CHARLOTTE 5, PAWSOX 0, 5 INNINGS, RAIN

The Highlights: After a 12-minute rain delay, Pawtucket and Charlotte took the field to play the final game of their four-game series.

It didn't last long. Mother Nature dropped buckets of rain on McCoy Stadium prompting the officials to call the game after five innings of action and another 45-minute rain delay.

When it was all said and done, Charlotte had left the wet field with a 5-0 victory and the 4,510 fans that braved the storm had witnessed history.

Durham starter Carlos Torres (5-4) pitched a perfect game, finishing with five strikeouts. According to the PawSox PR staff, it was the first five-inning perfect game in International League history and only the second five-inning no-hitter (Mariano Rivera, 1995, Columbus) in I.L. history.

"I knew I had a no-hitter but I didn't know I had a perfect game," Torres said. "My defense made some great plays."

"The catcher called a good game and I just tried to fill up the zone," Torres added.

Pawtucket manager called Torres "impressive."

"He had good stuff," Johnson said. "If the radar guns were right, he was running the ball up there pretty good. He had a pretty good slider. [Jeff] Bailey hit a ball to right-center field and that was about it. It's not one we are going to dwell on because you can't anyway, but, if it goes nine innings, it's a little different story.

"I'm not taking anything away from what the young man did through five innings but we had a lot of game left . . . We'll turn the page and go down to Durham [for the next series] and see what happens down there."

Pawtucket knuckleballer Charlie Zink held his own against Torres over the first four innings, but when the sky opened up and the rain started coming down hard in the fifth, he lost his control.

He hit a batter and then walked three straight batters with two outs. The last one allowed Donny Lucy to trot home from third base and give the Knights a 1-0 lead.

Pawtucket pitching coach Rich Sauveur went to the mound to talk to Zink and try to get him to refocus, but whatever he said didn't work. Josh Kroeger (2-for-3, 4 RBI) blasted the first pitch that Zink threw to him over the fence in right-center field for a grand slam home run that gave the Knights a 5-0 lead.

"In the fifth inning when the rains came, Charlie had a problem with his grip on the ball," Johnson said.

Zink gave up five runs on four hits in all. He walked three batters, hit two more, and had one strikeout.

"It's a tough one," Johnson said. "It's not the way we wanted to end the homestand, but it is what it is."

Great catch: Bubba Bell continues to impress. He saved a run in the top of the fourth inning when he made a spectacular diving catch on Darlye Ward's shot hit to left-center. Bell then got up and threw out Michael Restovich at second base for the double-play. Restovich did not tag up because he didn't think Bell was going to make the catch.

Hitting streaks are over: Jeff Bailey and Dusty Brown both had their three-game hitting streaks end Thursday night. Bailey is now 5-for-14 (.357) with a home run and one RBI over his last four games, and Brown is 4-for-14 (.286) with a double and two RBI over that span.

Next Up: The PawSox travel to Durham for a four-game series beginning on Friday at 7:05 p.m. Michael Bowden (3-3, 2.48 ERA) will pitch in the opener for Pawtucket. He is 1-2 with a 5.40 ERA in his last five starts, though he is coming off his first win since May 11. He only allowed two earned runs in seven innings in a 6-2 win at Syracuse in his last outing.

roblee@projo.com