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This Day in Baseball History
April 21st

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28 Fact(s) Found
1898 In a game against the Giants, Philadelphia Nationals' pitcher Bill Duggelby blasts a grand slam in his first major league at-bat. More than a century will pass before Jeremy Hermida accomplishes the feat again when the Marlin rookie pinch-hitter goes yard with the bases full, facing the Cardinals' Al Reyes Dolphins Stadium in 2005.

(Ed Note: Bobby Bonds hit a grand slam in his first game but his third at-bat. - LP)
1900 At Schorling's Park on Chicago's south side, the White Sox, as a minor league team, play their first game in franchise history, losing to Milwaukee, 5-4. The small wooden ballpark located at 39th and Princeton, also known as Southside Park, will continue to be the Windy City home for the team when they join the American League next season.
1910 In front of 19,867 of the Tribe's faithful, Detroit right-hander Ed Willett spoils the team's debut in League Park, blanking Cleveland, 5-0. The ballpark, located at E. 66th and Lexington Avenue, will serve as the franchise's full-time home until the club moves during the 1932 season to Municipal Stadium.
1925 The National League cancels all games due to the funeral of Dodger owner Charles Ebbets, who died three days ago of a heart attack. Edward McKeever, who assumed the presidency of the Brooklyn club, catches a cold at the owner's funeral and will die of influenza in eight days.


Charles Ebbets and Mr. & Mrs. Edward McKeever (1913)
Library of Congress - George Grantham Bain Collection
1944 After hitting just one home run in his last 297 games, Mike Kreevich hits two round-trippers in the Browns' 5-3 victory over Chicago at Sportsman's Park. The 35-year-old right fielder will finish the season with five homers for the eventual American League champs.
1946 Frank Hayes establishes a major league record for catchers when he plays behind the plate in the last of his 312 consecutive games. The 31-year-old Indian backstop's streak began on October 2, 1943, when he started for the Browns on the final day of the season at Yankee Stadium.
1948 Returning after serving his one-year suspension from baseball, Dodger manager Leo Durocher uses 24 players in a 9-5 loss to the Giants. Commissioner Happy Chandler suspended the controversial 'Lip' last April for an assortment of actions deemed detrimental to baseball.
1951 At Griffith Stadium, Gil Coan hits two triples in the Senators' seven-run sixth inning in an 8-7 loss to New York. The Washington left fielder will be the last major leaguer to accomplish the feat until Rockies' leadoff hitter Cory Sullivan collects a pair of three-baggers in one frame in 2006.
1955 The Dodgers win their 10th consecutive game from the start of the season when they beat the Phillies, 14-4. The Ebbets Field's victory establishes a major league record that lasts until 1981, when the A's chalk up 11 straight wins, beginning on Opening Day.

1959 At Wrigley Field, Stan Musial breaks up Glen Hobbie's no-hitter with a two-out seventh-inning double. The 23-year-old right-hander settles for a one-hitter, going the distance in the Cubs' 1-0 victory over the Cardinals.
1961 In front of 24,606 fans at Metropolitan Stadium, the Twins, formerly known as the Washington Senators before moving to Minnesota, play their first home game, losing to the 'new' expansion Washington Senators, 5-3. The club's move to the North Star State will attract 1,256,723 fans, third-best in the American League and far better than their last season in the nation's capital, where the team drew only 743,404 fans, the worst gate in the league.
1966 The Phillies obtain Larry Jackson and Bob Buhl from the Cubs in exchange for future Hall of Fame hurler Ferguson Jenkins, outfielder Adolfo Phillips, and first baseman/outfielder John Herrnstein. The right-handers will collectively post a 47-53 record for Philadelphia as Chicago's new moundsman will win twenty or more games for six consecutive seasons starting in 1967.
1967 Rain postpones a game for the first time since the Dodgers opened its stadium in Chavez Ravine in 1962. The postponement of their scheduled game against St. Louis ends a streak of 737 consecutive contests at Dodger Stadium without a washout.
1967 After ending the Red Sox's rookie no-hit bid last week, Elston Howard again spoils Billy Rohr's effort to get into the record book when his eighth-inning two-run single breaks up the southpaw's shutout. The 21-year-old goes the distance, earning his second complete-game victory over the Bronx Bombers in seven days, but fails to become the eighth freshman to start his career with back-to-back scoreless games.
1972 In the first American League game ever played in Texas, the transplanted Washington franchise, now known as the Rangers, beat California, 7-3. The club, managed by Ted Williams, will play its home schedule at Arlington Stadium, located between Fort Worth and Dallas, formerly Turnpike Stadium.

