1928 – At the Polo Grounds, the Giants take two games from the Braves, 11 – 6 and 7 – 6. Freddie Lindstrom goes 8 for 10 to pull New York into second place, two and a half games behind St. Louis. The Giants will continue to feast on Braves pitching, winning doubleheaders from Boston on the 13th and the 14th to tie the National League record for twinbills won on consecutive days.
1935 – The rampaging Cubs beat the lowly Braves, 15 – 3. Bill Lee coasts to the win.
1963 – At Crosley Field, the Reds score nine runs in the 4th en route to a 14 – 3 thrashing of the Braves.
1964 – In a pitching duel between the Braves’ Denny Lemaster and the Reds’ Jim Maloney, Milwaukee scores a run in the 8th to win, 1 – 0. Gene Oliver doubles, the second hit of the game off Maloney, and scores after a double steal and fly out. Leo Cardenas has the only hit off Lemaster.
1966 – Braves pitcher Pat Jarvis becomes the first of Nolan Ryan’s 5,714 career strikeout victims.
1977 – In Atlanta, the Braves pull off a triple steal in beating the Padres, 7 – 3. The thieves are Gary Matthews, Biff Pocoroba, and Pat Rock.
1998 – With a defeat to the Braves, the Marlins lose their 100th game to become the first team that has gone from being World Series champions to a 100-game loser. The “Fish” have the worst record in the league, 48-100.
1991 – Atlanta’s Kent Mercker, Mark Wohlers and Alejandro Pena combine to toss a 1 – 0 no-hitter against San Diego. It is only the second no-hitter in Atlanta history, following Phil Niekro’s 1973 masterpiece over the same Padres.
2002 – The Mets and Braves split a doubleheader, with Atlanta winning the first game, 8 – 5, and New York taking the nightcap, 5 – 0. John Smoltz gets the save in the opener, making him the seventh pitcher in history to record 50 saves in a season. Smoltz will set the National League season saves record with 55, topping the old mark of 53 shared by Randy Myers and Trevor Hoffman. Chicago’s Bobby Thigpen set the major league record of 57 in 1990.
2010 – A walk-off home run by Alex Gonzalez off Mitchell Boggs in the 12th inning propels the Braves to a 6 – 3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals. With the win, the Braves are once again tied with the Phillies atop the NL East.
2023 – Julio Rodríguez of the Mariners becomes the second player in franchise history to join the exclusive 30-30 club when he hits his 30th long ball of the season in an 8 – 5 loss to the Angels, having already stolen 36 bases. Only Alex Rodriguez, who had a 40-40 season in 1998, had previously achieved the feat for Seattle, while Julio is the second player to join the club this season, following Ronald Acuna of the Braves.
1955 – Red Sox outfielder Ted Williams collects his 2000th career hit in a 5 – 3 loss to the Yankees.
1956 – Yogi Berra ties the major league career record for home runs by a catcher in the Yankees’ 9 – 5 victory over Kansas City. His 236th – and the Yankees’ 177th of the season – ties him with Cub great Gabby Hartnett.
1974 – At Shea Stadium, the Mets lose a 25-inning night game to the St. Louis Cardinals, 4 – 3. Ken Reitz’s two-strike, two-out home run ties the game in the 9th. Two Mets errors lead to the Cardinals’ winning run, starting with an errant pickoff throw from Hank Webb that allows Bake McBride to score all the way from first. The Mets go to the plate 103 times, the only time the century mark has been reached in a major league game; the Cards are not far behind with 99 plate appearances. A record 175 official at-bats are recorded, with a major-league record 45 runners stranded. The seven-hour, four-minute marathon is the longest game played to a decision in major league history. Only a thousand fans are on hand when the game ends at 3:13 a.m.
1985 – Pete Rose becomes baseball’s all-time hit leader, singling to left-center off Eric Show in the 1st inning of the Reds’ 2 – 0 win over San Diego. His 4,192nd career hit breaks Ty Cobb’s record before 47,237 fans at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. Rose had tied the record at Wrigley Field on September 8th with a single off the Cubs’ Reggie Patterson in a game that was later suspended due to darkness, enabling Rose to break the record at home.
2001 – All major league baseball games are canceled due to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Flight #93. Games will not resume until September 17th. The Blue Jays take a 12-hour bus ride from Baltimore back to Toronto, and Yankee Stadium is evacuated as a precautionary measure. Former minor league players Marty Boryczewski, Mark Hindy, Mike Weinberg, and Brent Woodall are killed in the attacks.
2014 – Giancarlo Stanton is hit in the face by a ball thrown by the Brewers’ Mike Fiers in the 5th inning. The Marlins’ best player suffers multiple facial fractures and broken teeth after lying motionless at home plate, bleeding profusely, for several minutes after the beaning and is carried away on a stretcher. Stanton was swinging on the pitch, so it is called a strike; pinch-hitter Reed Johnson completes the at-bat, and strikes out on a pitch that hits him on the hand, prompting both benches to clear. Marlins manager Mike Redmond and 3B Casey McGehee are both ejected for arguing umpire D.J. Reyburn’s decision to call both pitches strikes. In the 6th, Miami pitcher Anthony DeSclafani is also thumbed, for hitting Carlos Gomez on the left elbow in a gesture that is seen as retaliation; bench coach Rob Leary also gets the heave-ho since he is now the acting manager and both benches had been warned. For his part, Fiers leaves the game after striking out Johnson and issues an immediate emotional apology, denying any intention to hit Stanton. Incidentally, the Brewers win the game, 4 – 2.