23 August in Sports History

In this edition of the Sports Break, we cover the top events in sports history along with the players and athletes that were a part of them on August 23. As a bonus, we place the jersey number worn at the time with the athlete.

Sports history is made every day of the year. We will preserve at least a small sampling from some great athletes every day based on the uniform number they wore.

9 - 3 - 21 - 15 - 43 - 

August 23, 1907 - Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Howie Camnitz no-hit the New York Giants roster, in a 1-0 in 5 inning game at the Polo Grounds in New York City

August 23, 1936 - A 17 year old Cleveland Indians future Baseball HOF pitcher Bob Feller's debut in a MLB game resulted in him striking out 15 St Louis Browns in 4-1 win at League Park, Cleveland. Feller wore the Number 9 on his uniform that day.

August 23, 1942 - In the spirit of charity, Walter Johnson pitched to Number 3, Babe Ruth in pregame attraction that drew 69,000 for New York Yankee versusWashington MLB doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. The exhibition of the legends helped to raise a cool $80,000 for Army-Navy relief

August 23, 1953 - A man named Phil Grate allegedly set a record for throwing a baseball with a toss of 443'3".

August 23, 1970 - Roberto Clemente, Number 21 of the Pittsburgh Pirates produced his record second straight 5-hit game

August 23, 1972 - Chicago's Dick Allen, Number 15 is 4th (Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, and Alex Johnson) to homer into Comiskey Park's center field bleachers

August 23, 1992 - Dennis Eckersley, Number 43 of the Oakland A's had another big year. Eck previously set record for most consecutive saves (40), on this day became the first pitcher to record 40 saves in 4 different seasons

August 23, 1993 - Atlanta Braves teammates Fred McGriff (Number 27) and David Justice (Number 23) became just the sixth duo to hit back-to-back home runs twice in same game

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: On This Day Sports, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com.

Banner photo is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of Original data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards: Camnitz (Pitt. N.Y.).
Corrected title and date based on research by the Pictorial History Committee, Society for American Baseball Research, 2006.
Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).