This Date in Baseball – Julio Franco breaks his own record for oldest player to hit a pinch-hit HR
The Associated Press | May 18th, 2024 10:07am EDTMay 19
1910 — Cy Young won the 500th game of his career as the Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 5-4, in 11 innings.
1910 — Boston beat the Pirates 6-3 for the first time in 26 tries.
1933 — For the first time in major league history, brothers on opposite teams hit home runs in the same game. Boston Red Sox catcher Rick Ferrell homers off his brother Wes Ferrell in the 2nd inning, but the Cleveland Indians pitcher returns the favor as he homers in the 3rd on a pitch called by his sibling. It is the only time that the Ferrell brothers homer in the same game.
1942 — Paul Waner of the Boston Braves got his 3,000th career hit off Pittsburgh’s Rip Sewell in a 7-6, 11-inning loss to the Pirates.
1956 — Pittsburgh’s Dale Long hit a ninth-inning homer against the Chicago Cubs. It was Long’s first of eight straight games with a homer.
1962 — Stan Musial of St. Louis became the NL career hits leader. The 41-year-old got a ninth inning single for his 3,431st hit and moved past Honus Wagner. The Cardinals beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 8-1.
1968 — After hitting 10 home runs in six games, Frank Howard of the Washington Senators was stopped by pitcher Earl Wilson of Detroit, which won the game 5-4.
1976 — Carl Yastrzemski has the only three-homer game of his illustrious career, going deep three times in a 4-for-4 day in a 9 – 2 Red Sox win over the Tigers. He victimizes three different pitchers – Dave Roberts, Steve Grilli and John Hiller.
1979 — After a bitter six-week strike, the major league umpires return to work. During the work stoppage, the men in blue were replaced by amateur and minor league arbiters.
1981 — Pittsburgh’s Jim Bibby gave up a leadoff single to Terry Harper of the Atlanta Braves, then retired the next 27 batters for a 5-0 one-hitter. Bibby also hit two doubles.
1998 — Mark McGwire hit three two-run homers against Philadelphia. It was the second time this season and fourth time in his career McGwire hit three homers in a game. McGwire became the 12th player to have two three-homer games in a season.
2000 — Jason Kendall hit for the cycle and drove in a career-high five runs, leading Pittsburgh to a 13-1 rout of St. Louis. Kendall had a two-run homer in the first inning, an RBI single in the second, a double in the third and a two-run triple in the eighth.
2004 — Atlanta’s 45-year-old Julio Franco broke his own record for the oldest player to hit a pinch-hit homer. Franco, who had a pinch-hit homer two weeks earlier against San Diego, hit a two-out, two-run homer to tie the game at 4 in the eighth. The Braves lost 6-4 in 11 innings to the Diamondbacks.
2008 — Boston’s Jon Lester shut down Kansas City 7-0 for the first no-hitter in the majors this season. The 24-year-old lefty, who survived cancer to pitch the World Series clincher for the Red Sox last fall, allowed two baserunners, walking Billy Butler in the second inning and Esteban German to open the ninth. Jason Varitek catches his fourth no-hitter, tying Ray Schalk for the major league record; one of Schalk’s no-hitters was later removed from the official records, making Varitek the first backstop to have four official no-hitters to his name.
2009 — Washington became the fourth team in major league history to score at least five runs in each game of a six-game losing streak. The Nationals lost 8-5 in 10 innings to Pittsburgh after they rallied to tie the game with a run in the ninth, but another letdown from a bullpen with a collective 1-14 record allowed them to join the 1929 Pirates, 2004 Cincinnati Reds and 2005 Texas Rangers.
2010 — CF Angel Pagan hits the first inside-the-park homer in the history of Nationals Park.
2011 — After sitting on the bench for most of the season so far, veteran 1B Jason Giambi has the first three-homer game of his career in the Rockies’ 7 – 1 win over Philadelphia. He hits homers in his first three at-bats, driving in all 7 of his team’s runs, but fails in his last two at-bats to become only the 16th player to hit four dingers in one game. Giambi entered the game hitting .115 with 1 homer and 4 RBI; at 40, he is the second-oldest player to hit three home runs in a game, after Stan Musial who was 41 when he accomplished the feat on July 8, 1962.
2018 — The Rays have been experimenting with “bullpen days” all season, when the starting pitcher is not expected to go deep into the game, going all out for 3 or 4 innings before handing the ball over to another reliever, but today they take it even further. Short reliever Sergio Romo starts today’s game against the Angels, his first start in the majors after 588 appearances out of the bullpen, and is only asked to pitch one inning before handing the ball over to Ryan Yarbrough. The plan works perfectly as Romo strikes out the three men he faces – Zack Cozart, Mike Trout and Justin Upton, all righthanders – then hands the ball over to lefty Yarbrough in the 2nd. Yarbrough pitches scoreless ball until allowing a run in the 8th as Tampa Bay wins, 5 – 3. It is the first time a starting pitcher leaves after a perfect 1st inning since Ernie Shore had done so on October 5, 1915. Manager Kevin Cash is so pleased with how the scheme goes that he picks Romo to start the next day’s game as well.
2021 — Corey Kluber of the Yankees is the latest pitcher to join this season’s no-hitter parade, pulling off the feat with a 2 – 0 win over the Rangers at Globe Life Field. It is already the 6th 9-inning no-hitter this year, and comes one day after Spencer Turnbull of the Tigers had pitched the previous one.
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