Baseball History on June 26
Major League Baseball Events on June 26 | Baseball Almanac
Baseball history on June 26, including a list of every Major League baseball player born on June 26, a list of every Major League baseball player who died on June 26, a list of every Major League baseball player who made their big league debut on June 26, and a list of every Major League baseball player whose final big league game was on June 26.
"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 26 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 26 in Baseball History...
- 1916 - Cleveland players, in a game with the White Sox, wear numbers on their sleeves, marking the first time players are identified by numbers corresponding to those on the scorecard.
- 1920 - Lou Gehrig gets his first national mention when, as a high school junior for New York City's School of Commerce, he hits a grand slam in a high school championship game against Lane Tech in Chicago. Scouts sit with open mouths as the ball sails out of the N.L. park (later known as Wrigley Field).
- 1935 - Lloyd Waner sets a major-league record with 18 putouts in center field in a doubleheader as the Pirates take a pair from the Braves at Boston.
- 1960 - Hoping to speed up the election process, the Hall of Fame changes its voting procedures. The new rules allow the Special Veterans Committee to vote annually, rather than every other year, and to induct up to two players a year. The BBWAA is authorized to hold a runoff election of the top 30 vote getters if no one is elected in the first ballot.
- 1968 - The major league Executive Council decides that both the A.L. and N.L. will play 162-game schedules in 1969 and operate two six-team divisions.
- 1971 - Last year's A.L. batting king, Alex Johnson, is suspended by the Angels following a series of incidents (including five benchings and 29 fines) resulting from failure to hustle.
- 1994 - Kirby Puckett becomes Minnesota's all-time hits leader by getting three safeties to pass Rod Carew with his 2,088 hit as a Twin.
- 1997 - Tony Gwynn of the Padres breaks a seventh-inning tie with an inside-the-park grand slam as San Diego beats Los Angeles, 9-7. The opposite-field hit not only puts Gwynn back over the .400 mark, but is also the first N.L. inside-the-park grand slam in six years.
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.