Any bid by Cliff Lee to join Don Larsen and Roy Halladay in one of the most elite clubs in baseball history will have to wait at least one more start.
Lee surrendered the first hit of his outing in the bottom of the fifth inning in Monday night's Game 3 of the ALCS when Yankees catcher Jorge Posada hit a broken bat flare into right field.
While the fifth inning may be a little too early to begin thinking about no-hitters, Yankees fans showed how much they were thinking about it upon cheering wildly when the ball fell in.
Lee promptly struck out Curtis Granderson to end the inning one batter later.
An inning earlier Lee walked Mark Teixeira, the lefty ace's first of the 2010 postseason, a stretch of 19 2/3 innings. Had he somehow completed the no-hitter, he would have joined Larsen (perfect game) and Halladay — who no-hit the Cincinnati Reds in his first postseason start — as the only pitchers to throw no-hitters in the playoffs.
