23 July in Sports History

Pinch me I must be dreaming because pinch hitters played a big part of the sports history of July 23. Catch these events and more in the Sports Break of the day.

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.

4 - 43 - 41 - 19 - 27 - 34 - 9 - 32 - 5 - 29 - 23 

July 23, 1925 - New York Yankee Lou Gehrig, Number 4 hit his first of 23 career grand slam homeruns. That is 92 of his 1995 career RBIs from just these 23 swings of the bat or almost 5% of the runs he drove in. 

July 23, 1944 - Chicago Cubs Bill Nicholson, wearing Number 43 hit 4 homeruns tallying 7 RBIs in a doubleheader against the New York Giants.

24 Jul 1944, Mon Press and Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, New York) Newspapers.com

July 23, 1955 - NY Yankees Bob Cerv, Number 41 and Number 32, Elston Howard are first to hit consecutive pinch homeruns

July 23, 1956  - Joe Cronin who wore Number 4 for much of his career and Hank Greenberg a long time Number 5 were inducted into Baseball Hall of Fame

July 23, 1964 - Kansas City A's Bert Campaneris Number 19 smacked a Homerun on the first pitch he saw from Twins' Jim Kaat, adds a 2nd HR later, also off of Kaat (in Minnesota)

July 23, 1975 - Los Angeles Dodgers Number 27, Willie Crawford and Lee Lacy, wearing Number 34 became the fifth duo in baseball history to hit consecutive pinch homeruns in a Major League Baseball game.

July 23, 1976 - Baltimore Oriole slugger Reggie Jackson, wearing the Number 9 on his jersey homered in the 6th straight game that he played in.

July 23, 1978 - The Philadelphia Phillies ace Steve Carlton, Number 32 became 78th MLB pitcher to reach the 200 baseball won games plateau in his career.

July 23, 1979 - George Brett, who was Number 5 with the Kansas City Royals reached his 1,000th MLB career hit

July 23, 1984 - Kansas City Royals releif pitcher Number 29, Dan Quisenberry achieved his 200th career save

July 23, 1993 - New York Yankee Mark Hutton, wearing Number 53, became the first Australian to be an MLB starting pitcher. In his debut Hutton took out the Angels 5-2 and propelled a log jam at the top of the standing of the AL East as the Yanks, Red Sox, Blue Jays  were in a 3 way tie for 1st place.

July 23, 1994 - Don Mattingly, Number 23 became the 6th New York Yankee to get to the 2,000 hit plateau

July 23, 1994 - Longest baseball rain delay (3:39) as the San Francisco Giants beat the New York Mets at home 4-2.

July 23, 2021 - Baseball's Cleveland Indians announce team will be re-named the Guardians, after the Guardians of Traffic, eight large Art Deco statues on the Hope Memorial Bridge, located near their playing field

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 American baseball player Lou Gehrig when he was introduced as new player of the New York Yankees. By Pacific & Atlantic Photos, Inc.