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On July 4 in Baseball History...
  • 1905 - In the afternoon game of a doubleheader, Philadelphia's Rube Waddell bests Cy Young in a 25-inning marathon as the Athletics down Boston 4-2. A's catcher Ossee Schreckengost works twenty-eught innings in one day, a Major League record.
  • 1911 - In the morning game between Chicago and Detroit, Ed Walsh stops Ty Cobb's 40-game hitting streak as the White Sox win 7-3. Cobb has batted .491 since the streak started on May 15.
  • 1939 - A tearful Lou Gehrig tells 61,808 fans at Yankee Stadium, 'I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.' Gehrig's uniform number four is retired, the first Major League player so honored.
  • 1960 - Mickey Mantle's three-run first-inning home run off Hal Woodeshick is the 300th of his career. Mantle becomes the 18th player to join the 300 club, but the Yankees drop a 9-8 decision to Washington.
  • 1974 - Mike Marshall picks up a 3-2 win over Reds. Over the past 30 days, Marshall is 9-0 with three saves and a 1.82 ERA in twenty appearances.
  • 1980 - Nolan Ryan fans Reds outfielder Cesar Geronimo to become the fourth pitcher ever to reach 3,000 career strikeouts. Geronimo was also Bob Gibson's 3,000th career strikeout victim. Despite the milestone, Ryan is tagged with the 8-1 loss.
  • 1983 - Dave Righetti pitches the Yankees' first no-hitter since Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. He handcuffs the Red Sox 4-0 before a holiday crowd of 41,077 at Yankee Stadium.
  • 1984 - Phil Niekro strikes out five batters in the Yankees' 5-0 win over Texas to become the ninth pitcher in major league history to record 3,000 career strikeouts.
  • 1985 - In a marathon game that borders on the surreal, the Mets endure two rain delays and six hours and ten minutes of playing time to beat the Braves 16-13 in 19 innings. Relief pitcher Rick Camp, an .060 career hitter, homers in the 18th inning to tie the game no pitcher has ever homered that late in a game. Keith Hernandez hits for the cycle in a game that ends at 3:55 a.m. on July 5, the latest finish in Major League history. At 4:01 a.m., the post-game fireworks display begins, causing some local residents to think the city is under attack.
  • 1987 - In a seven-player swap, the Padres trade pitchers Dave Dravecky and Craig Lefferts and outfielder Kevin Mitchell to the Giants for third baseman Chris Brown and pitchers Keith Comstock, Mark Davis, and Mark Grant. In 1989, Mitchell will win the MVP Award for the Giants and Davis will win the Cy Young for the Padres.
  • 1988 - Kansas City releases pitcher Dan Quisenberry, whose 238 saves are the fourth most in major league history. He will sign with St. Louis next week.
  • 1989 - Cincinnati's Tom Browning is three outs from his second career perfect game when Dickie Thon doubles. Browning is eventually relieved by John Franco in a 2-1 win over Philadelphia.
Baseball Birthdays on July 4...
Baseball Deaths on July 4...
Source: todayinbaseballhistory.com

FEATURED EVENT

JULY 4 (1939) - Luckiest*
By Bill Grimes
Jul 4, 2008

The Luckiest Man

JULY 4, 1939 • NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK - A tired, frail, shadow of his former self told 61,808 people in Yankee stadium on the Fourth of July in 1939, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

gehrig_goodbye200.jpg
Sporting News Archive
Always humble, Lou Gehrig was known as 'The Iron Horse,' but he was getting weaker by the day and would be gone in less than two years.

The suddenness of Gehrig's decline was shocking. He went from playing every single game for 14 years to never playing again. When Gehrig took himself out of the lineup on May 2nd 1939 he never got back in. Gehrig had 29 home runs, 114 runs batted in and 115 runs scored in his last full season - 1938, not his best year, but still quite good. The only stat that appeared to show decline was batting average. He hit .295. He hadn't hit under .300 in twelve seasons and hit .351 in 1937, .354 the year before that. Clearly, Gehrig had lost a step, but he was 35 years old, so not unexpected. Gehrig's decline was clear in spring training 1939. His power had faded. He was hitting just .143 with no extra base hits when he took himself out of the lineup after eight games of the regular season.


A few weeks after asking out of the lineup Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with a rare, crippling, fatal disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The sickness would become known as Lou Gehrig's disease .

  • When Babe Ruth set the single season home run record in 1927 with 60 home runs, Gehrig hit 47, more than anyone, other than Ruth, had ever hit up to that time.
Source: todayinbaseballonline.com


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