This Date in Baseball - Mark McGwire hits his 400th homerun

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.

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