15 years later Ricky Brooks still remembers his shining moment at ECU

Ricky Brooks has his name painted all over East Carolina University baseball history. In two years in Greenville, North Carolina, Brooks twirled a gem in a 6-4 loss to the University of Houston in the Conference USA tournament in 2005 while tossing 8.1 innings of one-run baseball against the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the Regional just days later.

What Brooks will be most remembered for -- more than his postseason gems in games ultimately lost by the Pirates and his lackluster performance in ECU’s final game at Harrington Field -- is his no-hitter 15 years ago this Friday.

“That was never a goal of mine,” Brooks said. “Being a starter I just wanted to get deep into games as best I could. Try to set my team up in a position to win. If anything like that were to be a part of it, then it’s just fortunate that I was in that situation.”

The first no-hitter pitched in the newly minted Clark-LeClair Stadium, Brooks racked up a career-best 14 strikeouts while blanking the University of Memphis in a 3-0 Pirates win.

A measly strikeout wild pitch away from capturing ECU’s first perfect game in school history, Brooks was content with a no-no in the moment.

“Jake (Smith) called for the breaking ball and you trust your catcher no matter what the situation,” Brooks said. “Just broke one off a little too hard, it gets away from him. He tried to make the play, the guy just beat it out. At the time you’re like whatever but when the game’s over, someone’s like ‘dude you had a perfect game if that didn’t happen.’ I was like I got a no-hitter, who cares.”

Less than a month earlier, Brooks found himself in a similar situation, staring one of the rarest feats in baseball history dead in the eyes. On March 26, 2005, against the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the right-hander nearly limited the opposing team to no hits.

With two outs in the ninth, a 49er hitter sent a ball toward shortstop Dale Mollenhauer, one he bobbled to allow the runner to reach first base. Eventually ruled a hit by the official scorer, Brooks was robbed of a no-no, but not before the feelings of head coach Randy Mazey were felt.

“I was extremely upset with the official scorer at the time,” Mazey said in a phone interview earlier in the week. “With two outs in the ninth inning, to break up a no-hitter it has to be the cleanest hit you’ve ever seen. I lost that battle and Ricky basically said don’t worry about it, I’ll throw another one next weekend.”

Working primarily with a fastball and curveball for the majority of his collegiate career, Brooks rode those offerings to 70 strikeouts across 78 innings in 2005. That mark, along with his 3.46 ERA, led a Pirate team that finished the season 35-26 and fourth in the C-USA.

Admittedly having dealt with back soreness while at ECU, the right-hander recalls neither him nor his pitching coach Tommy Eason being happy with his bullpen prior to throwing his no-hitter in late-April.

“Coach Eason was not happy with me in that bullpen,” Brooks said. “I was pretty erratic, wasn’t really feeling that great. I dealt with some back stiffness and soreness a lot of my career at ECU even into the pros.”

Brooks quickly settled into a groove on the mound against the Tigers despite his rather shaky bullpen. He got the first batter of his outing to strikeout swinging before striking out the side in the second inning.

Over the next four innings, Brooks struck out six more Memphis hitters, running his total to 10 on the day en route to his career-best 14.

“About three or four innings in, there’s no hits up on there and I’m striking out everyone,” Brooks said. “I felt like I was bringing the heat then, I didn’t know if I was or not.”

Without the benefit of a speed readout on the scoreboard for his pitches, Brooks could only rely on batters’ reactions to tell him how hard he was throwing. He says on more than one occasion a Memphis batter whiffed on a fastball right down the middle, giving him all the information needed to determine just how locked in he was on that day.

As the game deepened, Brooks’ teammates began to sense what was transpiring in front of their very eyes. For that reason, they reacted in accordance with the unwritten rules of baseball etiquette and began giving the right-hander plenty of room in the dugout.

“Around the third or fourth inning, I really was feeling good and I was like this could be one of those games,” Brooks said. “I remember in the third or fourth inning, nobody was coming near me, the whole stay away from the pitcher and don’t talk to him. I was never like that, I wasn’t a leave me alone kind of guy in the bullpen. I wanted to talk to people, have conversations.”

Trying to get guys to interact with him in between innings, Brooks continued mowing opposing batters down. Save for the aforementioned strikeout wild pitch in the fourth inning, a blemish that was not deemed significant until after the game, the 6’3” right-hander was in complete control.

Maintaining a healthy pitch count, Mazey says he never once considered taking Brooks out of the game as long as he kept a no-hitter intact. Upholding his end of that bargain, Brooks remembers his curveball being an extremely important weapon for him on that April morning.

“I remember that day just fastball, curveball, just anywhere I wanted,” Brooks said. “Jake Smith, just everytime he called a pitch, just bam wherever he wanted. I can still visualize some of that stuff, even to this day about that game and how Jake and I were just on top of it. I don’t remember shaking him off one time.”

For a game that lasted only one hour and 43 minutes, it is safe to say Brooks was gripping and ripping and the memory of not shaking his catcher off only supports that claim. Additionally, Brooks was pitching when intent after losing his no-hitter against Charlotte.

While not on his mind that he would find himself in a situation to accomplish the lofty feat again so quickly, once the game began to wind down, Brooks became determined to finish this one off.

“How many times do you get an opportunity to throw a perfect game or a no-hitter? With the kind of talent that you’re playing against, it’s not very often,” Brooks said. “So never in my mind did I think this situation would come up just a few weeks later. When it came up that time, I was like this is not getting away from me this time.”

Get away from him, it did not. In the ninth, Brooks induced a ground ball before logging his 14th and final strikeout of the day to get to two outs in the frame. The final out, a fly to right field, gave Brooks time to panic at first and then accept the sheer joy that began flooding over him.

“I had a lot of time to think about it because it was a super high fly ball,” Brooks said. “At first I was like oh no, did that guy hit that out? And then I seen Harrison Eldridge, he’s a good buddy of mine, I see him and I’m like he’s camped under that. I remember putting my hands on my head. Then Jake comes and the bear hug and the pile starts and I’m like this is great.”

Fifteen years later, Brooks says he can still visualize some of the moments about his special day in Clark-LeClair Stadium. In a twist of fate, his parents missed that weekend of action, the first, Brooks says, in nearly two years.

While Brooks’ no-hitter came a little more than one full year after Clark-LeClair opened to the public, no Pirate has logged such a feat in that stadium since. In fact, until junior left-handed pitcher Jake Kuchmaner recorded a perfect game against the University of Maryland in 2019, no ECU player had pitched a no-hitter, no matter the venue.

Not long after Kuchmaner tossed the first perfect game in ECU history, Brooks attended a Pirate baseball game and introduced himself to the young southpaw and made sure he knew just how cool what he had pulled off was.

Now living in New York state and working as a letter carrier for the postal service, Brooks fails to remember every single detail about his two years in purple and gold. What he will never forget, however, is he what he did 15 years ago in Greenville, North Carolina.

“It’s really hard to believe,” Brooks said. “I don’t remember every game or all the details of everything, but when you have stuff like that, those memories really stick in your head.”