“Game Of His Life” tells the story of Pittsburgh athletes who may not have had the most illustrious, Hall of Fame level careers, but had one absolutely amazing game. In today’s edition, Nick Kingham.

Baseball might be the best sport for articles like these to create themselves. With so many games over the course of a single season, there are so many opportunities for a player to put in a few games, and maybe wow the crowd in the limited opportunities he had.

Such was the case with a starting pitcher by the name of Nick Kingham.

Kingham didn’t have a prolonged major league baseball career. Pitching 43 games over the course of two seasons, Kingham saw the majority of his work in 2018.

A fourth round selection by the Pirates in 2010, Kingham had spent years working through the Pirates minor leagues before finally earning his chance early on in the 2018 season.

The Backstory

The 8th ranked prospect within the Pirates’ system at the time, Kingham had began the 2018 season with Pittsburgh’s Triple-A affiliate in Indianapolis.

He jumped out to an amazing start with Indy, earning International League Pitcher of the Week honors, and was named Indy’s Opening Day starter for the season.

Meanwhile, the new-look Pirates were in desperate need of some feel-good stories. Though this team performed better than it was projected to, that didn’t help the sting of the offseason, which saw the Pirates trade away franchise icons Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen.

At the time of this game, the Pirates had gotten off to a solid 16-11 record near the end of April.

Kingham, meanwhile, was preparing to make his major league debut on the mound for the Pirates. With the NL Central rival St. Louis Cardinals in town, the Pirates were looking for the sweep, and turned to Kingham to get the job done.

Little did he, or anyone else know, the kind of game he was about to have.

The Game

Kingham opened the game about as well as anyone could. Facing a 1-2-3 of Matt Carpenter, Tommy Pham, and Paul DeJong, Kingham retired all three in short order to get his confidence going early. He also recorded his first strikeout of the game, getting Pham to go down swinging.

Meanwhile, the Pirates bats would struggle to get going as well. Facing St. Louis starter Jake Weaver, the Pirates also went three up and three down as we headed to the second.

Kingham was absolutely on fire early on. In the second inning, he got all three Cardinals batters to strike out.

“Man is this fun to watch,” Greg Brown said on the Pirates broadcast.

Pittsburgh would get on base in the second inning, but would strand two runners as Weaver got himself out of the jam.

But that didn’t matter for Kingham, who went right back on the mound and delivered another three up, three down inning for the Buccos. He finished that inning by striking out his pitching opponent in Weaver.

Weaver would continue to be a tough test on the mound, however. He would secure another scoreless inning against the Pirates, who went into the fourth inning still tied at 0-0.

However, Weaver was allowing opponents to get hits, something Kingham was not. The Pirates pitcher continued a perfect game through the fourth, notching another strikeout in the process.

Still getting no run support, Kingham went back out for the fifth, putting up another perfect inning to send the Bucs’ bats back out.

Once again, however, Weaver stumps them, and that prompts Kingham to go back out for the sixth. With an impressive enough debut already, Kingham struck out two more as his perfect game kept rolling on.

And then finally, as a reward for the debut of a lifetime, the floodgates opened for the Pirates. In the bottom of the six, Pittsburgh gets 2 runs off the bat of Elias Diaz, which chases Weaver from the game.

His replacement, Jordan Hicks, also gives up 2 runs as the game quickly got away from St. Louis.

Looking to continue his perfect game Kingham got so close to taking it past the seventh inning. Kingham got a lineout, and then recorded his ninth strikeout for the second out of the inning.

But then, tragically, Paul DeJong gets a single through the shortstop/third base hole, and puts Kingham’s perfect game aspirations to bed.

Despite that, Kingham secures a groundout to end the inning. Michael Feliz would take over in the eighth inning, and Edgar Santana would close things out for a 5-0 win for the Bucs.

Kingham finished his day going 7 innings, allowing just a single hit, and recording 9 strikeouts shutting out the St. Louis Cardinals, which earned him the win in his MLB debut.

The Aftermath

Kingham’s unbelievable debut set a 50+ year major league record at the time. His 20 retired batters to open the game was the longest a rookie pitcher had gone without putting a man on base in his debut since 1961.

The day after his debut, Pirates manager Clint Hurdle announced that the team would keep Kingham in the rotation, and were moving Steven Brault to the bullpen to make room for him.

Unfortunately for Kingham, he would never reach that level of performance again in his major league career. In fairness to him, that feat was really hard to replicate.

Kingham over the season pitched in 18 games for the Pirates (15 starts), finishing with a 5-7 record and a 5.21 ERA.

The following season, Kingham began the year in the bullpen for the Pirates. He bounced back and forth between the bullpen and starting rotation, but struggled massively that season, recording a 9.87 ERA in 34.2 innings pitched for the team.

In early June, Kingham was designated for assignment, and a few days later, was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays for cash considerations.

He went back and forth between the Blue Jays and their Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo, but was released in late August.

After that, he spent parts of seasons with several teams in the Korean Baseball Organization, the Mexican League, and the Chinese Professional Baseball League.

It was one of the best and brightest debuts in Pirates history, and by far, Kingham’s best performance on the mound.

(Featured photo by Gene J. Puskar/AP)