1927: With the score tied 2-2 in the eighth, Mark Koenig triples and Babe Ruth hits home run № 60 off Tom Zachary for a 4-2 win. In the ninth, Walter Johnson makes
his final appearance as a player. He pinch-hits for Zachary and flies
out to Ruth. Ruth hits 17 homers in September, the highest month's home
run output until Rudy York's 18 in August 1937.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1927/B09300NYA1927.htm 1934: Babe Ruth is hitless in his final game in a Yankee uniform. 1947:
At the Stadium, the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers play the first
World Series game broadcast on television. Frank 'Spec' Shea gets the
start for the Bombers, and 21-year-old Ralph Branca of the Dodgers
becomes the youngest pitcher ever to start a Series opener. Shea and the
home side win 5-3.
1953: The Yankees defeat the Dodgers 9-5 in the first game of the World Series. Carl Erskine is ineffective, walking the first 3 batters, who then score on a Hank Bauer triple. The Dodgers tie it up 5-5, and Clem Labine gets the loss in relief.
1960: The Yankees beat the Red Sox 6-5, and set a new AL record for homers with 192. Tony Kubek and Jesse Gonder hit the homers today as the Bombers win their 13th straight.
1970:
The Yankees finish their best season in 6 years, as Fritz Peterson's
20th win of the campaign gives the Bombers their 93rd. The Red Sox are
the 4-3 losers.
1971: With the Yankees in town, the Washington Senators draw 14,000 for their final home game, with another 4,000 crashing the gate. Dick Bosman gives up homers to Bobby Murcer, Roy White and Rusty Torres, and the Nats are down 5 - 1 in the 6th. Mike Kekichthen grooves a fastball for Frank Howard, who launches his 26th homer, and thanks Thurman Munson as
he crosses the plate. The Senators take a 7-5 lead, and after Murcer
makes the 2nd out in the 9th, fans swarm onto the field, causing the
game to be forfeited to the Yanks 9-0. All records stand but reliever Paul Lindblad loses the win by not recording the third out, batter Horace Clarke. Of the Senators, Jeff Burroughs will be the last to retire, finishing up in 1985.
1920: Babe Ruth hits his major league record 54th home run on the last day of the season. Only one other team in the AL will hit more than 44 homers. 1927: Babe Ruth ties his own home run record with № 59 of the year.
1928: Though the Yankees wind up on the losing end, 19-10, they combine with the Tigers for an AL record 45 hits in a 9 inning game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Jackson_(baseball) 1951: Allie Reynolds pitches his second no-hitter of the season as the Yankees defeat the Red Sox 8-0 in the opener of a doubleheader. The Yankees clinch their third straight AL pennant with an 11-3 victory in the nightcap.
1920: Carl Mays and the Yankees beat the A's 3-0, as Mays allows just four hits. It is his 3rd straight shutout of Philadelphia and his 10th straight win against them. Babe Ruth drives in all the runs on a pair of homers over the RF fence off Eddie Rommel, his 52nd and 53rd homers of the campaign. He hits two other liners to left and center that are close to the wall.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1920/B09270PHA1920.htm 1927: Babe Ruthconnects for a grand slam off Lefty Grove, while Lou Gehrig hits No. 46 in a 7-4 win over the A's. Ruth has 57 with three games to play. The grand slam is the Babe's second in three days.
1931: Lou Gehrig hits a home run to tie Babe Ruth at 46 while the Yankees pound Lefty Grove 13-1, denying him his 32nd victory. Grove throws just three innings in the A's warmup for the World Series. Gehrig
drives in two runs as he (184) and Ruth (163) combine to drive in 347
runs for the year, the most productive duo in history. Bill Dickeyhas four hits and ends the year with no passed balls, the only AL catcher to do so, while the Yankees are the only AL team to ever accomplish the feat.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1931/B09270NYA1931.htm 1998: Topping Tampa Bay 8-3, the Yankees win
their seventh straight game to end the season with a .704 winning
percentage. The Bronx Bombers (114-48) become the first team since the 1954 Indians (111-43) to play over .700 ball for an entire season.
2009: The Yankees are assured of the best record in the American League after a 4-2 win over the
Red Sox. Andy Pettitte picks up the win, and once again Mariano Rivera
gets the save, in New York's 100th win of the year. The Bombers finish 9-9 against their divisional rivals, after dropping the first 8 contests between the two teams.
1921: Babe Ruth hits
home runs number 57 and 58 plus a double and a walk to beat the Indians
8-7, increasing the Yankee lead in the pennant race to two games.
George Burns (below) adds
a triple and three singles for New York in the come-from-behind win.
The Indians load the bases in the 9th inning but Steve O'Neill strikes out on a Carl Mays fastball in the dirt to end it.
1961: In
the Yankees' 159th game, Roger Maris rips a Jack Fisher fastball into
the short porch in right at the Stadium for his 60th home run of the
season. New York beat Baltimore 3-2, though there are fewer than 8,000
fans on hand to witness the historic event.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1961/B09260NYA1961.htm 1964: Behind rookie Mel Stottlemyre's two-hitter, the Yankees roll over the Senators 7-0 for
their 11th win in a row. Stottlemyre leads the offense with a major
league record-tying five hits, the last pitcher to collect that many and
just the 8th pitcher this century to do so (Jim Callahan of the White Sox did it twice). With a single in his last at bat in his last game, he has had six hits in a row.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B09260WS21964.htm 1997: Four Yankee pitchers combine to one-hit the Tigers for an 8-2 win. Andy Pettitte starts and allows a two-run single to Travis Fryman in the 3rd inning, giving Detroit a 2-1 lead. Pettitte leaves after four frames and is succeeded by Brian Boehringer (3 innings), Mariano Rivera(1 inning), and Jeff Nelson(1 inning). Rivera receives credit for the win when New York explode for six runs in the 9th inning.
