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This Day in Baseball History
May 8th

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40 Fact(s) Found
1878 Providence Gray outfielder Paul Hines becomes the first player to execute an unassisted triple play after making a shoestring catch in left-center field and stepping on third, retiring both runners who had passed the base. The runners were out due to the rules used at the time.
1906 At Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds, A's right-hander Chief Bender, coming off the bench, goes deep twice after being asked by his manager Connie Mack to replace an outfielder in the sixth inning of Philadelphia's 11-4 victory over Boston. The Hall of Fame hurler's home runs, a seventh-inning solo shot, and a three-run blast in the ninth are both inside-the-park round-trippers given up by Jesse Tannehill.
1926 A three-alarm blaze burns down Fenway's grandstand roof and left-field bleachers. The Red Sox, desperately in need of cash, use most of the insurance proceeds to pay for operations, leaving a vacant lot where the bleachers once stood.
1929 Giants' hurler Carl Hubbell becomes the first left-hander in 13 seasons to throw a no-hitter when he beats the Pirates, 11-0. The 26-year-old southpaw, in only his second season in the majors, will post an 18-6 record for the third-place club.
1930 At Forbes Field, future Hall of Fame infielder Freddie Lindstrom completes the cycle when he doubles in the seventh inning of the Giants' 13-10 victory over the Pirates. The contest marks the 24-year-old third baseman's second five-hit game of the young season, having also accomplished the feat in the campaign's fifth game.
1935 Reds' catcher Ernie Lombardi hits four consecutive doubles in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth innings off four different hurlers. The slow-footed catcher's quartet of two-baggers helps Cincinnati rout Philadelphia at the Baker Bowl, 15-4.
1942 In the first of sixteen Army-Navy Twilight Relief Games involving every major league club, New York's two National League teams raise nearly $60,000, with admission charged for everyone entering the park, including players, umpires, writers, ushers, and vendors. Dolph Camilli's seventh-inning homer proves to be the difference in the exhibition contest when the Dodgers edge the Giants, 7-6, in front of one of the largest crowds in the history of Ebbets Field.
1948 The Senators snap a 36-inning scoreless streak, tallying a run in the final frame of their 6-1 loss to Cleveland at Griffith Stadium. Washington narrowly avoids being shut out for the fourth consecutive game when Tribe starter Gene Bearden issues four walks to force in a run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
1961 The New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, Inc. announces the New York National League franchise's team nickname will be the Mets. Other names considered included the Avengers, Burros (a play on the word boroughs), Continentals, Islanders, Jets, Rebels, Skyliners, and Meadowlarks, the first choice of owner Joan Payson.
1961 The Yankees swap Ryne Duren, reliever Johnny James, and outfielder/first baseman Lee Thomas to the Angels for right-hander Tex Clevenger and outfielder Bob Cerv, joining the Bronx Bombers for the third time. During his two seasons with the Halos, the fire-balling Duren posts a disappointing 8-21 record and sets an AL record, striking out seven consecutive batters shortly after joining the team.
1966 Orioles' outfielder Frank Robinson becomes the first (and only) player to hit a home run entirely out of Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. The 451-foot wind-assisted blast, which clears the fifty rows of the left-field seats near the foul pole before rolling to a stop 540 feet from home plate, comes off a fastball thrown by Indians' starter Luis Tiant who hadn't given up an earned run on the season.

1966 The Cardinals play their final game at Busch Stadium, known for most of its existence as Sportsman's Park. The 64-year-old ballpark, which served as the home field for the American League's Browns until the franchise moved to Baltimore in 1954, was also the home for the big-league Redbirds from 1920 until today's final contest, a 10-5 loss to San Francisco.
1968 Catfish Hunter hurls the first American League perfect game in forty-six years when the A's defeat the usually heavy-hitting Twins, 4-0, in front of only 6,298 Oakland fans. White Sox right-hander Charlie Robertson was the last Junior Circuit hurler to retire 27 consecutive batters in a regular-season game, accomplishing the feat against Detroit in 1922.

