This Date in Baseball - Rickey Henderson set the ML walks record with his 2,063rd base on balls

April 25

1901 — In the opener at Detroit’s Bennett Park, the Tigers beat Milwaukee in a great comeback. Trailing 13-4 going into the bottom of the ninth, the Tigers scored 10 runs for a 14-13 victory. Frank Dillon had four doubles.

1904 — New York pitcher Jack Chesbro recorded the first of his 41 victories on the season, an American League record that still stands.

1933 — Yankees pitcher Russ Van Atta made a spectacular debut by blanking Washington 16-0 and going 4-for-4.

1948 — Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians ties a major league record by striking out five times in a game.

1961 — Two weeks after the Boston Celtics win the NBA championship, their reserve center, Gene Conley, pitching for the Boston Red Sox, gets his first American League victory, a 6-1 win over the visiting Washington Senators.

1976 — Cubs center fielder Rick Monday rescued the American flag from two trespassers who tried to set it on fire in the outfield of Dodger Stadium. The incident happened in the fourth inning of a 5-4, 10-inning loss to Los Angeles.

1982 — Just 14 games into the season, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner fires manager Bob Lemon and replaces him with Gene Michael, the man Lemon had replaced the previous September. Michael won’t finish the season either.

1990 — At Fenway Park, gimpy-legged Bill Buckner, 41, hits an inside-the-park home run for the Boston Red Sox. It will be his only homer in this, his last, season as he will play just 22 games.

1995 — Major league baseball returned after a 257-day layoff as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Florida Marlins 8-7. Players had gone on strike the previous season.

1997 — Matt Williams hit three homers and David Justice homered twice as the Cleveland Indians and Milwaukee Brewers combined to match a major league record for home runs in a nine-inning night game with 11. Cleveland hit a club-record eight in all, including three in one inning as the Indians beat the Brewers 11-4.

2001 — Rickey Henderson of the Padres set the major league walks record with his 2,063rd base on balls in San Diego’s 5-3 loss to Philadelphia.

2009 — Albert Pujols hit his second grand slam of the season and surpassed 1,000 career RBIs in St. Louis’ 8-2 victory over the Chicago Cubs.

2017 — Eric Thames hit his major league-leading 11th home run — his eighth against Cincinnati this season — and the Milwaukee Brewers cruised to a 9-1 victory over the Reds. In his first season with the Brewers after playing three years in South Korea, Thames capped a five-run sixth with a two-run drive off reliever Robert Stephenson. He has homered in all six games against the Reds and joined Willie Stargell as the only players in MLB history to hit eight homers in April against one team.

2017 — Trea Turner hit for the third cycle in Nationals history and drove in a career-high seven runs, helping Washington to a 15-12 win over Colorado on a frigid night.

2019 — In the NFL draft, the Arizona Cardinals select University of Oklahoma QB Kyler Murray first overall. He had been the #1 pick of the Athletics in the 2018 amateur draft, 9th overall, as an outfielder, and had signed with the A’s before giving up baseball last winter. This makes him the first player to be a first-rounder in both the NFL and MLB drafts. Murray will soon give up baseball in favor of the gridiron.

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