Ripken Jr. collects his 3,000th hit
April 15, 2000: “It seemed like it was slow motion,” Cal Ripken Jr. says of his 3,000th base hit, a line single to center field in the Orioles’ 6-4 win over the Twins in Minnesota. Ripken becomes the 23rd player to reach the milestone.
April 17, 1975: Following 24 consecutive losses, the Forest Park lacrosse team wins its second straight game, 10-3, over Glenelg. Mark Jackson scores three goals for the Foresters.
April 14, 1958: Aided by 14 walks, Poly defeats Dunbar, 12-1, in a seven-inning baseball game at Druid Hill Park. Linn Hammond pitches a three-hitter for the defending city public school champs.
April 14, 1956: The Colts re-sign Leroy Vaughn, a quarterback from Virginia Union who made their practice squad in 1955. Vaughn won’t make the roster but his son, Mo Vaughn, will become a slugger for the Boston Red Sox and the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1995.
April 16, 1940: Led by its star sophomore goalie, Mark Kelly Jr., the Maryland lacrosse team defeats Army, 6-2, en route to a national championship. Kelly (McDonogh) will leave college, join the Navy and become a pilot in World War II. Listed as missing in action in 1942, he is remembered by the Ensign C. Markland Kelly Award, presented each year to the outstanding college goalie.
April16,1938: More than12,000 people attend opening day at the Havre de Grace Race Track (“The Graw”), where a horse named Charlotte Girl wins the Aberdeen Stakes under jockey Johnny Longden, who’ll go on to win the 1943 Triple Crown aboard Count Fleet.
April 12, 1928: At Bowie Race Course, jockey Eddie Barnes is thrown twice at the start of a race by his mount, Harry Carroll. But Barnes gets back on and finishes seventh out of 12 horses.
April 16, 1922: Before the then-second largest crowd ever at Oriole Park (16,858), Babe Ruth hits a mammoth home run to lead the New York Yankees to a 9-1 exhibition win over the Orioles. The blast “went yards beyond [the fence] and was still rolling when Ruth neared the end of the beaten path he has trotted so often,” The Sun reports.
Birthday
April 12, 1936: Charley Lau, catcher and pinch-hitter on the Orioles’ 1966 championship team who later became an acclaimed hitting coach. Lau died of cancer in 1984.