TODAY IN BASEBALL courtesy of National Pastime
1989 – In his first Major League at bat, Mariners’ center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. doubles off of Oakland’s Dave Stewart. The 19 year-old ‘Junior’, the son of an active Major Leaguer outfielder playing with the Reds, will establish himself as one of the game’s superstars before retiring in 2010.
1990 – Billy Hatcher, who is the in the delivery room with his pregnant wife when the phone rings, is informed by Pirate manager Jim Leyland that he has been traded, but doesn’t ask to which team. After his daughter Chelsea is born, the former Buc outfielder gets a call at home from Cincinnati general manager Bob Quinn to welcome him to the Reds.
2002 – Barry Bonds becomes the second player in baseball history to begin a season with consecutive two-homer games. Eddie Mathews also hit a pair of homers in each of the Braves’ first two games against the Pirates to start the 1958 season.
And finally…in 2008, during a tour of Fenway Park with her classmates, a Memorial Boulevard Middle School student is attacked by a 3 1/2-pound red-tailed hawk known to nest at the historic ballpark. The 13 year-old eighth grader from Bristol, Connecticut, who is treated for a small scratch on her scalp at a local hospital, has a familiar name to Red Sox fans, Alexa Rodriguez, similar to the much detested third baseman of the Yankees, who also is 13 (uniform number).
PLAYERS BORN TODAY
Wally Moon (1930), Chris Bosio (1963), Mike Lansing (1968), Koji Uehara (1975) and Jay Bruce (1987).
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