


ON THIS DATE
May 7
1960: Norm Sherry, a replacement catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, hit a home run in the 11th inning to give his brother, relief pitcher Larry Sherry, a 3-2 triumph over the Philadelphia Phillies in Los Angeles.
1973: The Pirates became the first team to score their five runs on five solo homers in a 5-4 win over at Dodger Stadium. Willie Stargell, Dave Cash, Richie Hebner, Manny Sanguillen and Al Oliver homered.
1986: Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Garry Maddox announces his retirement at the age of 36. Properly nicknamed “Secretary of Defense”, the slick-fielding Maddox won eight Gold Gloves.
1997: The Montreal Expos scored 13 runs to set an NL record for runs in a sixth inning during their 19-3 win over the San Francisco Giants.
1999: Tampa Bay’s first baseman Fred McGriff sets a major league record by homering in his 34th major league ballpark.
1999: Carlos Lee becomes the first player in Chicago White Sox history to hit a home run in his first major league at-bat in the Sox’s 7-1 victory over the Oakland Athletics.
2005: Julio Franco of the Atlanta Braves goes 3 for 4, including his first home run of the season, in a 4-1 victory over the Houston Astros. Franco, who turns 47 on August 23rd, becomes the second-oldest player in major league history to homer at 46 years, 257 days. Jack Quinn, a pitcher who accomplished the feat when he was 100 days older, hit a home run for the Philadelphia Athletics on June 27, 1930; Franco will eventually pass him as well.
2008: Carlos Gomez became the first Minnesota player to hit for the cycle in 22 years in a 13-1 victory over the Chicago White Sox.
2009: New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera gave up home runs to consecutive batters for the first time in his major league career, with Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria connecting in the ninth inning of Tampa Bay’s 8-6 victory. Rivera had not given up back-to-back homers in 862 games coming in.
2009: The Boston Red Sox tied a modern major-league record with 12 runs in an inning before making an out in a 13-3 win over Cleveland. The Red Sox tied the mark set by the Brooklyn Dodgers on May 24, 1953.
2009: The Dodgers’ star outfielder, Manny Ramirez, is suspended for 50 games for testing positive for a banned substance. He is the most prominent player yet caught under Major League Baseball’s PED policy implemented in 2005.
2010: Starlin Castro hit a three-run homer in his first major league at-bat and drove in a record six runs during the Chicago Cubs’ 14-7 victory over the Cincinnati Reds. Castro added a bases-loaded triple, sliding headfirst into the record books with six RBIs, the most ever in a modern day debut: one more than the previous mark shared by four players.
2011: Justin Verlander threw his second career no-hitter, leading the Detroit Tigers to a 9-0 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays. The only runner Verlander allowed came with one out in the eighth inning when J.P. Arencibia walked on a full count.
2011: Andre Ethier’s 30-game hitting streak ends in a 4-2 Dodgers loss to the Mets. Ethier, who goes 0 for 4, ends up one game short of the franchise record of 31 games held by Willie Davis since 1969.
2016: Aaron Hill hit a grand slam in Milwaukee’s seven-run 10th inning for his third homer of the game, and the Brewers beat Cincinnati 13-7.
2016: New York’s Bartolo Colon became the oldest player to hit his first major league home run, connecting less than three weeks before his 43rd birthday, to help the Mets to a 6-3 victory over the Padres.
2018: George Springer ties an Astros team record by going 6 for 6 in a 16-2 win over the Athletics. He has a double, homer and single by the end of the 4th inning, but fails in his next three at-bats to get the triple that would have completed the cycle as he hits a single each time.
2019: Mike Fiers pitches his second career no-hitter as the Athletics defeat the Reds, 2-0.
2022: Less than two weeks after getting his 3,000th hit, Miguel Cabrera reaches another milestone with his 600th career double, only the 18th player to that total. Only two others - Hank Aaron and Albert Pujols - have compiled his combination of 3,000 hits, 600 doubles and 500 home runs.
May 8
1906: Philadelphia manager Connie Mack needed a substitute outfielder in the sixth inning of a game against Boston and called on pitcher Chief Bender. Bender hit two home runs, both inside the park.
1907: Boston’s Big Jeff Pfeffer threw a no-hitter to give the Braves a 6-0 victory over the Cincinnati Reds in Boston.
1929: Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants pitched a no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Pirates, the first by a left-hander in the majors in 13 seasons.
