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-thepark homer for Brooklyn.
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.
For the first time in Major League Baseball history, the regular season fails to open due to the player strike which started on April 1st. 86 games will be lost before the labor dispute is settled.
Baltimore manager Earl Weaver got his 1,000th career victory when the Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox.
The San Diego Padres beat the San Francisco Giants 16-13 in the highestscoring opening day game in 50 years. Winning pitcher Tim Lollar also drove in three runs.
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.
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.
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 gamewinning 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.