12 September 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 September 12. As a bonus, we place the jersey number worn at the time with the athlete as well.

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 - 23 - 15 - 8 - 19 - 10 - 19 - 31 - 16 - 29 - 34 - 5 - 11

September 12, 1911 - Future Baseball Hall of Fame pitchers dual for final time; Boston Rustlers' Cy Young vs Christy Mathewson of the Giants; NY wins, 11-2

September 12, 1930 - Brooklyn catcher Al López hits major league's last recorded bounce home run

September 12, 1947 - Pittsburgh Pirates's future Baseball HOF left fielder Ralph Kiner, Number 4 ripped 2 home runs in Pirates' 4-3 win over the Boston Braves at Forbes Field. This was Kiner's record 8th HR in 4 games

September 12, 1962 - Washington Senators ace Tom Cheney, Number 23 struck out a record 21 Baltimore Orioles batters in a 16 inning game

September 12, 1979 - The Indiana Pacers cut female player Ann Meyers, Number 15 who was the first woman on an NBA club

September 12, 1979 - Carl Yastrzemski wearing Number 8 reached his 3,000th hit off NY Yankee Jim Beattie

September 12, 1981 - Red Sox rookie Bob Ojeda, Number 19 no-hit the Yankees for 8 innings before Rick Cerone (Number 10) and Dave Winfield (Number 31) lead off the 9th inning with back-to-back doubles

September 12, 1984 - New York Met Dwight Gooden, Number 16 set a rookie strike out record at 251

September 12, 1987 - St Louis Cardinals Speedster Vince Coleman, Number 29 stole his 100th base for 3rd straight year

September 12, 1991 - Nolan Ryan, Number 34 of the Houston Astros notched a 4-3 victory over Twins with superb pitching and earned his 312th career win

September 12, 1993 - Toronto Blue Jays slugger Paul Molitor, Number 19 at age 37 became the oldest MLB player to reach 100 RBIs for the first time in career

September 12, 1997 - New York Met John Olerud (Number 5) hit for the cycle against the Montreal Expos

13 Sep 1997, Sat Daily News (New York, New York) Newspapers.com

September 12, 2005 - Mark Messier (Number 11) announced on ESPN radio that he would retire from the NHL after 25 brilliant seasons of skating in the league.

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 the 1953 Bowman Color baseball card of Ralph Kiner of the Pittsburgh Pirates.