Baseball History on September 20
Major League Baseball Events on September 20 | Baseball Almanac
Baseball history on September 20, including a list of every Major League baseball player born on September 20, a list of every Major League baseball player who died on September 20, a list of every Major League baseball player who made their big league debut on September 20, and a list of every Major League baseball player whose final big league game was on September 20.
"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 September 20 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 September 20 in Baseball History...
- 1902 - Chicago's Jim Callahan tossed the White Sox's first no-hitter, beating Detroit 2-0.
- 1905 - Chicago White Sox president Charles Comiskey orders a houseboat built for the express purpose of transporting and housing the team during spring training.
- 1908 - Frank Smith of the Chicago White Sox threw his second career no-hitter for a 1-0 victory over the Philadelphia Athletics.
- 1919 - Babe Ruth ties Ned Williamson Major League mark of 27 home runs with a game-winner off Lefty Williams of the White Sox. Four days later he will hit number 28 over the roof of the Polo Grounds.
- 1922 - Rogers Hornsby is stopped by Burleigh Grimes of Brooklyn after hitting in 33 straight games.
- 1924 - Grover Alexander won his 300th game as the Chicago Cubs beat the New York Giants 7-3 in 12 innings.
- 1931 - Lou Gehrig drives in four runs to break his old American League RBI mark of 175, set in 1927. By the season's end he will have a total of 184.
- 1951 - The owners elect National League President Ford Frick as the third commissioner of baseball for a seven-year term at $65,000 per annum.
- 1953 - Ernie Banks of the Cubs hits his first Major League home run against Gerry Staley, but the Cards win 11-6.
- 1955 - Giants slugger Willie Mays poles two home runs against the Pirates, giving him 50 for the year, making him the seventh player in history to accomplish this.
- 1958 - Hoyt Wilhelm of the Baltimore Orioles pitched a 1-0 no-hitter against the New York Yankees at Memorial Stadium, with the only run coming on a home run by Gus Triandos.
- 1968 - Mickey Mantle hit his last home run in the Major Leagues, a solo shot against Boston's Jim Lonborg. Mantle had 536 homers.
- 1969 - Bob Moose of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitched a 4-0 no-hitter against the New York Mets at Shea Stadium.
- 1980 - George Brett goes 0-for-4 in a 9-0 loss to the A's to drop his average below .400 for good. He is now hitting .396 and will finish the season at .390.
- 1984 - The Padres clinch their first National League West title since entering the league in 1969 with a 5-4 win over the Giants. The key blow is winning pitcher Tim Lollar's three-run home run, his third home run of the season.
- 1988 - Wade Boggs became the first player this century to get 200 hits in six consecutive seasons as the Boston Red Sox pounded Toronto 13-2. Boggs also joined Lou Gehrig as the only players to get 200 hits and 100 walks in three consecutive years.
- 1992 - Philadelphia second baseman Mickey Morandini made the first unassisted triple play in the National League in 65 years, just the ninth in Major League history, in the Phillies' 3-2, 13-inning loss to Pittsburgh.
- 1998 - Cal Ripken, Jr. took himself out of the starting lineup and did not play in the Baltimore Orioles' loss to the New York Yankees, ending his consecutive-game streak at 2,632 games. After nearly 16 years, Ripken said he decided the time was right to end the streak, which began on May 30, 1982.
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.