This date in baseball
MAY 20
1919 Babe Ruth won a game on the mound and at the plate. He hit his first career grand slam as the Boston Red Sox beat the St. Louis Browns 6-4.
1925 The Cleveland Indians scored six runs in the last of the ninth to beat the New York Yankees 10-9. Tris Speaker scored the winning run from first on a single.
1932 Paul Waner of the Pittsburgh Pirates hit four doubles in one game.
1941 Lefty Grove of the Boston Red Sox won his 20th consecutive game at home, the longest home park streak in the major leagues. Boston beat the Detroit Tigers, 4-2.
1947 The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Braves 4-3 in a game that featured 22 hits all singles. The Pirates had 12 singles, the Braves 10.
1948 Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees hits for the cycle and collects six RBI in a 13-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox. DiMaggio hits two home runs, a triple, a double and a single, and narrowly misses another extra-base hit when Chicago left fielder Ralph Hodgin makes a spectacular catch at the wall.
1953 In the 13th game of the season, the Milwaukee Braves surpassed their 1952 attendance of 281,278, when they were in Boston.
1959 The Detroit Tigers beat the Yankees, 13-6, to place New York in last place for the first time in 19 years.
1962 Chicago Cubs rookie Ken Hubbs had eight singles in eight trips to the plate. The Cubs swept the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-4 and 11-2.
1978 Willie Stargell hit a 535-foot homer off Montreal’s Wayne Twitchell the longest home run in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium to highlight the Pirates’ 6-0 victory. It was also Stargell’s 407th career homer, tying him with Duke Snider on the career list.
1983 Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Steve Carlton passes Walter Johnson to move into second place on the all-time strikeout list. Carlton’s four strikeouts put him at 3,511, just 10 behind Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros.
1984 Boston’s Roger Clemens earned his first major league victory. The Red Sox beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-4.
1988 Mike Schmidt belts the 535th home run of his career during 1st inning in San Diego, Calif., off Padres starting pitcher Andy Hawkins, moving Schmidt past Jimmie Foxx into sole possession of 8th place on the all-time home run list.
1991 Jeff Reardon got his 300th save and Steve Lyons and Jack Clark homered as the Boston Red Sox beat the Milwaukee Brewers 3-0.
1999 Robin Ventura became the first major leaguer to hit grand slams in both games of a doubleheader, leading the New York Mets to a sweep over Milwaukee, 11-10 and 10-1. He had two slams in a game for the Chicago White Sox on Sept. 4, 1995.
2001 Barry Bonds hit two homers in the San Francisco Giants’ 11-6 loss to the Atlanta Braves, giving him a total of five in two games, becoming the 23rd player in history to do so.
2006 Barry Bonds tied Babe Ruth for second place on the career home run list during San Francisco’s 4-2, 10-inning victory over the Oakland Athletics.
2009 Boston center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury tied a major league record with 12 putouts by an outfielder in a nine-inning game, previously done by Earl Clark of the Boston Braves in 1929 and Lyman Bostock of the Minnesota Twins in 1977. He accomplished the feat in the Red Sox’s 8-3 win over Toronto.
2009 Nick Swisher, Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera hit consecutive home runs for the New York Yankees in an 11-4 victory over Baltimore. All three solo shots to right field came in the second inning off Orioles starter Jeremy Guthrie with two strikes.
2011 The Chicago Cubs make their first visit to Fenway Park since the 1918 World Series.
2018 Rookie Jordan Hicks of the Cardinals ties Aroldis Chapman’s record for the fastest pitch ever recorded by pumping a couple of fastballs at 105 mph while facing Odubel Herrera of the Phillies. The first one goes for a ball, and Herrera manages to foul off the second before striking out on a pitched timed at 103.7 mph.