Happy birthday to Clayton Richard* and other former Cubs.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Bleed Cubbie Blue is pleased to present a light-hearted, Cubs-centric look at baseball’s colorful past. Here’s a handy Cubs timeline, to help you follow the various narrative paths.
“Maybe I called it wrong, but it’s official.” — Tom Connolly, HoF Umpire.
Today in baseball history:
- 1900 – Sammy Strang, a rookie 3B, breaks in with seven hits for the Chicago Orphans in a doubleheader against the Giants. Chicago catcher Johnny Kling and Giants pitcher Win Mercer collide at the plate in the seventh inning of the second game, and Mercer is carried off the field unconscious. Chicago coasts, 9-1 in the opener, with Mercer the loser to Jock Menefee. New York takes the nightcap, 7-6, when Luther Taylor fashions a seven-inning win over Jack Taylor. (2)
- 1924 – Chicago’s Hack Miller hits a pinch home run in the eighth to tie the game with the Phils at six apiece. The Cubs go on to win, 10-8. (2)
- 1932 – In the bottom of the 9th, Johnny Frederick hits his major league record-setting sixth pinch-homer of the season off Burleigh Grimes, giving the Dodgers a 4-3 victory over the Cubs. Frederick’s six pinch-hit home runs doubles the previous record of three held by Ham Hyatt in 1913, Cy Williams in 1928, and Pat Crawford in 1929. With just nine pinch-hits altogether, his home run percentage is a major league record. (1,2)
- 1935 – Charlie Grimm‘s Cubs continue their hot hitting, trouncing the Dodgers, 13 – 3. Augie Galan has four hits and five RBIs for the “Grimm Reapers.” (2)
- 1998 – Cubs OF Sammy Sosa becomes the fourth player in history to reach the 60-home run mark for a season when he slugs number 60 off Valerio de los Santos of the Brewers in the seventh inning of the 15-12 Chicago win. (2)
- 2000 – The Cubs’ Kerry Wood pitches his second career complete game, winning 2 – 1 over the Reds. Two unearned runs do in Osvaldo Fernandez. (2)
- 2016 – The major league ERA leader, Kyle Hendricks of the Cubs, takes a no-hit bid into the ninth inning in a start against the Cardinals, but Jeremy Hazelbaker leads off the frame with his 12th homer to break it up. Still, Hendricks records his 15th win, 4-1, and lowers his ERA to 2.03 as the Cubs’ magic number to clinch the NL Central is down to three. (2)
Cubs Birthdays: John Dolan, Fred Luderus, Ralph Hamner, Bubba Church, George Freese, Carmen Pignatiello, Clayton Richard*.
Today
in History:
- 1829 – Greek War of Independence ends after 8 years and 6 months.
- 1857 – 423 die when steamship SS Central America, the “Ship of Gold,” sinks in a hurricane off Cape Romain, South Carolina, carrying tons of gold coins and bricks from the California Gold Rush (rediscovered in 1988).
- 1933 – Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives the idea of a nuclear chain reaction.
- 1940 – Four teens follow their dog down a hole near Lascaux, France, and discover 17,000-year-old drawings now known as the Lascaux Cave Paintings.
Common sources:
- (1) — Today in Baseball History.
- (2) — Baseball Reference.
- (3) — Society for American Baseball Research.
- (4) — Baseball Hall of Fame.
- (5) — This Day in Chicago Cubs history.
- (6) — Wikipedia.
- (7) — The British Museum
- For world history.
*pictured.
Things are as near to the truth as we can get them. Some of these items spread from site to site without being fact-checked, and that is why we ask for verifiable sources, so that we can help update the records and have documentation of why.
