In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: Talking during a no-hitter.

On the final day of the 1975 season, four A’s pitchers combined for a no-hitter. Rollie Fingers, the last of them, was tasked with pitching the final two innings.

Before the closer entered, his roommate, friend and consistent antagonist Ken Holtzman said to him, “Fingers, you’re going to blow it!”

Fingers, nonplussed, bet him a dinner that he was wrong.

After Fingers set down the side in order in the eighth without allowing a ball out of the infield, he asked whether Holtzman might like to raise the ante.

“No,” said Holtzman, “let’s just stick with this.”