TODAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY

1820       Alexander Cartwright, considered by many the ‘father’ of the national pastime, is born in New York City. The banker, who is given credit for establishing three strikes for an out and three outs for each half inning, will be elected into the Hall of Fame in 1938 after a review of his journals reveals the many contributions he made in developing and promoting the sport of baseball.

1869       The Cincinnati Red Stockings defeat the rival Amateurs, 24-15, in baseball’s first professional game. Team captain Harry Wright had put all of his players under contract, making the club, that will become known as the Reds, the first pro team in sports history.

1904       By not charging admission but requiring fans to buy a scorecard, the Superbas find a way to play their first Sunday game at home, beating the Beaneaters, 9-1, at Brooklyn’s Washington Park. The strategy is an attempt to circumvent the existing blue laws, legislation designed to enforce religious edicts, including the observance of Sunday as a day of worship.

1912       In front of a larger than usual crowd at the Polo Grounds of over 14,000 patrons that includes Broadway legend George M. Cohan, the Giants beat the new-look Yankees, now sporting pinstripes, in an unscheduled exhibition game, 11-2, to raise money for the survivors of the HMS Titanic. The charity contest, the first Sunday game ever played between major league teams at the Coogan’s Bluff ballpark, raises over $9,000 when each fan donates the price of an admission ticket to purchase a special program for the event.

1925       Babe Ruth undergoes an operation for an intestinal abscess at St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he will remain for six weeks. The 30 year-old Yankee outfielder will miss the first forty games of the season due to his “bellyache heard ’round the world,” a popular misconception that blamed the consumption of an abundance of hot dogs and soda for his illness.

1929       In a ceremony that takes place on Opening Day at five a.m. to avoid crowds, Claire Hodgson becomes the second Mrs. Babe Ruth. The Yankees’ outfielder’s first wife, Julia Woodford, died in a house fire in January.

1929       On a cold and dreary day at Griffith Stadium, President Herbert Hoover throws out the first ball and then stays for the entire game, watching the A’s beat the hometown Senators, 13-4. The loss spoils the managerial debut of Washington legend Walter Johnson.

1934       On Opening Day at the newly-named Crosley Field, Reds’ announcer Red Barber calls his first play-by-play for a major league team. The 26 year-old future Hall of Fame broadcaster had never attended a major league game before today’s 6-0 loss to the Cubs.

1939       On the morning of Opening Day in Washington, D.C., President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Yankees visit Abner Doubleday’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery. A rainout this afternoon cancels FDR’s ceremonial first pitch at Griffith Stadium, with Veep Garner doing the honors in the season opener against the same opponents four days later after the Bombers return from New York having played Boston to start their campaign. Library of Congress

1945       Browns outfielder Pete Gray, playing with one arm, makes his major league debut with one hit in four at-bats in a 7-1 victory over Detroit at Sportsman’s Park. The 30 year-old St. Louis outfielder, who lost his right arm in a childhood accident, batted .333 last season as a minor leaguer.

1951       Before the Cubs’ home opener, Sam Snead tees off from home plate, sending a golf ball soaring over the 89-foot Wrigley Field scoreboard in center field. ‘Slammin’ Sammy’ won three Masters, three PGA Championships, and one British Open during his nearly 40 years as a professional golfer.

1951       Mickey Mantle, batting third, grounds out to second base in his first major league at-bat. The 19 year-old right fielder will hit a sixth-inning run-scoring single, going 1-for-4 in the Yankees’ Opening Day 5-0 victory over Boston in the Bronx.

1951       For the first time, in a career that will span more than half of a century, public address announcer Bob Sheppard announces the Yankees’ lineup. The ‘Voice of God’s introduction of the team includes the memorable names of Mickey Mantle, playing his first game, Phil Rizzuto, Yogi Berra, but the first player’s name announced will be DiMaggio – Dom DiMaggio, the leading off for the visiting Red Sox.

1953       Mickey Mantle blasts a ‘reported’ 565-foot homer off southpaw Chuck Stobb in the Yankees’ 7-3 victory over Washington at a windy Griffith Stadium. The distance of the historic round-tripper hit by the 21 year-old Yankee outfielder will become the subject of much debate, with later research debunking its original tape-measure status.

1954       At Milwaukee’s County Stadium, utility man Nino Escalera becomes the first black player to appear in a Reds’ game. The Puerto Rican native, who will bat .159 and collect 11 hits in his only major league season, will eventually become a scout for the Oakland A’s.

