Sept. 17
1930 - Cleveland’s Earl Averill drove in eight runs with three consecutive home runs to lead the Indians to a 13-7 victory over the Washington Senators in a doubleheader opener. Averill added another homer in the nightcap, which the Senators took 6-4, and set an American League record with 11 RBIs in the twinbill.
1968 - Gaylord Perry of the San Francisco Giants pitched a no-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals for a 1-0 victory.
1984 - Reggie Jackson, at 38, became the 13th player in major league history to record 500 home runs. No. 500 came off Kansas City pitcher Bud Black. His homer came exactly 17 years after he got his first career hit.
1984 - Rookie pitcher Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets struck out 16 Phillies in a 2-1 loss at Philadelphia. Five days earlier, Gooden fanned 16 Pittsburgh Pirates tying a major league record for 32 strikeouts in two consecutive games.
1988 - Jeff Reardon became the first pitcher to save 40 games in both leagues as the Minnesota Twins beat the Chicago White Sox 3-1. Reardon, who saved 42 games for the Montreal Expos in 1985, pitched the ninth inning for his 40th save in 47 opportunities.
1996 - Hideo Nomo pitched a no-hitter against the Colorado Rockies, leading the Los Angeles Dodgers to a 9-0 victory. Nomo walked four batters and stuck out eight.
2004 - San Francisco’s Barry Bonds hit the 700th home run of his career, joining Babe Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (755) as the only players to reach the milestone. Bonds connected in the third inning at home, a 392-foot solo shot to left-center. San Francisco beat San Diego 4-1.
2004 - Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki broke Lloyd Waner’s single-season record for singles with his 199th in a 6-3 win over Oakland. Suzuki’s two hits gave him 235 for the season, 22 shy of the major league record set by George Sisler of the St. Louis Browns in 1920.
2008 - Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki matched Willie Keeler’s major league record of eight straight 200-hit seasons, beating out an infield single in the eighth inning for his third hit against Kansas City.
2008 - Tampa Bay (90-60) became the sixth team in major league history to win 90 games immediately following a stretch of at least 10 consecutive losing seasons. The others were the 1912 Washington Senators, 1914 Boston Braves, 1956 Cincinnati Reds, 1979 Montreal Expos and 2006 Detroit Tigers.
2011 - Mariano Rivera tied the major league saves record, earning the 601st of his career and matching Trevor Hoffman while preserving the New York Yankees’ 7-6 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. The 41-year-old Rivera was perfect in pitching the ninth inning for his 42nd save of the season.
2011 - Houston lost 100 games in a season for the first time in franchise history, falling to the Chicago Cubs 2-1. The Astros, who began play in 1962 as the Colt .45s, dropped to 51-100. Colorado and the Angels are the only remaining franchises that have never lost 100 games in a season.
2016 - Curtis Granderson hit a solo home run with two outs in the 12th inning after also connecting for a tying shot in the 11th, lifting the New York Mets to a 3-2 12-inning victory and into a tie for the NL wild-card lead.
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Sept. 18
1908 - Bob Rhoads of the Indians pitched a no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox for a 2-1 victory in Cleveland.
1930 - New York pitcher Red Ruffing hit two home runs as the Yankees edged the St. Louis Browns 7-6 in 10 innings.
1954 - The Cleveland Indians clinched the American League pennant with a 3-2 triumph over the Detroit Tigers.
1963 - The New York Mets lost their last game at the Polo Grounds to the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-1, in front of a crowd of only 1,752.
1968 - Ray Washburn threw a 2-0 no-hitter against the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park, one day after the Giants’ Gaylord Perry tossed a no-hitter against Washburn’s St. Louis Cardinals.
1984 - The Detroit Tigers clinched the American League East Division with a 3-0 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers, making the Tigers the fourth team in major league history to lead from start to finish. The other three teams were the 1923 New York Giants, 1927 New York Yankees and the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers.
1987 - Detroit’s Darrell Evans became the first 40-year-old player in major league history to hit 30 home runs in a season as the Tigers beat the Milwaukee Brewers 7-6.
