Baseball History on August 28
Major League Baseball Events on August 28 | Baseball Almanac
Baseball history on August 28, including a list of every Major League baseball player born on August 28, a list of every Major League baseball player who died on August 28, a list of every Major League baseball player who made their big league debut on August 28, and a list of every Major League baseball player whose final big league game was on August 28.
"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 August 28 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 August 28 in Baseball History...
- 1884 - Mickey Welch of the New York Gothams sets the all-time major league record by fanning the first nine Philadelphia batters he faces. Welch wins 39 games this year and in just 13 seasons will win 307.
- 1921 - Babe Ruth starts a record streak in which he gets at least one extra-base hit in nine straight games.
- 1926 - Dutch Levsen of the Cleveland Indians pitched two complete-game victories over the Boston Red Sox, 6-1 and 5-1. He did not strike out a batter in either game. The Indians used the identical lineup in both games.
- 1932 - The Red Sox eclipse the Indians in the second game of a doubleheader 4-3 in 11 innings. The game was previously scheduled for August 31, but a solar eclipse was due and blackened the ballpark for twenty minutes, so the game is played today instead.
- 1938 - On Connie Mack Day at Shibe Park, the A's win a doubleheader from the White Sox, setting a league record by playing their seventh successive twinbill in eight days.
- 1950 - Earle and Roy Mack, Connie's sons by his first marriage, purchase 54 percent interest in the Athletics from Connie Mack, Jr., their younger brother from a second marriage. Earle, Roy and Connie Mack now own the club outright.
- 1951 - The Braves sell pitcher Johnny Sain to the Yankees for $50,000 and a young pitcher named Lew Burdette. It is another late-season insurance measure for the New Yorkers.
- 1951 - The Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the New York Giants 2-0, snapping the Giants' 16-game winning streak. The streak enabled the Giants to cut the Dodgers 13 1/2-game lead to six.
- 1958 - White Sox second baseman Nellie Fox sets a record for consecutive games without striking out (98).
- 1967 - Boston signs free-agent outfielder Ken Harrelson. Harrelson reportedly receives a $75,000 bonus and salary package for 1967 and 1968. Harrelson will homer in his first Boston at bat but will hit just .200 for the Red Sox in 1967. The next year, however, he will become an All-Star and lead the American League with 109 RBI.
- 1971 - Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Rick Wise hit two home runs to help himself to a 7-3 victory over the San Francisco Giants.
- 1977 - Steve Garvey hit three doubles and two home runs in five at-bats, leading the Los Angeles Dodgers to an 11-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. One of Garvey's homers was a grand slam.
- 1977 - In a 6-1 loss to the Baltimore Orioles, Nolan Ryan of the California Angles struck out 11 batters to pass the 300-strikeout plateau for the fifth time in his career.
- 1983 - Greg Luzinski becomes the first player to park three home runs onto the roof at Comiskey Park, connecting off Boston's Oil Can Boyd in a 6-2 Chicago victory. Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams each accomplished the feat twice.
- 1987 - Mike Schmidt continues to climb baseball's all-time home run list, passing both Ted Williams and Willie McCovey with the 522nd of his career in an 8-1 win over San Diego.
- 1989 - Frank Viola and the Mets outduel Orel Hershiser and the Dodgers 1-0 in the first-ever regular-season matchup of defending Cy Young Award winners.
- 1990 - Ryne Sandberg homers in the Cubs' 5-2 win over the Astros to become the first second baseman ever to post back-to-back 30-home run seasons. He will finish the year with 40 home runs to become the first second baseman since Rogers Hornsby in 1925 to lead the league in that category.
- 1992 - The Milwaukee Brewers set an American League record with 31 hits and 26 singles in a 22-2 rout of the Toronto Blue Jays.
- 1996 - The Cleveland Indians finished the season 12-0 against Detroit Tigers to become the seventh team to sweep a season series since 1900.
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.