1935: In the first game of a doubleheader, Ernie Lombardi of the Cincinnati Reds hit four doubles in consecutive innings (sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth) off four different Phillies pitchers. Lombardi also singled to send the Reds past Philadelphia 15-4.
1946: Boston shortstop Johnny Pesky scored six times, an American League record, in a 14-10 win over the White Sox. Pesky, who was 4-for-5 with a walk and two RBIs, matched Mel Ott’s National League mark for runs scored in a game.
1963: A Stan Musial home run against the Dodgers gives him 1,357 extra-base hits, surpassing Babe Ruth’s major league record. He will get 20 more; his record will later be broken by Hank Aaron.
1963: Pirates LF Willie Stargell’s first major league homer and Cubs P Bob Buhl’s first major league hit in 88 at-bats highlight a 9-5 Chicago win over Pittsburgh.
1966: Frank Robinson became the only player to hit a home run out of Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. The shot over the left-field wall came off Cleveland right-hander Luis Tiant. The Orioles won 8-3.
1966: The St. Louis Cardinals closed old Busch Stadium with a 10-5 loss to the San Francisco Giants.
1966: Orioles outfielder Frank Robinson hits the only ball ever completely out of Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. The shot clears the left-field single-deck grandstand’s rear wall, 451-feet away, going an estimated 541 feet.
1968: Jim “Catfish” Hunter of the Oakland A’s pitched a perfect game to beat the Minnesota Twins 4-0.
1983: Darryl Strawberry gets his first major league hit, a single that scores Danny Heep, in a 10-5 Mets win over the Reds.
1984: Minnesota’s Kirby Puckett had four singles in his first major league game, and the Twins beat the California Angels 5-0.
1994: Danny Tartabull, Mike Stanley and Gerald Williams hit back-to-back-to-back home runs for the Yankees in the 6th inning of New York’s 8-4 win over Boston.
1994: The Colorado Silver Bullets, the first women’s team to play a pro men’s team, lost 19-0 to the Northern League All-Stars. Leon Durham hit two homers and Oil Can Boyd started for the All-Stars. The Silver Bullets had two hits, struck out 16 times and made six errors.
1998: Cardinals 1B Mark McGwire hits his 400th career home run in a 9-2 loss to the Mets. He is the 27th player to reach 400, and does so in fewer at bats than anyone in history, 4,726. Babe Ruth had taken 127 more at-bats, having held the old record.
2000: Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hits his 12th home run of the season, against the San Francisco Giants. The homer ties “Big Mac” with Jimmie Foxx for ninth place on the all-time list with 534 career homers. McGwire needs just two taters to catch number eight on the list, Mickey Mantle, at 536.
2001: Randy Johnson became the third pitcher to strike out 20 in nine innings, but didn’t finish the game in which the Arizona Diamondbacks beat Cincinnati 4-3 in 11 innings. Johnson, the first left-hander to strike out 20, missed a chance to join Roger Clemens and Kerry Wood as the record-holders for a nine-inning game because Arizona could not finish off the Reds in regulation.
2001: The Devil Rays edge the Orioles, 4-3, as Tampa Bay’s Fred McGriff joins Mark McGwire, Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Eddie Murray and Reggie Jackson as the only players to homer off 300 different pitchers in their career.
2009: In his first game of the season after missing six weeks because of hip surgery, Alex Rodriguez hits the first pitch he sees from Baltimore’s Jeremy Guthrie for a three-run home run in a 4-0 Yankees win that ends a five-game losing streak. CC Sabathia pitches a four-hit shutout in his best performance since signing a huge free agent contract over the winter.
2010: Jody Gerut hit for the cycle and drove in four runs, and the Milwaukee Brewers pounded the Arizona Diamondbacks 17-3. Gerut hit a solo home run in the second inning, singled in the third, drove in a run with a triple in the fifth and added a two-run double in the ninth.
2012: Josh Hamilton became the 16th player to hit four home runs in a game. His four two-run drives came against three different pitchers, carrying the Texas Rangers to a 10-3 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.
2015: Bryce Harper hit two more home runs, giving him five in two games, and Danny Espinosa also connected twice to power the Washington Nationals to a 9-2 win over the Atlanta Braves. The 22-year-old Harper became the youngest in major league history to hit five homers in two games.
2018: James Paxton of the Mariners becomes only the second-ever Canadian-born pitcher to throw a no-hitter, after Dick Fowler in 1945, turning the trick against the Blue Jays in a 5-0 win.