This Marlin Hooks a Gem

SAN FRANCISCO — After two terrible starts, Kevin Brown was almost as good as a pitcher can be.

A no-hitter.

Nearly a perfect game.

And for a while Tuesday, it seemed like a double no-hitter was possible too.

“I’ve never pitched a game like this,” Brown said after the Florida Marlins defeated the San Francisco Giants, 9-0. “Not even in Little League.”

On an afternoon when neither team got a hit until the seventh inning, Brown (6-4) came within one hit batter of the 15th perfect game in major league history. With two outs in the eighth, his 1-2 cut fastball glanced off Marvin Benard, just near his calf.

“The ball hit a pad on my right leg,” said Benard, who replaced right fielder Glenallen Hill in the top half of the inning.

Said Brown, “It was disappointing, but I didn’t want to lose my focus. I was trying to bear down from the first inning on. There wasn’t much margin for error. I just tried to make sure I didn’t let any runs in.”

Brown needed only 10 pitches in the ninth to finish the second no-hitter in Marlin history. Bill Mueller grounded to first, Stan Javier grounded to shortstop and Darryl Hamilton took a called third strike.

“I really didn’t start thinking about it until the last inning,” said Brown, who struck out seven and walked none.

Florida catcher Charles Johnson broke up William VanLandingham’s no-hit bid with a one-out homer in the seventh, the key hit in a seven-run inning.

Johnson sounded more nervous than Brown.

“I was praying I could put down the right finger and they’d hit to the right guy,” Johnson said.

Brown’s teammates started avoiding him in the middle of the game.

“They were pretty quiet,” he said. “They all kind of moved back from the fifth inning on, and gave me some space.”

Johnson’s two-run homer, after first baseman J.T. Snow dropped his foul pop for an error, started the seven-run inning and helped Florida stop its nine-game losing streak at San Francisco.

San Francisco hit only three balls out of the infield: fly balls by Hamilton in the fourth and seventh and by Barry Bonds in the eighth.

“He had great stuff today,” Hamilton said. “It helps when you get ahead of the hitters like he did. The way his ball moves, it’s difficult to take an aggressive hack.”

Brown, who led the major leagues with a 1.89 earned-run average last season, had not won since May 25 at San Diego. In his previous start, he gave up 12 hits in seven innings in a 6-0 loss to the New York Mets on June 5.

In the start before that, he gave up a 529-foot homer to Andres Galarraga--the longest in the majors this season--in an 8-4 loss to Colorado.

He needed only 99 pitches against the Giants, throwing 68 strikes.

The best defensive play came in the seventh, when Snow hit a grounder behind second base. Second baseman Luis Castillo made a backhand play and threw him out at first.

“There’s been a lot of ground balls that have found their way through recently,” Brown said. “This was nice.”

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Special Deliveries

* Brown vs. Giants:

--99 pitches

--68 strikes

--7 strikeouts

* No-hitters in NL history: 113

* No-hitters in AL history: 94

* Marlin no-hitters: 2

* No-hitters against Giants: 14

* No-hitters in 3Com Park: 9

* Most consecutive years with no-hitters: Dodgers, 1962-65