[size=24:0cab968ac1][b:0cab968ac1]HEATON UP[/b:0cab968ac1][/size:0cab968ac1]
[size=18:0cab968ac1]Neal Heaton No-Hits Mets; Gary Carter Hurt[/size:0cab968ac1]
That's right, for the second night in a row, a National League pitcher threw a complete game no-hitter, and [i:0cab968ac1]we don't have a picture of the guy.[/i:0cab968ac1] Saturday night was [b:0cab968ac1]Neal Heaton[/b:0cab968ac1]'s turn, as the Padres right-hander dominated the Mets in a [url=http://www.sportingnews.com/baseball/1986/scores/boxscore.php?id=1755]5-0 San Diego victory[/url] with obvious pennant race ramifications. Heaton walked 2 and struck out 3 in throwing the 5th complete game no-hitter of the 1986 season.
(By the way, we regret that we completely failed to mention that Floyd Youmans' [url=http://www.sportingnews.com/baseball/1986/scores/boxscore.php?id=1741]no-hitter on Friday night[/url] happened to be the Montreal righty's [i:0cab968ac1]second of the year[/i:0cab968ac1]. Ok, WOW)
So the Padres won their 2nd in a row, hanging on desperately for dear life after a recent slide dug them a 3.5 game hole under the NL West leading Astros. Meanwhile, this game was not only the Mets' 4th straight defeat (on which the NL East co-leading Cardinals failed to capitalize), but tragically for them, All-Star catcher [b:0cab968ac1]Gary Carter[/b:0cab968ac1] wrenched his back striking out against Heaton and will be sidelined for 10 days.