This Date in Baseball

May 17

1925 - Cleveland's Tris Speaker got his 3,000th career hit, off Tom Zachary, in a 2-1 loss to the Washington Senators.

1939 - The first baseball game on television was broadcast by W2XBS, an experimental station run by NBC in New York. Bill Stern handled the play-by-play as Princeton beat Columbia, 2-1, in 10 innings.

1945 - For the fourth time in four days, every American League game in the country was postponed by rain.

1961 - Roger Maris hit his first home run of the season at Yankee Stadium (fourth overall) on his way to a record 61.

1963 - Don Nottebart pitched Houston's first no-hitter as the Colt .45s defeated the visiting Philadelphia Phillies 4-1.

1970 - Hank Aaron scratched out an infield single against Cincinnati's Wayne Simpson to become the ninth player with 3,000 hits. The hit came in the nightcap of the Atlanta Braves' doubleheader loss to the Reds in Cincinnati.

1977 - The Chicago Cubs hit seven home runs in beating the San Diego Padres 23-6 at Wrigley Field. Larry Biittner, Jerry Morales and Bobby Murcer hit consecutive home runs in the fifth for the Cubs.

1979 - Dave Kingman of the Cubs hit three home runs and Mike Schmidt of the Phillies hit two, and Philadelphia beat Chicago 23-22 in 10 innings at Wrigley Field. Bill Buckner had a grand slam and seven RBIs for Chicago. The game included 11 home runs and 50 hits.

1984 - Alan Wiggins of the San Diego Padres tied a National League record by stealing five bases in one game. He joined three others who have performed the feat - Dan McGann in 1904, Davey Lopes in 1974 and Lonnie Smith in 1982.

1992 - Toronto surpassed the 1 million mark in attendance earlier than any team in major league history. It took the Blue Jays 21 dates to draw 1,006,294. The previous record was shared by the 1991 Blue Jays and the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers.

1998 - David Wells pitched the 13th perfect game in modern major league history as the New York Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins 4-0.

2002 - Arizona's Erubiel Durazo hit three home runs, a double and drove in nine runs as the Diamondbacks defeated Philadelphia 12-9.

2008 - Barry Zito became the first Giants pitcher to open a season with eight straight losses since 1890 when San Francisco lost 3-1 to the White Sox. Zito (0-8) worked five innings and gave up only two runs in matching Jesse Burkett's record.

2009 - A pregame lineup mistake cost Tampa Bay its designated hitter for the game. The Rays listed both Ben Zobrist and Evan Longoria as the third baseman. Longoria was supposed to be DH, but Tampa Bay lost that position because of the mistake and was forced to put pitcher Andy Sonnanstine in the third spot of the lineup. Sonnanstine hit an RBI double and gave up five runs and seven hits in 5 2-3 innings in a 7-5 victory over Cleveland.

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May 18

1912 - Detroit players went on strike to protest Ty Cobb's suspension. To avoid a forfeit and fine, manager Hugh Jennings recruited college players and others; they lost to the Philadelphia A's 24-2. Joe Travers gave up all 24 runs on 26 hits.

1929 - The Brooklyn Dodgers outslugged the Philadelphia Phillies for a 20-16 victory in the first game of a doubleheader. Brooklyn's Babe Herman and Johnny Frederick each had five hits. Frederick scored five times to give him a major league record eight runs in two games. The Phillies won the second game 8-6. The teams combined for a record 50 runs in a doubleheader.

1957 - Dick Williams of the Orioles hit a ninth-inning, game-tying solo home run against Chicago's Paul LaPalme seconds before 10:20 p.m. - the curfew set so the White Sox could catch a train out of Baltimore. If Williams had done anything else, Chicago would have won. The game was later replayed from the beginning and Baltimore won.

1968 - Frank Howard hit his 10th home run in a six-game span to power the Washington Senators to an 8-4 victory over Detroit at Tiger Stadium.

1990 - The Baltimore Orioles tied an AL record with eight consecutive singles in a seven-run first inning against Bobby Witt to beat the Texas Rangers 13-1. The eight straight singles equaled a record set by the Washington Senators against Cleveland in 1951 and matched by the Oakland Athletics against Chicago in 1981.

1999 - Edgar Martinez hit three home runs - tying a major league record with five homers in two games - to give the Seattle Mariners a 10-1 win over the Minnesota Twins. He homered twice in the opener of the series.

2000 - Mark McGwire homered three times and had a career-high seven RBIs, leading the St. Louis Cardinals over the Philadelphia Phillies 7-2.

2003 - The Texas Rangers swept three games at Yankee Stadium for the first time in the franchise's 43-year existence, winning 5-3.

2004 - Randy Johnson, 40, became the oldest pitcher in major league history to throw a perfect game, retiring all 27 hitters to lead the Arizona Diamondbacks over the Atlanta Braves 2-0. It was the 17th perfect game in major league history and the first since the New York Yankees' David Cone did it against Montreal on July 18, 1999.

2009 - Mark Teixeira homered from both sides of the plate and the New York Yankees finished a four-game sweep of Minnesota with a 7-6 victory.

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May 19

1910 - Cy Young won the 500th game of his career as the Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 5-4, in 11 innings.

1910 - Boston beat the Pirates 6-3 for the first time in 26 tries.

1942 - Paul Waner of the Boston Braves got his 3,000th career hit off Pittsburgh's Rip Sewell in a 7-6, 11-inning loss to the Pirates.

1956 - Pittsburgh's Dale Long hit a ninth-inning homer against the Chicago Cubs. It was Long's first of eight straight games with a homer.

1962 - Stan Musial of St. Louis became the NL career hits leader. The 41-year-old got a ninth inning single for his 3,431st hit and moved past Honus Wagner. The Cardinals beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 8-1.

1968 - After hitting 10 home runs in six games, Frank Howard of the Washington Senators was stopped by pitcher Earl Wilson of Detroit, which won the game 5-4.

1981 - Pittsburgh's Jim Bibby gave up a leadoff single to Terry Harper of the Atlanta Braves, then retired the next 27 batters for a 5-0 one-hitter. Bibby also hit two doubles.

1998 - Mark McGwire hit three two-run homers against Philadelphia. It was the second time this season and fourth time in his career McGwire hit three homers in a game. McGwire became the 12th player to have two three-homer games in a season.

2000 - Jason Kendall hit for the cycle and drove in a career-high five runs, leading Pittsburgh to a 13-1 rout of St. Louis. Kendall had a two-run homer in the first inning, an RBI single in the second, a double in the third and a two-run triple in the eighth.

2004 - Atlanta's 45-year-old Julio Franco broke his own record for the oldest player to hit a pinch-hit homer. Franco, who had a pinch-hit homer two weeks earlier against San Diego, hit a two-out, two-run homer to tie the game at 4 in the eighth. The Braves lost 6-4 in 11 innings to the Diamondbacks.

2008 - Boston's Jon Lester shut down Kansas City 7-0 for the first no-hitter in the majors this season. The 24-year-old lefty, who survived cancer to pitch the World Series clincher for the Red Sox last fall, allowed two baserunners, walking Billy Butler in the second inning and Esteban German to open the ninth.

2009 - Washington became the fourth team in major league history to score at least five runs in each game of a six-game losing streak. The Nationals lost 8-5 in 10 innings to Pittsburgh after they rallied to tie the game with a run in the ninth, but another letdown from a bullpen with a collective 1-14 record allowed them to join the 1929 Pirates, 2004 Cincinnati Reds and 2005 Texas Rangers.