The Night the Lights Came On

The Night the Lights Came On (1880)

Two teams of Boston department store clerks played nine innings on a hotel lawn near Nantasket Beach under three wooden towers, each 100 feet tall and strung with a dozen lamps. Jordan Marsh against R.H. White, the first baseball played under artificial light. The baseball was beside the point. An electric light company staged it to sell towns on lighting their streets, and the 300 people on the balconies came to see the glow. The players obliged with a 16 to 16 tie.

The Home Run That Wasn't (1918)

The war cut the season short, and Washington closed it with a doubleheader nobody took seriously by the eighth. The Philadelphia first baseman came in to pitch. Nick Altrock, a 41-year-old Senators coach, came up to hit. He lofted the soft pitch to right and jogged around the bases, skipping second and third entirely, and the umpire called him safe at home. Washington hit four home runs the whole season. That one led the club.

One Pitch From Perfect (1972)

Milt Pappas had retired 26 Padres in a row at Wrigley. Pinch-hitter Larry Stahl worked the count full. Pappas threw three straight sliders he swore caught the outside corner. Bruce Froemming called all three balls. Pappas raged at him from the mound, then got Garry Jestadt to pop out and finished the no-hitter anyway. He spent the rest of his life certain the perfect game had been taken from him, and Froemming spent his own insisting he called them exactly where they were.

Greenwell 9, Seattle 8 (1996)

Boston managed seven hits all game at the Kingdome. Mike Greenwell had four of them, and he drove in every run the Red Sox scored: a grand slam, a second homer, a double, and the go-ahead single in the tenth. The scoreboard graphic reading Greenwell 9, Seattle 8 was not a joke. It is still the record for most RBI by a man accounting for all of his team's runs. He died last October, and this is the night people bring up first.