1971 Willie Mays (634) and Hank Aaron (604) hit round-trippers in the Braves' 5-2 victory over the Giants at Candlestick Park. The long flies mark the first time in baseball history two players with 600 career homers go deep in the same game.
1971 The A's trade first baseman Don Mincher, who started his career in the nation's capital in 1960, to Washington, making the 32-year-old first baseman one of a few major leaguers to have played for both the original and expansion Senators. The veteran infielder will become the only person to play for each franchise when both teams depart from the District of Columbia, 11 seasons apart, making him an original Minnesota Twin and an original Texas Ranger.
1973 Bob Gibson starts his 242nd straight game, breaking a major league established in 1947 by right-hander Red Ruffing pitching the Yankees and White Sox. The competitive Cardinals' right-hander, who will extend the mark to 303 before appearing in relief in 1975, is tagged with the loss in the team's 9-7 defeat to the Giants at Candlestick Park.
1973 One-hundred-year-old Ralph Miller, the last nineteenth-century ballplayer, dies in Cincinnati. Appearing in 29 National League games for the 1898 Bridegrooms and 1899 Orioles, The right-hander compiled a 5-17 record.
1973 On a rainy night at Shea Stadium, the seventh-inning line drive off the bat of Atlanta's Marty Perez strikes Jon Matlack's forehead so hard that the ball ricochets into the Mets dugout. Fortunately, the 23-year-old southpaw sustains only a hairline fracture of his skull and will return to the mound on May 19 to blank the Bucs for six innings at Pittsburgh.
1973 After the ejection of Whitey Lockman in the 11th inning of a Jack Murphy Stadium contest place, Ernie Banks fills in for the departed Cubs' skipper in the team's 3-2 overtime victory over the Padres. Although Frank Robinson usually gets the credit, the Chicago coach technically becomes the first black to manage a major league team.
1979 Ranger right-hander Ed Farmer becomes a one-man wrecking crew when his fifth-inning pitch fractures Al Cowens' jaw, causing the outfielder to miss 21 games. In the first inning of the Arlington Stadium contest, the Texas starter also hit the leadoff batter Frank White with a pitch that will keep the Kansas City second baseman on the shelf for 33 games with a broken wrist.
1984 Kirby Puckett collects four singles in his first major league game, helping Minnesota beat the Angels, 5-0. The 24-year-old Twins' rookie, a future Hall of Famer, will finish his 12-year major league career with a lifetime .318 batting average.
1984 The White Sox and Brewers begin the lengthiest game in major league history, needing 8 hours and 6 minutes to complete the Comiskey Park contest. The 25-inning marathon, suspended after the 17th frame, ends tomorrow with the White Sox winning, 7-6, on a Harold Baines walk-off homer off Chuck Porter.

1992

"I started out slow and ended up slower. I was cussing (third-base coach) Tommy Spencer when he waved me home. I would have settled for a triple and two RBIs."- BUTCH HENRY, Astros' pitcher, commenting on his inside-the-park home run.

Astro southpaw Butch Henry becomes the first player to stroke an inside-the-park home run for his first hit in the major leagues when his sinking line drive gets past left fielder Barry Bonds. The historic three-run homer, which Doug Drabek of the Pirates gives up, will be the only round-tripper the Houston hurler will ever hit during his seven-year career.

1994 The Colorado Silver Bullets become the first women's team to play a men's professional team. The Northern League's All-Stars beat the ladies, 19-0, with one-time Cubs slugger Leon Durham hitting two homers and former Red Sox hurler Oil Can Boyd making a start for the All-Stars.
1997 Twenty-year-old Ryan Jaroncyk, the Mets' hard-working first-round draft pick in 1995, retires from baseball, citing he finds the game boring. The healthy, introspective athletic graduate of Orange Glen High School (Escondido, CA), who the team had hoped to be their future shortstop, leaves the franchise after receiving an $850,000 signing bonus, which the club will not ask their former player to return.
1998 Cardinal Mark McGwire reaches the 400th career home run mark. Big Red's historic milestone comes in 4,727 at-bats (127 fewer than Babe Ruth), the least amount of plate appearances ever needed to reach the mark.
2000 Brothers Jason and Jeremy Giambi hit home runs in the A's 9-8 loss to Anaheim at Edison Field. The siblings' round-trippers mark the first of four times the Oakland teammates will accomplish the feat.
2000 John Rocker balks when the ball falls out of his glove, resulting in a 3-2 walk-off loss to the Marlins at Miami’s Pro Player Stadium. The Braves closer’s ninth-inning miscue, with two outs and a 2-2 count on Cliff Floyd, plates Danny Bautista from third with the winning run.
2001 With the deed not officially recognized as tying a record, at first, because the contest against the Reds goes extra innings, Diamondback southpaw fireballer Randy Johnson joins Roger Clemens and Kerry Wood as the only pitchers to strike out 20 batters in nine innings. After being pulled in the ninth, the three-time Cy Young Award winner does not get an opportunity to break Tom Cheney's major league mark of 21 strikeouts recorded by the 27-year-old Senator right-hander in a 16-inning contest on September 12, 1962, against the Orioles.

