Yesterday, the Marlins’ Sean West took a no-hitter into the seventh inning before giving up a hit. He is the tenth pitcher to do so this season, after Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Randy Wells, Scott Baker, Chris Carpenter, Matt Garza, Brian Tallet, Randy Johnson and Ted Lilly. In other words, it’s happened about once a week.

The rational explanation for this is that pitching is tiring work, and starting pitchers these days are expected, ideally, to last about six innings per start. And almost like clockwork, that’s where the no-hitting stops in 2009. (Nobody’s taken a no-hitter through nine this season, and only two, Tim Wakefield and Clayton Kershaw, have pitched eight no-hit innings).

Baseball fans, though, are wont to embrace irrational explanations. Curses, jinxes, ghosts, all that. With that in mind, I suggest you allow the statistical trend to guide your jinxing strategy. Given our fear of the no-hit jinx, it’s rarely spoken aloud until the fifth inning. Next time you’re watching a game with friends and a pitcher has a no-hitter going through, say, four innings, make your move. Proclaim that the pitcher looks good, but will lose his no-hitter in the seventh inning. Odds are, it’ll happen, and you’ll look like a genius. Immediately follow up with a random, interesting fact — for example, “I was reading the other day that elephants bury their dead and can paint self-portraits” — and let the adulation wash over you. You’re welcome!

Well, Chicago Cubs fans. Well. I would would say that if you need a sign that there’s a World Series title waiting for you at the end of the rainbow that is October, this is pretty good one.

See, Carlos Zambrano just tossed the first Chicago Cubs no-hitter since Milt Pappas slung one in 1972. Which means that for roughly 50 percent (I made that up) of Cubbie fans, this is the no-hitter they’ve ever seen.

Zambrano was standardly emotional and standardly brilliant, although a lot of Cubs fans didn’t get to see it. See, because of the super-awesome blackout rules that often apply to baseball games, only the White Sox were on television for Sunday Night Baseball. (Though, it obviously wasn’t blacked out in Chicago.)

The thing is, too, that it makes almost zero sense why ESPN wasn’t showing this game. Yes, you could in fact argue that it was a rescheduled game (more on that in a sec) and therefor just not a plausible option for Sunday night. But it was the Cubs and baseball’s hottest team, the Astros, and they were playing in Milwaukee. Just reroute Joe Morgan, John Miller and a few HD cameras.

Need a storyline? Well, how about not looking any further than why they were in Milwaukee in the first place? The Astros, displaced because of Hurricane Ike, were “lucky” enough to have MLB send them to Milwaukee, a much closer location than almost, well, none of the other places they could have played.

So, in return they get a whole nine innings of nothing, courtesy of Big Z — who, I might add, is a perfect pitcher because of stamina and strikeouts to throw a no-no, and who also deserves much praise for such a feat. But yeah, Houston thanks you Bud Selig. Been a fun 48 for that team.