1955       In his first major league at-bat, Roberto Clemente singles off Dodger pitcher Johnny Podres. The Pirates’ rookie, who will die in a plane crash attempting to bring relief aid to earthquake-stricken Nicaragua in 1972, will collect precisely 3,000 hits during his 18-year major league career, all with Pittsburgh.

1956       Luis Aparicio, Don Drysdale, and Frank Robinson play in their first major league games, respectively, for the White Sox, Dodgers, and Reds. The trio of debuts marks the first time that three future Hall of Famers have made their initial appearance on the same day.

1960       In a trade of fan favorites, the Tigers swap Harvey Kuenn, last season’s batting champ, for Indians slugger Rocky Colavito. Detroit gets the better of the deal when their new outfielder puts together four consecutive outstanding seasons with their former fly chaser hitting .308 in his only season in Cleveland before being traded by the Tribe to the Giants for Johnny Antonelli and Willie Kirkland.

1964       After spending the first two years of their existence at the Polo Grounds, the Mets play their first game at Shea Stadium in front of 50,312 fans in Queens. The Amazins’ drop the stadium opener to Pittsburgh, 4-3, with Willie Stargell hitting the first homer in the Flushing facility.

1968       In their first game at Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, the newly arrived A’s lose to the Orioles, 4-1. The team, which played in Kansas City last season, is shut down by Baltimore southpaw Dave McNally on two-hits.

1969       In only the ninth game of the franchise’s history, Expos hurler Bill Stoneman, who had never thrown a complete game in the major leagues, tosses a no-hitter, defeating the Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium, 7-0. The 25 year-old right-hander, the future GM of the Angels, will throw another no-hit game in 1972 against the Mets.

1976       At Wrigley Field, Mike Schmidt hits four home runs in one game, including the game-winner, when the Phillies come back from an 11-run deficit to beat the Cubs in ten innings, 18-16. The Phillies’ slugging third baseman is the first National Leaguer, third overall, to hit the homers consecutively.

1976       At Yankee owner’s George Steinbrenner’s insistence, Thurman Munson is named the team captain. The reluctant backstop is the first player to assume the role since the Bronx Bombers honored Lou Gehrig with the position in 1935.

1977       At Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, the umpires walk off the field in the fourth inning to protest the Braves showing a controversial play on the ballpark’s massive instant replay screen that involves Houston’s Bob Watson scoring on a close play at the plate. Team executive Bill Lucas persuades the crew, which includes Terry Tata, Ed Sudol, Dick Stello, and Bruce Froemming, to return the field, after assuring the arbitrators the incident would not occur again.

1977       Mike Pazik posts his first and last major league win when hurls eight innings in the Twins’ 10-2 victory over Oakland at Metropolitan Stadium. The 27 year-old former Yankees farmhand’s career will come to a sudden end on April 25 when his van is hit head-on by a car driving the wrong way on a freeway entrance, resulting in the southpaw fracturing both legs.

1988       The Braves beat the Dodgers, 3-1, after breaking the National League record with ten losses to start the season. The team will drop 27 of its first 39 decisions, costing Chuck Tanner his job as the Atlanta manager.

1995       The Devil Rays and the City of St. Petersburg come to terms on a 30-year lease for the new American League expansion team to play their home games at the ThunderDome. The domed stadium, now known as Tropicana Field, was built originally as the Florida Suncoast Dome in an attempt to coax the White Sox to leave their aging ballpark in Chicago and relocate to the Tampa Bay/St. Pete area.

2001       Barry Bonds becomes the 17th major leaguer, as well as the fourth Giant, to join the 500 home run club when he hits a Terry Adams’ 2-0 heater into McCovey Cove at Pac Bell Park. The San Francisco left-fielder is joined at home plate by two other members of the elite fraternity, Willie Mays (660) and Willie McCovey (521), for a brief ceremony.

2006       In front of 36,867 Shea Stadium patrons, Pedro Martinez becomes the 103rd pitcher in major league history to win 200 games when the Mets beat the Braves, 4-3. The Dominican ace has lost only 84 contests at the time of reaching the milestone, putting him behind only Bob Caruthers (74), Whitey Ford (79), and Lefty Grove (83).

2006       In the bottom ninth inning, Mark Loretta hits a two-out, two-run home run over the left-field wall, giving the Red Sox a dramatic 7-6 victory over the Mariners at Fenway Park on Patriots’ Day. The only other player to end a game with a homer on Boston’s special day of celebration is Frank Malzone, who gave the team a 5-4 walk-off victory over the Yankees in 1959, the year the New England baseball tradition began.