1998: The Yankees defeat the Devil Rays 3-1, giving David Cone his 20th win of the year. Cone sets a record for the most years (10) between 20-win seasons, having last won 20 for the Mets in 1988. Jim Kaat held the previous record at 9. Shane Spencer homers, his 6th in nine days and his 7th in the month, a Yankee rookie record.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1998/B09260NYA1998.htm 2008: The Yankees thrash the Red Sox 19-8 on a rainy night at Fenway. Back-up shortstop Cody Ransomhits two homers, while Robinson Cano drives in 5 runs and Brett Gardner 4 more in the rout. Boston's loss means that Tampa Bay officially clinches the AL East division title. It is the first time since 1997 that neither Boston nor New York has won the AL East. The Rays had never won 70 games in a season before this year.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2008/B09260BOS2008.htm 2009: CC Sabathia wins his 19th game, giving up one hit in seven innings in a 3-0 Yankee victory over Boston. Newly-appointed Supreme Court judge Sonia Sotomayor, a lifelong Yankee fan better known in baseball circles for her ruling that ended the 1994-95 strike, throws the ceremonial first pitch to Jose Molina.
1921: At the Polo Grounds, the Yankees thrash the 2nd-place Indians 21-7 to move a full game ahead of the Tribe. The Yanks chase Ray Caldwell in the 2nd and dust Duster Mails for 10 runs in his two innings. Carl Mays goes the distance for the win.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1921/B09250NYA1921.htm 1926: The Yankees take two from the Browns to clinch their fourth AL pennant, winning the opener 10-2 behind Herb Pennock. Babe Ruth's grand slam is the big blow. In the nitecap, Lou Gehrig homers in the 3rd inning off Milt Gaston, while Ruth matches him with a two-run home run in the 6th off Win Ballou. Ruth adds a solo shot in the 9th, his 46th, off Joe Giard to seal Waite Hoyt's 10-4 victory. Despite the score, the game is played in a new AL record 55 minutes.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1926/B09251SLA1926.htm https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1926/B09252SLA1926.htm 1929: At Fenway Park, the game is halted during in the 5th inning as the umpires call time-out and have players from the Yankees and Red Sox gather at home plate. Bill McGowan, a respected arbiter, informs the teams that Bronx Bomber manager Miller Huggins has just died in New York and asks the crowd to stand for one minute of silence as the flag in center field is lowered to half-staff.
1934: Lou Gehrigplays his 1,500th consecutive game, a 5-0 shutout of the A's. His 48th homer is a career high.
1949: Despite 71 injuries that kept players out of games, Casey Stengel and his Yankees have been in first place all season. But today the Red Sox move into a tie for first place with a 4-1 victory over Allie Reynolds. Ted Williams hits his 43rd homer, and Mel Parnell wins his 25th game of the season. The lefty is 16-3 at Fenway Park this year. Joe DiMaggio listens
to the game from a hospital, bedridden with pneumonia. The Yankees
return to New York and are greeted at Grand Central Station by a huge
crowd of fans, including Mrs. Babe Ruth, who predicts, "Whoever wins
tomorrow should go all the way."
1960:
The Yankees clinch their 25th pennant with a 4-3 victory over the Red
Sox, Ralph Terry getting the win, and Luis Arroyo the save. It is Casey
Stengel's 10th pennant in 12 years at New York.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1960/B09250BOS1960.htm 1962: Whitey Ford beats Washington 8-3, as the Yankees clinch their 27th pennant in franchise history. Ralph Houk becomes the 5th manager to capture pennants in each of his first two seasons.
1968: In Mickey Mantle's last appearance at Yankee Stadium, he slices a two-out 1st-inning single off Cleveland's Luis Tiant, the only hit for the home side. Tiant tosses his 9th shutout of the year, tops in the AL, to win 3-0.
1985: Rickey Henderson steals his 75th base of the season in the Yankees' 10-2 win over Detroit, breaking the club record of 74 set by Fritz Maisel in 1914.
1990: The Yankees tie
a major league record when their first eight batters all hit safely on
the way to a 15-3 rout of the Orioles. Anthony Telford allows the first six hits to take the loss. The Yanks hit six homers in the game, including Kevin Maas' 20th.
1996: The Yankees clinch the AL East title by pounding out 20 hits in a 19-2 win over the Brewersin
the opening game of a doubleheader. The Bombers score 10 runs in the
2nd inning after plating four in the opening frame. Tino Martinezleads the attack with five RBI, and David Cone (7-2) is the easy winner. New York also take the nitecap 6-2.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1998/B09250NYA1998.htm 2014: In his final home game, Derek Jeter provides a storybook ending with an opposite-field, game-ending single in the bottom of the 9th that gives the Yankees a 6-5win over the Orioles. His hit off Evan Meeksends pinch runner Antoan Richardson racing home from second base, after David Robertson had given up three runs in the top of the inning to tie the score, making Captain Clutch's final heroic moment possible.