1996 - Roger Clemens equaled his own major league record, fanning 20 batters and pitching a four-hitter to lead Boston over the Detroit Tigers 4-0.
2003 - Atlanta clinched its 12th straight division title when second-place Florida was mathematically eliminated from the NL East race after a 5-4 loss to Philadelphia. The record title streak started in 1991, when the Braves won the NL West. They moved to the East Division in 1994 and trailed Montreal by six games when the strike stopped the season in August.
2006 - The Los Angeles Dodgers hit four consecutive homers in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game and Nomar Garciaparra’s two-run homer in the 10th lifted Los Angeles to an 11-10 victory over the San Diego Padres. It was the fourth time a team hit four consecutive homers and the first since May 2, 1964, when the Minnesota Twins accomplished the feat against Kansas City in the 11th inning.
2010 - Troy Tulowitzki hit two more home runs, tying a modern major league record with 14 shots in a 15-game stretch, and the Colorado Rockies routed the Los Angeles Dodgers 12-2. Tulowitzki hit a two-run homer in the first inning, doubled in the third and added another two-run homer in the fifth against rookie John Ely. Tulowitzki joined Albert Belle (1995) and Barry Bonds (2001) as the only players since 1900 to homer 14 times in a span of 15 games.
2011 - Erick Aybar went 4 for 4, with four extra-base hits and tied a franchise record by scoring five runs, leading the Los Angeles Angels to an 11-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.
2012 - Dusty Baker reached another milestone in his long career when he managed his 3,000th game, guiding the Cincinnati Reds against one of his former teams, the Chicago Cubs. Baker, who had a 1,572-1,426 record before the game, also managed one tie in 2002.
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Sept. 19
1925 - Ted Lyons lost his bid for a no-hitter when Bobby Veach singled with two outs in the ninth inning. The Chicago White Sox routed the Washington Senators 17-0.
1926 - The St. Louis Cardinals pounded the Philadelphia Phillies 23-3 in the first game of a doubleheader and beat them again in the nightcap, 10-2.
1949 - Ralph Kiner of the Pittsburgh Pirates became the first NL player to hit 50 home runs in two different seasons.
1955 - Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs set a major league record with his fifth grand slam of the season in a 12-inning, 6-5 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.
1968 - Denny McLain won his 31st game, the most in the AL since Lefty Grove’s 31 in 1931. The Detroit Tigers beat the New York Yankees 6-2 while Mickey Mantle hit his 535th and next-to-last career homer.
1973 - Frank Robinson hit his first home run in Arlington Stadium, as a member of the California Angels. It was the 32nd major league ballpark in which he had homered.
1984 - Pete Rose reached the 100-hit plateau for the 22nd consecutive year, an all-time record. He also tied the NL record for doubles with 725 as the Cincinnati Reds beat the Atlanta Braves 4-2.
1995 - San Diego’s Ken Caminiti became the first player in major league history to homer from both sides of the plate three times in a season as he went 4-for-4 with a career-high eight RBIs in a 15-4 win over Colorado.
1997 - Mark McGwire hit his 54th homer and became the first major leaguer to hit 20 or more homers for two teams in the same season.
1998 - Seattle’s Alex Rodriguez hit his 40th homer to become the third player in baseball history to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season.
2001 - Roger Clemens became the first pitcher in major league history to go 20-1, pitching the New York Yankees to a 6-3 victory over the Chicago White Sox.
2001 - Albert Pujols set a National League rookie RBI record as St. Louis beat Milwaukee 8-2. Pujols drove in three runs to give him 120 RBIs, breaking the mark of 119 set by Wally Berger in 1930 for the Boston Braves.
2008 - Baseball’s instant replay system produced its first reversal when Tampa Bay’s Carlos Pena had a two-run double changed to a three-run homer during the fourth inning against Minnesota.
2011 - Mariano Rivera set the major league record with his 602nd save, closing out the New York Yankees’ 6-4 win over the Minnesota Twins.
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