It was on this day in 1984 that
Toronto Blue Jays’ designated hitter/first baseman, Cliff Johnson, came off the
bench to hit a pinch hit homerun—the 20th time he had gone deep
while pinch hitting in his career, to set a Major League record.
The Blue Jays were in Baltimore
to play the Orioles at Memorial Stadium. Baltimore had jumped to a 2-0 lead but
Toronto had gone ahead with three runs in the top of the seventh. After the O’s
had tied it in the bottom of the seventh, the Jays came to bat with designated
hitter, Willie Aikens, scheduled to be the lead-off hitter.
Blue Jays’ manager, Bobby Cox,
sent Johnson—a right-handed hitter—to face the Orioles’ left-hander, Tippy
Martinez. Johnson’s pinch hit homer would be the final run of the game as the
Jays beat Baltimore by a final score of 4-3.
While Johnson would never hit
another home run in a pinch-hitting role during the rest of his career, his MLB
record would stand for nearly a quarter of a century when Canadian-born Matt
Stairs (who played for the Jays for a few years during his career) surpassed
the total in 2010. (More to come on the Matt Stairs homer later in the month).
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