This Date in Baseball: Week Ahead, Sept. 23-29

September 22, 2022 GMT

Sept. 27

1914 — Nap Lajoie of the Cleveland Naps collected his 3,000th hit in the opening game of a doubleheader, a 5-3 win over the New York Yankees at League Park II. Lajoie doubled off of Marty McHale for the milestone hit.

1923 — Lou Gehrig hit his first homer in the majors off Bill Piercy of the Boston Red Sox. On the same date 15 years later, he hit his 493rd and last off Dutch Leonard of the Senators.

1930 — Hack Wilson hit two home runs for the Chicago Cubs, giving him an NL-record 56 for the season.

1935 — The Chicago Cubs clinched the NL pennant and won their 21st consecutive game with a doubleheader sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cubs won the pennant with the opening-game victory.

1936 — Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston played in his only major league game as a late-inning substitute at first base for Johnny Mize of the St. Louis Cardinals. He made one error in two chances and struck out in his only at-bat.

1940 — Rookie Floyd Giebell pitched the Detroit Tigers to a pennant-clinching 2-0 victory over the Cleveland Indians. It was Giebell’s second and last major league win.

1967 — Philadelphia’s Jim Bunning tied the National League record with his fifth 1-0 loss of the season.

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 St. Louis 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.

_____

Sept. 28

1919 — In the shortest nine-inning game in major league history, 51 minutes, the New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-1.

1920 — A grand jury indicted eight members of the Chicago White Sox on charges of fixing the 1919 World Series in the “Black Sox Scandal.”

1938 — Gabby Hartnett hit his famous “Homer in the Gloamin’” in the ninth inning against Mace Brown to give the Chicago Cubs a 6-5 victory, their ninth straight, at Wrigley Field. It was a key triumph en route to the Cubs’ NL pennant.

1941 — Ted Williams went 6-for-8 in a doubleheader against the Philadelphia A’s to finish the season with a .406 average. No player has batted .400 since.

1951 — Allie Reynolds pitched his second no-hitter of the season as the New York Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox, 8-0, in the opener of a doubleheader. The Yankees clinched the AL pennant with an 11-3 victory in the nightcap.

1960 — Ted Williams homered in his final major league plate appearance, against Baltimore’s Jack Fisher. Williams did not take a curtain call, but he trotted out to left field in the ninth and was replaced immediately by Carroll Hardy and retired to a standing ovation. It was Williams’ 521st career home run. The Red Sox rallied for two runs in the ninth for a 5-4 victory.

1974 — Nolan Ryan pitched his third of seven career no-hitters, striking out 15 batters and beating the Minnesota Twins, 4-0, at Anaheim Stadium.

1975 — Vida Blue, Glenn Abbott, Paul Lindblad and Rollie Fingers of the Oakland A’s combined to no-hit the California Angels, 5-0, on the final day of the season.

1995 — Greg Harris of the Montreal Expos became the first pitcher in major league history to pitch with both hands. Harris faced four batters, two from his usual right side and two from the left, in the ninth inning of a 9-7 loss to Cincinnati.

1997 — San Diego’s Tony Gwynn tied Honus Wagner’s record by winning his eighth NL batting title. Gwynn finished at .372, becoming the first player to win four consecutive NL batting titles since Rogers Hornsby won six straight from 1920-25.

2001 — Alex Rodriguez of Texas hit his 50th homer in an 11-2 victory over Anaheim and became the 20th player to hit 50 homers in a season.

2006 — James Loney tied a franchise record with nine RBIs, including a grand slam and a two-run homer, to lead the Los Angeles Dodgers to a 19-11 victory at Colorado.

2012 — Homer Bailey of the Cincinnati Reds threw the season’s seventh no-hitter, beating the Pittsburgh Pirates 1-0. The seven no-hitters matched the modern record (since 1900) for one season, tying 1990 and 1991. Pittsburgh (76-81) assured itself of a 20th consecutive non-winning season with the loss, extending its major North American professional sports record.

2016 — John Jaso hit for the cycle and drove in five runs in Pittsburgh’s 8-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs.

2017 — Giancarlo Stanton homered twice to become the first player to hit 59 in a season since 2001, and the Miami Marlins opened the last series of Jeffrey Loria’s tenure as owner by beating the Braves 7-1.

_____

Sept. 29

1913 — Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators finished the season with 36 victories by virtue of a 1-0 decision over the Philadelphia A’s.

1915 — The Philadelphia Phillies clinched their first NL pennant, beating the Boston Braves, 5-0, behind Grover Alexander’s one-hitter.

1954 — Willie Mays made his famous over-the-shoulder catch of Vic Wertz’s long drive to center field and pinch-hitter Dusty Rhodes homered off Bob Lemon in the 10th inning to lead the New York Giants to a 5-2 victory over the Cleveland Indians in Game 1 of the World Series.

1963 — John Paciorek of the Houston Colt .45s, in his only major league appearance, went 3-for-3 with three RBIs and four runs scored against the New York Mets. A back injury ended his baseball career the next season.

1976 — John Montefusco of the San Francisco Giants pitched a 9-0 no-hitter over the Braves in Atlanta.

1983 — Mike Warren of the Oakland A’s pitched a no-hitter to beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-0.

1986 — Minnesota’s Bert Blyleven broke Robin Roberts’ 1956 record of 46 home run pitches in a season when he gave up a two-out, third-inning homer to Cleveland rookie Jay Bell. It was the first major league pitch Bell had seen. Despite giving up two more homers, Blyleven was the winner when the Twins rallied in the eighth for a 6-5 victory.

1986 — Chicago Cubs rookie Greg Maddux defeated the Philadelphia Phillies 8-3 in the City of Brotherly Love. The losing pitcher was his brother, Mike, also a rookie. It was the first time brothers faced each other as rookie pitchers.

1996 — Brady Anderson of the Baltimore Orioles became the 14th player to reach the 50-homer mark in a 4-1 loss at Toronto. Anderson’s previous season high was 21.

2001 — Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki set the major league rookie record for hits in a season but the Mariners fell to Oakland 8-4. Suzuki got his 234th hit, breaking the previous rookie mark set by Shoeless Joe Jackson with Cleveland in 1911.

2004 — Major League Baseball announces that the Montreal Expos franchise will move to Washington D.C.

2011 — The Tampa Bay Rays clinched the AL wild card with a stunning rally, overcoming a late seven-run deficit and then beating the New York Yankees 8-7 on Evan Longoria’s home run in the 12th inning. The Rays’ win came four minutes after Boston blew a one-run lead in the ninth at Baltimore and lost 4-3. The Red Sox held a nine-game lead over the Rays in early September. Boston became the first team to miss the postseason after leading by as many as nine games for a playoff spot entering September.

2011 — Chris Carpenter and St. Louis completed one of the more remarkable comebacks in baseball history, clinching the NL wild card with an 8-0 win over Houston and a later loss by Atlanta. The Cardinals got their playoff spot when the Braves fell to Philadelphia 4-3 in 13 innings. St. Louis trailed Atlanta by 10 1/2 games on Aug. 25. The Cardinals won 23 of their last 31 games.

2013 — On the last day of the season, Miami’s Henderson Alvarez pitched one of baseball’s most bizarre no-hitters. Alvarez celebrated in the on-deck circle when the Marlins score on a two-out wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat the Detroit Tigers 1-0.

2017 — Rockies OF Charlie Blackmon set a new record for RBIs by a leadoff hitter, 101, with a two-run home run in the second inning.