1989 After helping to arrange a syndicate to purchase the controlling interest in the Rangers for $89 million, George W. Bush, who also bought into the deal with a small stake of $500,000, convinces the investor group to make him the managing general partner. The future president of the United States will become the team's public face, with co-general partner Edward W 'Rusty' Rose handling the club's financial matters.
1990 The Reds beat the Braves at Riverfront Stadium, 8-1, for their ninth consecutive victory since Opening Day. The eventual World Champions' winning streak is the best start in club history.
1994 At the Metrodome, switch-hitting DH Eddie Murray knocks a home run from both sides of the plate in the Indians' 10-6 win over the Twins. 'Steady Eddie' has gone deep batting left-handed and right-handed in the same game eleven times, breaking the previous record that Yankee legend Mickey Mantle established in 1964.
1996 En route to hitting 50 home runs this season, Oriole outfielder Brady Anderson leads off his fourth consecutive game with a round-tripper when he goes deep off Darren Oliver in the team's 9-6 loss to the Rangers at The Ballpark in Arlington. Despite their leadoff man's heroics, Baltimore goes 0-4 in those games.
1997 The Devil Rays sign Rolando Arrojo, the former ace of the Cuban National Team. The 28-year-old right-hander, who defected from his homeland just before the 1996 Summer Olympics, will set a record for wins by an expansion pitcher with 14 victories.
2000 Due to the umpires' equipment going to New York instead of Cincinnati, the Reds' game against the Dodgers starts 27 minutes later. A downtown store supplies the replacement gear, but due to heavy traffic, the goods arrive at Cinergy Field with the assistance of a police escort.
2002 Atlanta shortstop Rafael Furcal ties a major league record, last done by White Sox outfielder Lance Johnson in 1995, by hitting three triples in a game. Danny O'Connell, the previous Braves player to hit three three-baggers in one contest, accomplished the feat at County Stadium in 1956 when the team played in Milwaukee.

2006 Kansas City names the Kauffman Stadium Press Box after Hall of Fame writer and former Royals board member Joe McGuff. The 1984 J.G. Taylor Spink Award Winner died in February at 79 after battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease.
2012 Phillip Humber's first major league complete game is baseball's twenty-first perfect game when he retires all 27 Mariners he faces in the White Sox' 4-0 victory at Safeco Field. The 29-year-old right-hander, who had Tommy John surgery in 2005, is the third Pale Hose pitcher to accomplish perfection, joining Mark Buehrle (2009 vs. Tampa Bay) and Charles Robertson (1932 vs. Detroit).

2014 Although he breaks his bat on the swing, Ike Davis becomes the first major leaguer to hit a grand slam for two teams in April when he homers off Mike Leake, helping the Pirates defeat the Reds, 6-5, at PNC Park. Before being traded by the Mets to Pittsburgh earlier in the month, the 27-year-old first baseman went deep against another Cincinnati hurler, J.J. Hoover, for a walk-off slam in the bottom of the ninth at Citi Field.
2015 Celebrating the 150th anniversary year of their first meeting, Wesleyan and Yale, the Connecticut schools believed to have played the first college baseball contest using the rules which resemble today's game, meet at New Haven's Yale Field. Unlike their 39-13 rout in 1865, the Bulldogs only beat their Middletown rivals, 7-3, improving their record in the intercollegiate series to 62-18-2.
2016 Cubs right-hander Jake Arrieta tosses a no-hitter in the Cubs' 16-0 rout over the Reds at Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park. The Chicago ace becomes the second pitcher, joining Johnny Vander Meer, who threw consecutive no-hitters in 1938, to go unbeaten between no-no's, having not lost in his last 17 regular-season starts since his gem against the Dodgers last season.

2018 A's southpaw Sean Manaea tosses the twelfth no-hitter in franchise history and the first since southpaw Dallas Braden's perfect game in 2010, when he keeps the opponents hitless in the team's 3-0 victory over the 17-2 Red Sox at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. The 26-year-old's performance ends Boston's run of 3,987 games without being no-hit, a streak dating back to Mariners' Chris Bosio's no-no against the club at the Kingdome on April 22, 1993.

28 Fact(s) Found