ON THIS DATE

Sept. 27

1968: Bob Gibson of St. Louis pitched his 13th shutout of the season for a 1-0 win over the Houston Astros. Gibson (22-9) struck out 11, walked none and held the Astros to six singles.

1973: The California Angels beat the Minnesota Twins 5-4 in 11 innings as Nolan Ryan struck out 16, including No. 383 of the season, a modern major league record.

1993: Randy Myers became the first NL reliever with 50 saves in a season as the Chicago Cubs beat Los Angeles 7-3.

1996: San Francisco’s Barry Bonds became the second player to hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases in a season. Jose Canseco was the other. Bonds, who had 42 homers, stole his 40th base in a 9-3 win over Colorado.

1998: Mark McGwire gave baseball a new magic number, hitting two homers to reach No. 70 in the Cardinals’ season finale against Montreal. It was McGwire’s fifth homer in the season-ending, three-game series. McGwire’s 70th and final home run of the season was a line shot over the left-field wall on a first-pitch fastball from Carl Pavano in the seventh.

1998: The New York Yankees won their seventh straight game and ended their incredible regular season with 114 victories. With a .704 winning percentage, the Yankees (114-48) became the first team since the 1954 Cleveland Indians (111-43) to play .700 ball over an entire season.

2000: Anaheim’s Darin Erstad was 4-for-5 with an RBI in a 9-7 loss to Oakland. Erstad with 99 RBIs, broke the major league record for RBIs in a season by a leadoff batter set by Boston’s Nomar Garciaparra (98) in 1997.

2005: The Atlanta Braves clinched their 14th straight division title thanks to Philadelphia’s loss to the New York Mets. The Braves began their record-setting streak in 1991--when they were in the NL West.

2012: R.A. Dickey became the first knuckleballer to win 20 games in more than three decades, matching his career high with 13 strikeouts and leading the New York Mets to a 6-5 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

2017: J.D. Martinez hit his 16th homer in September during a three-run rally in the ninth inning that lifted Arizona to a 4-3 win over San Francisco. Martinez tied Ralph Kiner’s 1949 NL record for home runs in September.

2017: From worst to wild card, the Minnesota Twins completed a most remarkable reversal. A couple hours after losing 4-2 to Cleveland, the Twins earned an AL wild-card berth the Angels lost 6-4 in 10 innings to White Sox. A season after winning just 59 games, the Twins became the first team to lose at least 100 and then make the postseason the following year.

2020: Major League Baseball concludes its abbreviated 2020 season, with the postseason field set as the Phillies and Giants are eliminated with losses today. For the first time, two postseason teams have sub-.500 records--the Astros who finish second in the AL West, and the Brewers, who limp into the final wild card slot in the NL, both with records of 29-31. Happiest are the Cardinals whose 5 - 2 win over the Brewers means they won’t need to play a make-up doubleheader against the Tigers today, their place in the postseason having been secured by finishing second in the NL Central.