This Date in Baseball

Oct. 20

1910 - Philadelphia’s Jack Coombs, on one day of rest, had a complete-game victory to beat the Chicago Cubs 12-5 and give the Athletics a 3-0 lead in the World Series. Coombs also had three hits and drove in three runs in the game.

1972 - In the fifth game of the World Series, Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds homered on the first pitch of the game from Oakland’s Catfish Hunter, and the Reds went on to win 5-4.

1973 - Reggie Jackson of Oakland had RBI doubles in the first and third innings to lead the A’s to a 3-1 victory over the New York Mets and set up a seventh game in the World Series.

1982 - The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers 6-3 in Game 7 to win the World Series.

1988 - Orel Hershiser pitched a four-hitter and Mickey Hatcher and Mike Davis hit two-run homers to give the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-2 victory over the Oakland Athletics and the World Series title in five games. Hershiser became only the third player to win the MVP in both the playoffs and the World Series.

1990 - The Cincinnati Reds completed one of the biggest upsets in baseball history, beating the Oakland Athletics 2-1 to win the World Series in four games.

1993 - Devon White’s two-run triple capped a six-run eighth inning as the Toronto Blue Jays rallied for a 15-14 victory over the Phillies and a 3-1 World Series lead. The 29 runs shattered the series record of 22 set in Game 2 in 1936, when the Yankees beat the New York Giants 18-4. It was also the longest nine-inning game in series history - 4 hours, 14 minutes.

2004 - Just three outs from getting swept in the AL championship series three nights earlier, the Boston Red Sox finally beat the New York Yankees, winning Game 7 in a 10-3 shocker to become the first major league team to overcome a 3-0 postseason series deficit. Boston didn’t need any late-inning dramatics as David Ortiz, the series MVP, started it with a two-run homer in the first off broken-down Kevin Brown, and Johnny Damon quieted Yankee Stadium in the second inning with a grand slam on Javier Vazquez’s first pitch.

2015 - Daniel Murphy homered for a record-tying fifth straight game in the postseason, sending Jacob deGrom and the New York Mets over the Chicago Cubs 5-2 for a 3-0 lead in the National League Championship Series. Murphy tied the homer streak mark set by Carlos Beltran in 2004.

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