2007       After the second inning of an eventual 6-4 loss to the Braves at RFK Stadium, the Nationals take the field wearing Virginia Tech baseball caps as a tribute to the 32 victims of the shooting rampage which took place on the Blacksburg campus yesterday morning. Nearly a dozen of the burgundy caps signed by the players who wore them will be sent to the nearby college while the hat worn by the Nationals’ last batter of the game, Chris Snelling, will reside in the Hall of Fame.

2009       At Citi Field, Gary Sheffield becomes the 25th player to hit 500 career home runs. Joining Ty Cobb and Rusty Staub as the only major leaguers to homer as a teenager and as a forty year-old, the recently released Tiger DH becomes the first to reach the milestone as a pinch-hitter and the first to accomplish the feat in a Mets uniform.

2009       Washington’s right fielder Adam Dunn and third baseman Ryan Zimmerman start the game against Florida with the word “Nationals” misspelled on the front of their uniforms. Majestic Athletic, the manufacturer of the jerseys, takes full responsibility for the missing “O” and apologizes for the mistake to the organization, the players, and their fans.

2009       Jason Kubel blasts a grand slam to become the ninth Twins player to hit for the cycle, the first to do it at the Metrodome since 1986 when Kirby Puckett accomplished the feat in front of the home crowd. The left fielder’s bases-full homer caps a seven-run eighth inning in Minnesota’s 11-9 comeback victory over the Angels.

2010       The 26-year-old Rockies’ right-hander Ubaldo Jimenez, striking out seven and walking six, hurls the first no-hitter in the 18-year history of the franchise. The 4-0 historic victory over Atlanta at Turner Field is saved in the seventh inning with a spectacular catch by center fielder Dexter Fowler.

2012       Throwing seven strong innings in the Rockies’ 5-3 victory over San Diego, Jamie Moyer becomes the oldest pitcher to win a major league contest. The 49-year, 150-day old southpaw surpasses Brooklyn’s Jack Quinn, who was almost three months younger when he got the victory pitching five frames in relief against St. Louis in 1932.

2012       After agreeing on a $1.25 million deal last week, Johnny Damon signs a minor league contract en route to joining the Indians to become their regular left fielder possibly. The 38 year-old career .286 hitter, who needs 277 knocks to reach the 3,000-hit plateau, will bring intangibles to the club by providing veteran leadership for the struggling Tribe in addition to serving as a mentor to the team’s younger stars.

2012       Mark Melancon allows six earned runs without recording an out in the eighth inning, a frame which features three home runs to the six Rangers he faces in the 18-3 rout of the Red Sox at Fenway Park. The Boston reliever yields a double to Ian Kinsler, walks Elvis Andrus, gives up a three-run blast to Josh Hamilton, followed by round-tripper by Adrian Beltre, before David Murphy walks and Nelson Cruz homers, before ending his historic outing.

2013       Clayton Kershaw becomes the second-fastest Dodger to strike out 1,000 batters when he throws a second-inning 93-mph fastball past San Diego first baseman Yonder Alonso. The 25 year-old southpaw reaches the milestone in 970 career innings, 15.2 more than needed by Hideo Nomo, who established the team mark in 2003.

2015       Mike Trout, at the age of 23 years and 253 days, becomes the youngest major league player to compile 100 career home runs and 100 career stolen bases when he homers in the sixth inning off Roberto Hernandez in the Angels’ 6-3 victory over the Astros at the Minute Maid Park. The Melville Millville Meteor surpasses the mark previously set by Alex Rodriguez, who was 56 days older when he reached the 100/100 mark.

2015       Kris Bryant makes his much-anticipated major league debut for the Cubs, going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in the team’s 5-4 loss to the Padres at Wrigley Field. Chicago had delayed the start of his season to extend the club’s control on the highly-touted freshman, who will go on to be named the National League’s Rookie of the Year.

1945 WORLD SERIES HISTORY

The Chicago Cubs finally made it back to the World Series after a seven year absence thanks to the timely pitching of Henry Borowy. Acquired on waivers in late July after he had compiled a 10-5 record for the New York Yankees, the “newbie” proceeded to win eleven of thirteen decisions and helped Chicago fight off the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League pennant race. Their opponents, the American Leagues’ Detroit Tigers were a familiar post-season rival. The Tigers were shooting for their second World Series crown; their only previous Series title had come in 1935, against the Cubs. The Cubs were eyeing their third Series championship; their two titles came in 1907 and 1908 at the Tigers’ expense.

