April 19
1900 — The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Boston Braves 19-17 in 10 innings to set a major league record for most runs scored by two clubs on opening day. The Braves scored nine runs in the ninth inning to put the game into extra innings.
1920 — Al Schacht, who later became the “Clown Prince of Baseball,” was all business in pitching the Senators to a 7-0 victory over the Philadelphia Athletics.
1938 — Emmett Mueller of the Phillies and Ernie Koy of the visiting Dodgers each homered in their first major league at-bats as Brooklyn defeated Philadelphia 12-5.
1949 — The New York Yankees unveil a granite monument to Babe Ruth.
1956 — The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies 5-4 in 10 innings at Jersey City’s Roosevelt Stadium, the first major league game held in New Jersey.
1960 — Roger Maris makes his New York Yankees debut.
1981 — In an International League night game, the Rochester Red Wings and Pawtucket Red Sox played to a 2-2 tie through 32 innings before play was suspended at 4:07 a.m. The game was completed later in the season with Pawtucket scoring the winning run in the 33rd inning of the longest game in professional baseball history.
1987 — Rob Deer hit a three-run homer to tie the score and Dale Sveum won the game with a two-run shot as the Milwaukee Brewers rallied for five runs in the ninth inning to beat the Texas Rangers 6-4 and set an American League record with their 12th straight victory to start the season.
1996 — Juan Gonzalez homered and drove in six runs as Texas beat Baltimore 26-7. The Rangers scored 16 runs in the eighth inning — one short of the modern major league mark — and scored the most runs by an AL team in 41 years.
1997 — A major league game is played in Hawaii for the first time.
2002 — Jeff Cirillo of the Seattle Mariners ties a major league record with 99 consecutive errorless games played at third base.
2004 — Seattle became the third team since 1974 to win a game on a balk in extra innings, edging Oakland 2-1. With runners on first and third and two out in the bottom of the 14th inning A’s reliever Justin Duchscherer was called for a balk to score Quentin McCracken from third.
2012 — Curtis Granderson hit three home runs in the first four innings and matched a career high with five hits, sending the New York Yankees to a 7-6 victory over the Minnesota Twins.
2012 — The Houston Astros set a franchise record by hitting three triples in a five-run first inning on the way to an 11-4 victory over Washington. Jose Altuve, Brian Bogusevic and Matt Downs had the triples off Edwin Jackson.
2022 — The Padres are the first team to announce a deal to have advertisements on their uniforms, as they will sport the logo of Motorola on their jersey sleeves starting next season.
2023 — The Oakland Athletics sign a binding agreement to buy a plot of land near the famous strip in Las Vegas, NV, with the plan of building a $1.5 billion ballpark with a partially retractable roof there. The A’s lease with the city of Oakland, CA for the aging Oakland Coliseum expires after the 2024 season, and negotiations to find a new site for a ballpark in the East Bay area over the past decade have proved futile. The new digs could be ready by 2027.
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