Jeter singled against the Mariners’ Tom Wilhelmsen for hit number 3141, tying him for 18th with Tony Gwynn on MLB’s all-time list.
Up next for Jeter:
17th - Robin Yount, 3142
16th - Paul Waner, 3152
15th - George Brett, 3154
Happy Birthday Yogi Berra!
Three Cheers for this Yankee Hall of Famer!
Known as much for his catching abilities as his “Yogi-isms”, Yogi Berra played on 10 World Series championship teams and appeared in 14 World Series with the New York Yankees. Berra was selected to the All-Star team every year from 1948 to 1962 and was a three-time American League MVP. He called three no-hitters, one of them Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series.
**This photo hangs in the Corzo Lounge at the 40/40 Club**
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- Dave O’Brien, Red Sox play-by-play announcer on WEEI-FM The Yankees had come back to take a 10-9 lead after trailing 9-0 after 6 innings. The Yankees won 15-9. |
Fenway Park - April 20, 1912
Fenway Park was supposed to open on April 18, 1912, a Thursday. The game was rained out. A doubleheader was scheduled for April 19, Patriots’ Day. Again the weather failed to cooperate. Finally, on Saturday April 20 at 3:00 pm the Boston Red Sox took the field against the New York Highlanders. (They wouldn’t be called the Yankees until the following season, and the heated rivalry was eight years - and an infamous trade - away.)
Anywhere from 24,000 to 27,000 fans were in attendance, enough that overflow was allowed to watch the game behind ropes in the outfield. (Not the outfield seats, the grass itself.) Seats were priced from 25¢ for the bleachers up to $1.50 for box seats. The crowd got its money’s worth.
The Highlanders jumped out to a 3-1 lead after the first inning. By the end of the 3rd it was 5-1. But in the bottom of the fourth, the Red Sox had three men cross the plate to bring the score to within one. Boston tied it up in the sixth, and both teams traded runs in the 8th.
The score was 6-6 after nine. In the bottom of the 11th the Sox scored again earning a 7-6 walk-off win in their brand-new park. (No more details are known because there is no complete box score from the game.)
The Sox starter, Buck O’Brien, would earn the win and finish 20-13 that year. Ray Caldwell earned the loss, one of 16 against only 8 wins.
By October the Sox had run away with the AL pennant, with a final record of 105-47, fourteen games up on the 2nd place Washington Senators. (The Highlanders would finish last, 55 games behind Boston.) In the postseason, the Sox defeated the Giants five games to three (best of 9 back then), clinching it in their shiny new park on October 16, 1912. They would win three Series more by 1918…then a small championship drought you may be familiar with…before winning again in 2004 and 2007.
Favorite random fact: Fenway has been the home park for more football teams (5 - Boston Bulldogs, 1926; Boston Shamrocks, 1936-1937; Boston Redskins, 1933-1936, later moved to Washington; Boston Yanks, 1944-1948, the owner originally hoped to play in Yankee Stadium - awkward; and the Boston Patriots, 1963-1968) than baseball teams (2 - Sox and the Boston Braves for the 1914 World Series and 1915 season).
Sources: retrosheet.org, Boston’s SABR chapter (great stuff on 1912 there), and wikipedia.org
(Image of first ball thrown at Fenway on April 20, 1912 is courtesy of ESPN.com and copyright Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)
tying Ken Griffey, Jr. for fifth place on the all-time list.
And no. one. cares.
Ladies and gentlemen…The Steroids Era!
Opening Day? Looks more like A-Rod’s trying to “close”, if you know what I mean…
Yankees Opening Day!
Apparently Ron Guidry, Cy Young Award winner and 4-Time All Star, drives Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra around Yankee Spring Training every year. Some might think, “How awesome is that?” Well, Harvey Araton of the NY Times thought the same thing — and wrote a book about it.
(Source: NPR)
Joba Chamberlin suffered a gruesome, bone-through-skin ankle dislocation because he was jumping on a trampoline with his son. Now there’s gonna be a lot of people saying that a man a donut shy of 300 pounds should never get on a trampoline, or that most parents just watch their children while they bounce, but OH MY GOD! TRAMAMPOLINE! TRAMBOPOLINE!
-KJ
Sure he was paid to play in NY, but Joe’s heart (like his family’s fishing boat, pictured in 1936) never left San Francisco
-KJ
Jason Varitek
Drafted - 1st round, 1994, Seattle Mariners
Debut - Sept. 24, 1997
Final game - Sept. 25, 2011
Two World Series rings, one Gold Glove, one Silver Slugger, three-time All Star
Jorge Posada
Drafted - 24th round, 1990, New York Yankees
Debut - Sept. 4, 1995
Final game - Sept. 28, 2011
Five World Series rings, five Silver Sluggers, five-time All Star
(Image of Varitek courtesy of bleacherreport.com and copyright Jim Rogash/GettyImages. Image of Posada courtesy of nydailynews.com and copyright Franklin/AP)
Joe Tinker, Chicago Whales (Federal League) - 1914-1915
Johnny Evers, Chicago White Sox - 1922
Frank Chance, New York Yankees - 1913-1914
(Courtesy of baseball-reference.com, bleacherreport.net, lonecadaver.com)
