Lead Story - 8/11/2018

2004 postseason schedule

Wild Card
Wed. 11/11 7:00 pm Pacific (1 game) (rest)
LDS
Thurs. 11/12 5:00 am Pacific
Games simmed approximately every 3 hours
LCS
Fri. 11/13 5:00 am Pacific
Games simmed approximately every 3 hours
World Series
Sat. 11/14 5:00 am Pacific
Games simmed approximately every 3 hours
All start times are approximations.

League Chat Box

9/14/2018

2004 Baseball Season

In the American League...
Baltimore Oriole Miguel Tejada won the 2004 Home Run Derby after edging the Houston Astros' Lance Berkman with five homers in the final round. The All-Star shortstop set two MLB records in the process by hitting a total of twenty-seven round-trippers for the night and fifteen in the second round. Amazingly, Tejada's final five blasts came after five outs, half of the requisite total.

Seattle Mariners sensation Ichiro Suzuki broke George Sisler's 1920 single season hitting record during an 8-3 victory over the Texas Rangers. With fans still cheering, Suzuki ran to the first-base seats and shook hands with Sisler's 81-year-old daughter and other members of the Hall of Famer's family. After Suzuki's record breaking 258th hit, he scored his 100th run of the season when the Mariners batted around in the third, taking a 6-2 lead on six hits.

The Cleveland Indians scalped the New York Yankees with a record-setting 22-0 massacre on August 31st. With the defeat, the Bombers lost their fifth consecutive game in the Bronx for the first time since May of 2003. The twenty-two runs allowed were the most ever given up by the Yankees in their home ballpark and the most runs allowed since 1928, when the Indians won a 24-6 decision (one of two eighteen-run defeats in New York history). The loss also tied the largest margin of defeat in a shutout since 1900, equaling the mark set in 1975 by the Pittsburgh Pirates in a 22-0 win over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.

In the National League...
San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds continued his relentless assault on the major league record books in 2004. His season highlights included: (September 17th) Hit his 700th career homer, off San Diego's Jake Peavy. (September 11th) Broke his own record for walks in a season and became the first player to earn two-hundred free passes in one campaign. (August 29th) Recorded his sixty-eighth career multi-homer game, passing Mark McGwire for second all-time. (August 13th) Singled in his 1,813th run, passing Frank Robinson for fourteenth on the all-time RBI list. (July 10th) Broke his own record for intentional walks in a season with the first of three in the game. (July 8th) Passed Eddie Murray (5,397) for eighth place on the all-time total bases list. (July 4th) Received two walks from the Athletics to tie and break Rickey Henderson's all-time walks record. (June 13th) Hit his 500th homer as a Giant. (June 12th) Homered off the 400th different pitcher of his career, Baltimore's Rodrigo Lopez. (May 28th) Hit his tenth career walk-off homer, a two-run shot off Colorado's Tim Harikkala. (April 29th) Hit his 668th career homer, giving him and his late father Bobby a combined one-thousand home runs. (April 17th) Scored his 2,063rd run, putting him alone in seventh place all-time, with a solo homer off Los Angeles' Darren Dreifort. (April 13th) Hit his 661st career homer, off Milwaukee's Ben Ford, to assume sole possession of third place on the all-time list. (April 12th) Hit his 660th career homer, off Milwaukee's Matt Kinney, to tie godfather Willie Mays for third on the all-time list.

After enjoying a brief, seventy-eight day retirement, Roger Clemens returned to pitch with friend and former teammate Andy Pettitte on their hometown Houston Astros. For more than a year, "The Rocket" had insisted that 2003 would be his final season, but all bets were off after the Yankees lost the World Series and Pettitte left New York. Remarkably, the forty year-old, six-time Cy Young winner, returned better than ever becoming a NL Cy Young candidate en route to the National League Championship Series.

Randy Johnson, of the Arizona Diamondbacks, turned his back on the clock on his amazing career after pitching a perfect game against the Atlanta Braves on May 18th. In doing so, the forty year-old became the first ace to toss a perfect game since David Cone of the New York Yankees accomplished the feat in 1999. He also became the oldest pitcher in baseball history to do so, followed by Cy Young who had reached perfection at the age of 37 in 1904. Johnson's masterpiece came in a 2-0 win at Turner Field that took only two hours and thirteen minutes to complete. Afraid to "jinx" the outcome, neither the scoreboard nor public address system noted the history in the making and only displayed Johnson's picture and stats after the final pitch had been made.

Around the League...
America's "National Pastime" returned to the capital for the first time in thirty-three years after Major League Baseball approved the relocation of the Montreal Expos to Washington DC. Ironically, the announcement came one day before the anniversary of the original Washington Senators' final game (before moving to Texas) in 1971. The relocation of the Expos was subject to certain contingencies, including a vote by team owners in November and passage of legislation by Washington's City Council to build a ballpark on the Anacostia River waterfront.

One day after the death of former baseball star Ken Caminiti (an admitted steroid user) U.S. lawmakers passed legislation allowing tighter government regulation of steroid precursors. In doing so, the Anabolic Steroid Control Act added androstenedione, norandrosterone and similar testosterone-production enhancing substances to a list of anabolic steroids regarded as controlled substances. Caminiti, who had played in the major leagues for fifteen years, died of an apparent heart attack at age forty-one. He had admitted to using steroids during his Most Valuable Player season in 1996, when he hit .326 with forty home runs and one-hundred thirty runs batted in for the San Diego Padres.