Baseball History on May 16
Major League Baseball Events on May 16 | Baseball Almanac
Baseball history on May 16, including a list of every Major League baseball player born on May 16, a list of every Major League baseball player who died on May 16, a list of every Major League baseball player who made their big league debut on May 16, and a list of every Major League baseball player whose final big league game was on May 16.
"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 May 16 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 May 16 in Baseball History...
- 1902 - Two deaf-mutes face each other for the first time when Dummy Hoy leads off for the Reds against Dummy Taylor of the Giants. The Reds win 5-3 with a five-run rally in the ninth. Hoy goes 2-for-4.
- 1932 - The Yankees score their fourth straight shutout to equal the record set by Cleveland (1903) and Boston (1906). Johnny Allen, George Pipgras, Red Ruffing, and Lefty Gomez are the hurlers.
- 1939 - The first A.L. night game is played at Shibe Park, with Cleveland beating the host Philadelphia Athletics 8-3 in ten innings.
- 1954 - Ted Williams returns to action after breaking his collarbone in spring training and goes 8-for-9 with two home runs and seven RBI in a doubleheader against the Tigers. Williams has three hits in game one, a 7-6 loss. He goes five-for-five in the nightcap, including two home runs, but Boston loses 9-8 in 14 innings.
- 1957 - The Yankees celebrate Billy Martin's 29th birthday in a raucous fashion. An ensuing fight at Manhattan's Copacabana Club leads to $5,500 in fines and the eventual trade of Billy to Kansas City. Hank Bauer allegedly starts the fight by hitting a patron, although Bauer denies it.
- 1967 - Philadelphia voters approve a $13 million bond issue to build a new stadium.
- 1979 - N.L. owners approve the sale of the Astros from the Ford Motor Credit Company to John J. McMullen for a reported $19 million.
- 1984 - The Twins sell 51,863 tickets to their 8-7 loss to the Blue Jays, but only 6,346 fans show up for the game. The skewed numbers are the result of a massive ticket buyout plan organized by Minneapolis businessman Harvey Mackay to keep the Twins in Minnesota; if the club does not sell 2.41 million tickets this season it can break its lease with the Metrodome. Taking advantage of reduced prices on the Family Day promotion, Mackay pays $218,718 for 44,166 tickets.
- 1987 - After starting off with an 18-2 record, the 1987 Milwaukee Brewers drop their tenth in a row, losing 13-0 to Kansas City, and earning the nickname Team Streak. The Brew Crew's only hit off Charlie Leibrandt is a bunt single.
- 1997 - Jim Leyland returns to Pittsburgh for the first time wearing a uniform other than that of the Pirates. Leyland, who spent 11 seasons as skipper in Pittsburgh, sees his new team, the Marlins, beat the Pirates, 3-1. Two days later he leaves town with Florida's first-ever sweep in Pittsburgh.
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.