Borowy had more than earned the start for Game 1 and he proved himself again and again as he held the Tigers to six singles and was a 9-0 victor as the Cubs bombed twenty-five-game winner Hal Newhouser. Bill Nicholson singled, tripled and drove in three runs for Chicago, which got two runs batted in apiece from Phil Cavarretta and Mickey Livingston. Virgil Trucks, a sixteen-game winner for Detroit in 1943 (and only recently discharged from the United States Navy), pitched a seven-hitter in Game 2 and won, 4-1, as midseason service returnee Hank Greenberg unloaded a three-run homer in the fifth. Four days earlier, on the final day of the American league schedule and in a game that marked Trucks’ only appearance of the regular season, Greenberg smashed a pennant-clinching, grand slam in the ninth inning against the defending American League champion St. Louis Browns.

In Game 3, Chicago’s Claude Passeau tossed a one-hitter in which Rudy York singled to left field with two out in the second and led the National Leaguers to a 3-0 triumph. Following his teammate’s cue, Ray Prim sat down the first ten Detroit batters he faced in Game 4, but after yielding a walk, two singles and a double in what became a four-run fourth for the Tigers, Prim was pulled in favor of Paul Derringer. While Derringer and fellow relievers Hy Vandenberg and Paul Erickson pitched shutout ball the rest of the way, it was to no avail. Detroit’s 4-1 triumph, fashioned on Dizzy Trout’s five-hit pitching set the tone for the rest of the contest. Now manager Charley Grimm went to Borowy, not once, not twice, but three times. Grimm, in his second year with the Cubs, was obviously impressed with Borowy’s combined regular-season record of 21-7, his second-half heroics (which netted him the National League’s ERA title with a 2.14) and his 56-30 mark with the Yankees.

Grimm’s newest “go-to-guy” held Game 5 to a 1-1 tie after five innings in which he matched Newhouser, who had just led the American League in victories (twenty-nine in 1944), strikeouts for the second successive season and topped the American League with a 1.81 ERA. Unfrotunately, it would be his turn to fall short as the Tigers’ pitcher would be the one to go the distance. Borowy was pulled after allowing four straight hits at the outset of the sixth as Detroit scored four runs in the inning and swept to an 8-4 victory. Greenberg continued to perform at the plate and slugged three more doubles for the Tigers.

Trucks and Passeau went at it for Game 6 and both dominated the other’s line-up for over four innings. Trucks blinked first and was routed in the Cubs’ four-run fifth which featured Stan Hack’s bases-loaded single. Passeau followed his opponent to the dugout in the seventh after Detroit managed to score twice. After the Cubs answered with two runs in their half of the inning, it was 7-3, Chicago. But Detroit struck for four runs in the eighth, the game-tying run coming on a Greenberg homer. Suddenly Manager Steve O’Neill’s Tigers were in a position to close out the Cubs in six games. Dizzy Trout came on in relief for Detroit in the last of the eighth, and when the 7-7 game moved into the ninth, Grimm decided to make another pitching change. Having followed Passeau with Hank Wyse (the Cubs’ top winner of ’45 with twenty-two victories) and Prim, Grimm now wanted Borowy back. Once again, the “newbie” delivered, holding Detroit at bay with four scoreless innings. Then, in the bottom of the twelfth, with two out and Billy Schuster at first base as a pinch-runner (for Frank Secory, who had come through with a pinch single), Hack hit a drive to left field that took a weird bounce and bounded over Greenberg. The hit, ruled a double, scored Schuster and gave Borowy and the Cubs a crucial 8-7 victory.

As the Tigers prepared to close the door on the Cubs and the 1945 season, Chicago’s newest hero was selected to keep his team alive in Game 6. The Chicago press had questioned the decision and printed that Grimm was making a serious mistake by using Borowy who was going on one day of rest after pitching the final four innings of Game 6. He had also pitched into the sixth inning in Game 5 and many wondered if his arm would hold up. The decision would prove costly as the fatigued pitcher yielded singles to the Detroit’s first three batters, Skeeter Webb, Eddie Mayo and Doc Cramer. Grimm, realizing that Borowy had done all he could for the ’45 Cubs, told his weary pitcher to call it a day. Paul Derringer came in as relief for Chicago, but by the end of the inning Detroit had scored five runs. The well-rested Newhouser went the distance for the 9-3 victory, allowing ten hits and striking out ten Cubs. Once again Chicago had come up short (their seventh Series loss) and even worse, it was (once again), to the Tigers.