BOISE, Idaho — THIS DAY IN SPORTS…August 22, 2007, 15 years ago today:
The Baltimore Orioles take a 3-0 lead in the fourth inning against the Texas Rangers at Camden Yards. Then all history breaks loose. The Rangers scored 30 unanswered runs to set a modern Major League record for scoring in a game, the first time in 110 years any team had reached that plateau. Texas had a nine-run inning and a 10-run inning, and Travis Metcalf and Marlon Byrd both hit grand slams. The Rangers scored more runs in that game than in their previous nine combined. Again, Rangers 30, Orioles 3. And it was the first game of a doubleheader.
Just two years ago, the Atlanta Braves broke the National League record with a 29-9 win over the Miami Marlins, getting three home runs and nine RBI from Adam Duvall. Two other American League teams have scored 29 runs in a game: the Chicago White Sox in 1955 and the Boston Red Sox in 1950. The 25-run threshold has been reached only 20 times in the majors since 1900.
The Toronto Blue Jays are tied for fifth in big league history with 28 runs — and that happened one month ago today. The Blue Jays were leading Boston 6-0 after three innings at Fenway Park when an inside-the-park grand slam by Toronto’s Raimel Tapia, the first in the majors in five years, broke the game wide open. The Jays scored four additional runs in the fourth, 11 more in the fifth, two in the sixth and one in the ninth. The final was 28-5, with the 28 runs allowed setting a new franchise record for the Red Sox.
Those inside-the-park grand slams are rare anywhere — I did something on them a few months ago. It’s worth mentioning this particular one by a Boise Hawk again. Tyler Colvin homered in five straight games for the Hawks near the end of the 2006 season. He hit six during that streak, one of them an extremely rare inside-the-park slam. (Colvin went on to play a six-year big league career with the Cubs, Rockies and Giants.)
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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