Mike Celizic

The kid of whom so much was expected was delivering on his promise in spectacular fashion. And then, while carrying a no-hitter into the seventh inning, he delivered his 83rd pitch of the game and felt something in his leg go pop.

It was the kind of thing you’d expect to happen on the North Side of Chicago, where bad luck isn’t just a sometime thing but a way of life. But it happened in Arlington, Texas, to the New York Yankees. And if anything encapsulated this season that is still in its infancy, it was Philip Hughes’ grabbing his hammy and walking out of a no-hitter and onto the DL.

If you believe in omens, this one was as subtle as the lighting display in Times Square. Until Hughes took the mound against the Rangers for his second big-league start, the only thing the Yankees had going for them was Alex Rodriguez’s spectacular April, not that much of his incredible power display to start the season had kept the team out of the AL East cellar.

A day earlier, George Steinbrenner, who doesn’t leave his Tampa bunker these days, issued a statement calling the team, manager Joe Torre and G.M. Brian Cashman to task. Now, on the first day of May, the line-up was piling up runs and the kid from Santa Ana was mowing down Rangers.

And then his hamstring popped.

This isn’t supposed to happen, not even to the Cubs. Maybe a shoulder pops or an elbow tightens or a finger grows a blister, but 20-year-old pitchers don’t pull hammies, not doing what they’ve done with so much success and so little seeming effort since they were in Little League. That’s an injury hitters and fielders get when running the bases and chasing down batted balls.

But the Yankees’ year has been like that. Of the five starters the Yankees brought north to begin the season, only one — Andy Pettitte — has yet to miss a turn. Carl Pavano, Mike Mussina and Chien-Ming Wang have just six starts among them — one more than Pettitte has all by himself. Kei Igawa has made four starts. Even Jeff Karstens, a minor leaguer called up to fill in for an injured starter, became an injured starter himself.

Hideki Matsui, the left fielder, started the year on the DL. Jorge Posada has missed time. Derek Jeter was out a game with a thigh bruise. Johnny Damon is spending almost as much time at the chiropractor’s getting treatments on his aching back as he does in the lineup.

The team went through nine starting pitchers in one month and was in last place. Only Kansas City and Washington has won fewer games than the mighty Yankees.

But now it was a new month and the new kid was on the mound pitching with the command of a Clemens. And as he mowed down hitter after hitter, you knew that there was no way the Yankees were going to send him back to AA when the injured pitchers started coming back to work. How could they demote someone who had become, after just 10 innings of major league ball, their best pitcher?

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As the outs mounted and the scoreboard continued to show zero in the slot reserved for Texas hits, Yankee fans could be forgiven for fantasizing about what was to come as the season wore on.

He was the crown jewel of the team’s farm system, a 20-year-old kid drafted out of high school in California in 2004 and possessed of the kind of stuff that hasn’t been seen in New York since a 19-year-old named Dwight Gooden walked onto the field in Shea Stadium in April of 1984.