. The Tigers, meanwhile, were no-hit for the first time since Randy Johnson did it to them 20 years ago. Just a brilliant effort - albeit against a depleted Detroit lineup - in what was Tampa Bay’s 2,039th game in franchise history.