June 21
1916 — Rube Foster of the Red Sox pitched a 2-0 no-hitter against the New York Yankees. Foster struck out three and walked three and pitched the first no-hitter at Fenway Park.
1938 — Pinky Higgins of the Boston Red Sox extended his consecutive hit string to 12, with eight hits in a doubleheader split with the Detroit Tigers. He went 4 for 4 in an 8-3 win in the opener and 4 for 4 in a 5-4 loss in the nightcap. The next day, Higgins struck out against Vern Kennedy in his first at-bat to end the streak.
1939 — The New York Yankees announced Lou Gehrig’s retirement, based on the report that he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The 36-year-old star remained as the team as captain.
1941 — Lefty Grove’s 20-game consecutive win streak at Fenway Park ended with a 13-9 loss to the St. Louis Browns. The streak spanned from May 3, 1938, to May 12, 1941.
1950 — Joe DiMaggio gets his 2,000th hit, a 7th-inning single off the Indians’Marino Pieretti, as the Yanks win, 8 – 2. DiMaggio joins Luke Appling and Wally Moses as the only active players with 2,000 or more hits.
1956 — In a rare double one-hitter, Chicago’s Jack Harshman outdueled Connie Johnson and George Zuverink of Baltimore as the White Sox beat the Orioles 1-0.
1964 — Jim Bunning of the Philadelphia Phillies pitched a 6-0 perfect game against the New York Mets in the opener of a Father’s Day doubleheader. Bunning threw 89 pitches and struck out 10, including John Stephenson to end the game. The no-hitter gave Bunning one in each league and Gus Triandos became the first catcher to handle no-hitters in both leagues.
1970 — Detroit Tigers shortstop Cesar Gutierrez had seven hits in seven times at bat in a 9-8, 12-inning victory over the Cleveland Indians. Gutierrez had six singles and a double.
1989 — Carlton Fisk set an American League record for homers by a catcher and drove in three runs to lead the Chicago White Sox to a 7-3 victory over the New York Yankees. Fisk hit his 307th homer as a catcher to pass the Yankees’ Yogi Berra.
2000 — Eric Chavez hit for the cycle in Oakland’s 10-3 win over Baltimore. Chavez doubled in the second inning, singled in the fourth, tripled in the fifth and finished off the cycle with a homer in the seventh.
2005 — Jeff Larish matched a College World Series record with three homers, and J.J. Sferra drove in the game-winning run with a bloop single in the 11th inning as Arizona State rallied for an 8-7 victory and eliminated hometown favorite Nebraska. Larish’s record-tying third homer tied it in the bottom of the ninth, and Sferra’s single in the 11th punctuated the 4-hour, 7-minute game.
2006 — Jose Reyes hit for the cycle in the New York Mets’ 6-5 loss to Cincinnati.
2009 — St. Louis’ Tony La Russa joined Connie Mack (3,831) and John McGraw (2,763) as the only managers with 2,500 victories following a 12-5 win over Kansas City.
2011 — Minnesota tied a major league record by opening with eight consecutive hits against San Francisco’s Madison Bumgarner, en route to a 9-2 win. Ben Revere had two hits and two RBIs to highlight an eight-run first inning.
2021 — Jacob deGrom pitches five scoreless innings to lead the Mets to a 4-2 win over the Braves. This extends his scoreless innings streak to 30 innings, lowering his ERA to 0.50. He becomes the first pitcher in history to go twelve straight starts of giving up to one or no earned runs topping the record set by Bob Gibson in 1968.
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