THIS DATE IN BASEBALL

April 5

1913 — Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field hosted its first game, an exhibition. Before a crowd of 25,000, the Dodgers beat the Giants, 3-2. Casey Stengel hit a an inside-the-park homer for Brooklyn.

1971 — In their last opening day, the Senators, behind pitcher Dick Bosman, beat the Oakland A’s 8-0 before 45,000 fans at RFK Stadium.

1979 — Baltimore manager Earl Weaver got his 1,000th career victory when the Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox.

1983 — The San Diego Padres beat the San Francisco Giants 16-13 in the highest-scoring opening day game in 50 years. Winning pitcher Tim Lollar also drove in three runs.

1993 — The expansion Florida Marlins won their first game, 6-3 over the Los Angeles Dodgers, at Joe Robbie Stadium. The new Colorado Rockies lost to the Mets 3-0 in New York.

1998 — Andy Benes pitched seven strong innings and Matt Williams had three hits and an RBI in to lead Arizona to its first victory, a 3-2 win over San Francisco. The Diamondbacks (1-5) had the second longest, season-opening losing streak for an expansion team in its first season.

2003 — Kansas City became the first major league team to start 5-0 after a 100-loss season. 2004 — Carlos Beltran of Kansas City and Shannon Stewart of Minnesota combined to set a record. For the first time in modern history, two players hit game-winning home runs on the same day. The Royals beat the Chicago White Sox, 9-7, while the Twins overcame the Cleveland Indians, 7-4, in 11 innings. The Royals also were the first team since 1901 to recover from a ninth-inning deficit of four runs on opening day.

2005 — The Washington Nationals, formerly known as the Montreal Expos, lost their inaugural season opener Philadelphia 8-4.

2006 — Ivan Rodriguez went 5-for-5 with a single, homer, three doubles and five RBIs, leading Detroit to a 14-3 rout over Kansas City.

2010 — Garrett Jones homered in his first two at-bats, pinch-hitter Ryan Church doubled home three runs in Pittsburgh’s 11-5 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers.

2012 — J.P. Arencibia’s three-run homer in the 16th inning sent the Toronto Blue Jays to a 7-4 win over the Cleveland Indians in the longest opening-day game in major league history. The marathon eclipsed the previous longest openers — 15 innings between Cleveland and Detroit in 1960 and 15 innings between Philadelphia and Washington in 1926.