2004 The Rangers, trailing 14-4 in the middle of the hour-long fifth inning at the Ballpark in Arlington, rally to beat the Tigers in ten innings, 16-15. Texas overcomes the double-digit deficit when the team tallies ten times in the bottom of the fifth inning after allowing eight runs in the top of the frame.

2009 At Camden Yards, Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez makes his return to the lineup immediately felt, blasting a three-run home run on the first pitch he has seen this season. The third baseman's Ruthian blast, which comes off a 98-mph fastball thrown by Baltimore's right-hander Jeremy Guthrie, helps to snap the Yankees' five-game losing streak when they beat the Orioles, 4-0.
2009 Stephen M. Ross, owner of the Dolphins' football franchise and the stadium where the NFL team and Marlins play their games, and singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett announced a unique branding partnership that renames the ballpark Land Shark Stadium. The joint venture, bringing together Buffett's Margaritaville and Anheuser-Busch InBev's Land Shark Lager, is reportedly for only eight months, reverting to Dolphin Stadium unless another naming rights deal happens before Super Bowl XLIV and the 2010 Pro Bowl.
2010 Jody Gerut, who had four hits this season before the game, becomes the sixth Brewer to complete a cycle when he strokes a two-run ninth inning-double in Milwaukee's 17-3 rout of the Diamondbacks. The 32-year-old outfielder, the first Brewer to accomplish the feat since Chad Moeller in 2004, hit a solo home run in the second inning, singled in the third, and added a triple in the fifth frame in the Chase Field contest.
2011 In all American League contests today, one team in each of the seven games scores exactly five runs. The last time such a statistical happenstance occurred was on August 10, 1993, when seven NL teams scored exactly two runs in each of the scheduled games.
2011 Mike Scioscia becomes the twenty-third manager in major league history to reach 1,000 victories with one team when the Angels beat Cleveland at the Big A, 6-5. The 52-year-old skipper, named the American League Manager of the Year twice, once in 2002, when the team won their only World Series, and in 2009, has led the team for a dozen years.
2012 Josh Hamilton becomes the 16th major leaguer to hit four home runs in one game when he blasts an 0-2 pitch over the Camden Yards centerfield fence in the eighth inning of the Rangers' 10-3 victory over Baltimore. The Texas outfielder, who connected each time with a man on base, also hits a double to break Ty Cobb's 1925 American League's single-game record for total bases with 18, one shy of Shawn Green's major league mark of 19 established in 2002 with the Dodgers.

2012 The New York State Senate congratulates Mr. Met with a voice-approved resolution, honoring the larger-than-life bobblehead for being named the best mascot in the U.S. in a fan survey conducted by the Marketing Arm. The Amazins' spherical symbol of cheer, who defeated the popular Phillie Phanatic in the poll, is commended by the legislative body for having his legacy serve as "a sterling example for all mascots."
2016 Bryce Harper reaches base seven times without recording an official at-bat due to being hit by a pitch and receiving six free passes. In the Nationals' 4-3 extra-inning loss at Wrigley Field, Cub hurlers throw 27 pitches, 25 out of the strike zone, to the 23-year-old reigning MVP.
2018 Mariner James Paxton, a native of Ladner, British Columbia, throws the sixth no-hitter in franchise history and the first not in Seattle, beating the Blue Jays, 5-0 at Toronto's Rogers Centre. The 29-year-old southpaw becomes the second Canadian to pitch a major league hitless game, a feat first accomplished by Torontonian Dick Fowler in 1945 for A's.
2019 Ranger center fielder Joey Gallo becomes the fastest player to hit 100 homers in American League history when his 443-foot blast lands in the Allegheny River, a two-run homer in the team's 9-6 victory over the Pirates at PNC Park. The milestone round-tripper comes in the 25-year-old's 377th game, surpassing Mark McGwire, who needed 16 additional games to accomplish the feat.

(Ed. Note: Ryan Howard set the major league record in 2007, recording his 100th in his 325th game with the Phillies. - LP)

40 Fact(s) Found