Baseball History on June 21
Major League Baseball Events on June 21 | Baseball Almanac
Baseball history on June 21, including a list of every Major League baseball player born on June 21, a list of every Major League baseball player who died on June 21, a list of every Major League baseball player who made their big league debut on June 21, and a list of every Major League baseball player whose final big league game was on June 21.
"No matter how your mind works, baseball reaches out to you. If you're an emotional person, baseball asks for your heart. If you are a thinking man or a thinking woman, baseball wants your opinion. Whether you are left-brain or right-brain, Type A or Type Z, whether your mind is bent towards mathematics or toward history or psychology or geometry, whether you are young or old, baseball has its way of asking for you. If you are a reader, there is always something new to read about baseball, and always something old. If you are a sedentary person, a TV watcher, baseball is on TV; if you always have to be going somewhere, baseball is somewhere you can go. If you are a collector, baseball offers you a hundred things that you can collect. If you have children, baseball is something you can do with children; if you have parents and cannot talk to them, baseball is something you can still talk to them about." - Baseball Historian Bill James in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (Free Press Publishing, 06/13/2003, "Part 1: The Game", Page 5)
Baseball history on June 21 includes a total of Major League baseball players born that day of the year, Major League baseball players who died on that date, baseball players who made their Major League debut on that date, and Major League baseball players who appeared in their final game that date.
On June 21 in Baseball History...
- 1939 - The New York Yankees announce Lou Gehrig's retirement, based on the report that he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The 36-year-old star will remain with the team as captain.
- 1950 - Joe DiMaggio gets his 2,000th hit, a seventh-inning single off the Indians Chick Pieretti, as the Yanks win 8-2. DiMaggio joins Luke Appling and Wally Moses as the only active players with 2,000 or more hits.
- 1964 - On Father's Day at Shea Stadium, Jim Bunning pitches the first perfect game (excluding Don Larsen's 1956 World Series effort and Harvey Haddix's 1959 extra-inning loss) since Charlie Robertson's on April 30, 1922. He also becomes the first pitcher to win no-hitters in both leagues and drives in 2 runs as Philadelphia beats the Mets 6-0. Gus Triandos becomes the first catcher to catch a no-hitter in each league. The Mets don't fare much better in the nightcap as rookie Rick Wise wins his first game and gives up just 3 hits for an 8-2 win.
- 1970 - Detroit's Cesar Gutierrez goes seven-for-seven to tie a record set in 1892 in a 12-inning, 9-8 win over Cleveland. Mickey Stanley's home run wins it for the Tigers. Gutierrez will collect just seven hits in all of 1971, and 128 hits for his career.
- 1971 - Indians slugger Ken Harrelson announces his retirement from baseball to join the pro golf tour.
- 1986 - Bo Jackson, college football's Heisman Trophy winner in 1985 and the first pick (by Tampa Bay) in the NFL draft, stuns observers nationwide by signing with the Kansas City Royals instead.
- 1989 - The Yankees trade outfielder Rickey Henderson back to the A's for journeymen pitchers Eric Plunk and Greg Cadaret and outfielder Luis Polonia.
Did you know that there were baseball players born on every date of the year and baseball players who died on every date of the year? Use the calendar below to select any date in baseball history.
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Bill James, on the same page of the same book we used at the top of this page, said, "But as I began to do research on the history of baseball (in order to discuss the players more intelligently) I began to feel that there was a history a baseball that had not been written at that time, a history of good and ordinary players, a history of being a fan, a history of games that meant something at the time but mean nothing now." To that end, I have created Baseball Almanac. A site to worship baseball. A site by a fan who is trying to tell the history of good and ordinary baseball players.