Four in one game!
On Thursday, Seattle Mariner Mike Cameron (formerly a Red, alas) homered in his first four at bats against the White Sox at Comiskey. This was only the 11th time that a player has hit four in a game since 1900 (two did it in the 1890s).
Interestingly, someone seems to accomplish this feat about once a decade. It happened twice in the 30s, three times in the 50s, and once in every other decade starting in the 40s. I thought it would be interesting to calculate the intervals, which I have reproduced in this table (in days and years):
| Player |
Date |
Days |
Years |
| Mike Cameron |
5/2/2002 |
3159 |
8.65 |
| Mark Whiten |
9/7/1993 |
2620 |
7.18 |
| Bob Horner |
7/6/1986 |
3732 |
10.22 |
| Mike Schmidt |
4/17/1976 |
5466 |
14.98 |
| Willie Mays |
4/30/1961 |
690 |
1.89 |
| Rocky Colavito |
6/10/1959 |
1775 |
4.86 |
| Joe Adcock |
7/31/1954 |
1430 |
3.92 |
| Gil Hodges |
8/31/1950 |
774 |
2.12 |
| Pat Seerey |
7/18/1948 |
4391 |
12.03 |
| Chuck Klein |
7/10/1936 |
1498 |
4.10 |
| Lou Gehrig |
6/3/1932 |
|
|
Like a perfect game or a triple play, four-in-a-game is not something that comes up in baseball talk very often. We probably won't be talking about Cameron's big day three months from now. My own knowledge/memory confirms this.
If you'd asked me before Thursday, I would have said that I believed no one had hit four homers in one Major League game since the early sixties. I distinctly remember Willie Mays doing it in 1961; I can still see in my mind's eye a graphic in The Sporting News showing the trajectories of the four. That's the last one I remember. Looking at the dates, I see why. In the Spring of 1976, when Mike Schmidt did it (in extra innings, but still quite an accomplishment), I was living in Europe, so I wasn't getting daily baseball news. And I gave up baseball for much of the 80s and almost all of the 90s. I have near total baseball amnesia for that decade.
So I'm glad for Cameron's four for a personal reason--it brings me up to date with a baseball statistic that was meaningful to me in the past and that I'd lost track of.
11:16:19 AM 
|
