Today in Baseball History

[Jocko]

1934 - George Herman "Babe" Ruth plays his last home game at Yankee Stadium

1964 - Happy Birthday Rafael Palmeroid

1979 - Pete Rose singles as the Phillies fall to the Cardinals, 7-2. Rose reaches 200 hits in a season for the tenth time. He breaks the Major League record of nine such seasons held by Ty Cobb.

1980 - The Braves, with 24,897 watching, beat the Astros 4-2 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, pushing the Braves over the one million attendance mark for the season. The eleven other National League teams have already reached that milestone, making this the first season ever in which all the teams in one league have done so.

1984 - Rick Sutcliffe pitches a two-hitter in a 4-1 win over Pittsburgh to clinch the National League East title for the Cubs, who will be making their first postseason appearance since 1945. The win is Sutcliffe's 14th in a row.

1985 - Expos outfielder Andre Dawson slugs three home runs, including a pair of three-run shots in a 12-run fifth inning, to lead Montreal to a wild 17-15 win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Dawson joins Willie McCovey as the only players to hit two home runs in one inning on two different occasions.

1992 - Toronto's Dave Winfield becomes the oldest player in Major League history to reach the 100-RBI plateau. The40-year-olddoesthe trick in his 2,700th career game.

[Jocko]

1961 - Roger Maris tied Babe Ruth's 34-year-old record with his 60th homer, off Baltimore's Jack Fisher.

1981 - Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros became the first player to pitch five no-hitters, hurling a 5-0 victory over Los Angeles at the Astrodome.

^^^^I was in attendance at this game^^^^

1983 - Bob Forsch of the St. Louis Cardinals pitched the second no-hitter of his career, defeating Montreal 3-0.

1986 - Houston's Mike Scott pitches a 2-0 no-hitter against the Giants at the Astrodome, clinching the National League West title for the Astros. It is the first time a division has ever been decided by a no-hitter, and the third consecutive game in which Astros pitchers have allowed two hits or less.

1989 - Wade Boggs becomes the first player in Major League history to achieve both 200 hits and 100 walks in four consecutive seasons. It is his seventh straight 200-hit season overall, extending his own modern Major League record.

1993 - Randy Johnson of the Seattle Mariners became the eighth pitcher to strike out 300 batters in a season with 13 strikeouts in ten innings of a 3-2, twelve-inning loss to Oakland.

1997 - Pedro Martinez joins Curt Schilling of the Phillies in the 300-strikeout club. The Expos right-hander fans nine Marlins in a 3-2 victory to become the first pitcher in a quarter-century with 300 strikeouts and an ERA under 2.00 (Martinez finishes with an National League best 1.90 mark). The last time two pitchers fanned 300 in a season was 1972 when Steve Carlton and Nolan Ryan turned the trick.

1998 - Curt Schilling became the fifth pitcher ever to strike out 300 batters in consecutive seasons when he fanned Kevin Orie in the seventh inning of Philadelphia's 4-3 loss to Florida in the first game of a doubleheader.

[JaxRolo]

1981 - Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros became the first player to pitch five no-hitters, hurling a 5-0 victory over Los Angeles at the Astrodome.

^^^^I was in attendance at this game^^^^

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Very nice!

[Jocko]

On September 26 in Baseball History...

1908 - Ed Reulbach of the Chicago Cubs became the only pitcher to throw two shutouts in a doubleheader, beating the Superbas 5-0 and 3-0.

1916 - Washington manager Clark Griffith excuses several regulars for the remaining games of the season so he can use some new players. Included is Walter Johnson, who has already won 25 games for the seventh-place club. In a league-leading 371 innings, he did not give up a home run, an all-time record.

1921 - Babe Ruth hits home runs 57 and 58 to beat the Indians 8-7, and the Yankees take a two-and-a-half-game lead. The four-game series draws 147,000 people.

1932 - Chuck Klein closes the season with 38 home runs and 20 stolen bases and becomes the only player of the lively-ball era (1920 and after) to lead his league in these two departments.

1953 - Billy Hunter becomes the last St. Louis Browns player to homer in a game. The Browns lose anyway 6-3 to Chicago.

1954 - Art Ditmar of the Athletics defeats the Yanks 8-6 in the last game the franchise will play in Philadelphia before moving to Kansas City. Yankees catcher Yogi Berra plays his only game at third base in his career and Mickey Mantle plays shortstop.

1955 - Ted Williams finishes the season at .356, well ahead of Al Kaline's .340, but does not have enough at-bats to win the batting title. The same thing happened in 1954. Williams was walked 136 times in 1954 and 71 times (an American League leading 17 were intentional) this year. A rule change will be made to recognize plate appearances, not times at bat.

1959 - At Milwaukee the Braves beat the Phillies 3-2 behind Spahn's 21st win. He is now ahead of Eppa Rixey as the winningest National League lefty.

1961 - Roger Maris of the Yankees tied Babe Ruth 34-year-old record with his 60th homer, off Baltimore's Jack Fisher.

1965 - Minnesota gains its first American League pennant by defeating Washington, 2-1. Jim Kaat (17-11) wins the clincher.

1971 - Jim Palmer becomes the fourth member of the Orioles 1971 pitching staff to notch his 20th victory. Only one other team in Major League history - the 1920 White Sox - boasted four 20-game winners.

1978 - New York District Court Judge Constance Baker Motley rules that women sportswriters cannot be banned from locker rooms in the state.

1979 - Atlanta's Phil Niekro notches his 20th win of the season by beating his brother Joe, the National League's only other 20-game winner of the season, 9-4. The Niekro brothers are the second pair (the other was Jim and Gaylord Perry) to win 20 games in the same year. Phil Niekro, who finishes at 21-20, is the first pitcher since fellow knuckleballer Wilbur Wood in 1973 to win and lose 20 games the same year, and the first National League pitcher to do so since 1905.