MLB hitters with four home runs in one game

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Listed below are the 15 Major League Baseball players who have hit four home runs in a single game. No player has accomplished this feat more than once in his career, and no player has ever hit five or more home runs in one game.

Date Player Team Opposing team Score
May 30, 1894 Bobby Lowe Boston Beaneaters NL Cincinnati Reds 20-11
July 13 1896 Ed Delahanty Philadelphia Phillies NL Chicago Colts 8-9
June 3, 1932 Lou Gehrig New York Yankees AL Philadelphia Athletics 20-13
July 10, 1936 Chuck Klein Philadelphia Phillies NL Pittsburgh Pirates 9-6
July 18, 1948 Pat Seerey Chicago White Sox AL Philadelphia Athletics 12-11
August 31, 1950 Gil Hodges Brooklyn Dodgers NL Boston Braves 19-3
July 31, 1954 Joe Adcock Milwaukee Braves NL Brooklyn Dodgers 15-7[1]
June 10, 1959 Rocky Colavito Cleveland Indians AL Baltimore Orioles 11-8[2]
April 30, 1961 Willie Mays San Francisco Giants NL Milwaukee Braves 14-4[3]
April 17, 1976 Mike Schmidt Philadelphia Phillies NL Chicago Cubs 18-16[4]
July 6, 1986 Bob Horner Atlanta Braves NL Montreal Expos 8-11[5]
September 7, 1993 Mark Whiten St. Louis Cardinals NL Cincinnati Reds 15-2[6]
May 2, 2002 Mike Cameron Seattle Mariners AL Chicago White Sox 15-4[7]
May 23, 2002 Shawn Green Los Angeles Dodgers NL Milwaukee Brewers 16-3[8]
September 25, 2003 Carlos Delgado Toronto Blue Jays AL Tampa Bay Devil Rays 10-8[9]

[edit] Notes

  • Lowe hit his four in a span of three innings at the Congress Street Grounds, which had a short left field distance. All of Lowe's drives were hit to left: two in the 3rd, one in the 5th, and one in the 6th. After hitting his fourth, the crowd went crazy and threw $160 in silver onto the field. [10] He hit a weak single in his final at-bat, which drew some laughter from the crowd, which he admitted must have seemed funny after his earlier display of power.
  • Lowe, Gehrig, Colavito, Schmidt, Cameron and Delgado hit their four home runs in consecutive at bats.
  • Lowe had only 71 home runs over 18 years in the big leagues. Seerey had only 86 home runs in seven seasons. Delahanty had four home runs in one game in 1896 and only nine the rest of that season, to lead the league that year.
  • Klein, Seerey and Schmidt needed extra innings to get four home runs.
  • Delahanty's home runs were either all inside-the-park or two of each at the spacious West Side Park—accounts vary, but in either case he is the only one that had any inside-the-park home runs as part of a four-home-run game). According to the account in Warren Brown's history of the Chicago Cubs, when Delahanty came to bat after having already hitting three homers, Chicago centerfielder Bill Lange called time and made somewhat of a show of positioning himself in extremely deep center. This drew some chuckles from the crowd, but Delahanty's inside-the-park drive to center still eluded Lange, while Delahanty circled the bases for his fourth homer of the day.
  • Gehrig hit a deep fly in his final at-bat that narrowly missed being a fifth home run. The centerfielder made a running catch with his back to the plate. The center field corner at Shibe Park was about 470 feet from the plate at that time, so if the ball had been over the centerfielder's head, writers speculated that it could have gone for an inside-the-park home run and Gehrig's fifth four-bagger of the day.[11]
  • Adcock hit a double off the top of the wall in his second at bat that narrowly missed being a fifth home run. His 18 total bases in a nine-inning game was a major league record until Shawn Green broke it during his four-homer game.
  • Horner's and Delahanty's home runs came in losing efforts.
  • Whiten's home runs drove in 12 runs, which also tied him (with Jim Bottomley) for the major league record for most RBIs in a game. His feat came in the second game of a doubleheader. Whiten was 0-4 in the first game but drove in the go-ahead run with a bases-loaded walk in the eight inning. His 13 RBIs for the day tied the MLB record for a doubleheader set by Nate Colbert.
  • All four of Cameron's home runs were solo shots, and each was hit before the sixth inning.
  • Green also doubled and singled, going 6-for-6 and setting a single-game record of 19 total bases.
  • Cameron and Green are the only pair of players to hit four home runs in a single game in the same year (in fact, only three weeks apart).
  • Gehrig, Seerey, Colavito, Cameron, and Delgado all share the American League record of 16 total bases in one game.
  • Cameron flied out to the warning track in his final at bat of the game.[12]
  • Delgado's first in his four was his 300th career home run.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Retrosheet Boxscore: Milwaukee Braves 15, Brooklyn Dodgers 7
  2. ^ Retrosheet Boxscore: Cleveland Indians 11, Baltimore Orioles 8
  3. ^ Retrosheet Boxscore: San Francisco Giants 14, Milwaukee Braves 4
  4. ^ Retrosheet Boxscore: Philadelphia Phillies 18, Chicago Cubs 16
  5. ^ Retrosheet Boxscore: Montreal Expos 11, Atlanta Braves 8
  6. ^ Retrosheet Boxscore: St. Louis Cardinals 15, Cincinnati Reds 2 (2)
  7. ^ Retrosheet Boxscore: Seattle Mariners 15, Chicago White Sox 4
  8. ^ Retrosheet Boxscore: Los Angeles Dodgers 16, Milwaukee Brewers 3
  9. ^ Retrosheet Boxscore: Toronto Blue Jays 10, Tampa Bay Devil Rays 8
  10. ^ Suehsdorf, A. D. (1978). The Great American Baseball Scrapbook, p. 14. Random House. ISBN 0-394-50253-1.
  11. ^ Suehsdorf, A. D. (1978). The Great American Baseball Scrapbook, p. 14. Random House. ISBN 0-394-50253-1.
  12. ^ With 4 homers, Cameron crows
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