Let’s go back in time!
MLB History
1972: Roberto Clemente’s final home run comes on his final swing during a batting demonstration in front of “300 admiring kids during a baseball clinic at the town of Aguadilla,” reports United Press International, according to whom Clemente hits “the fifth pitch about 350 feet out of left field at the local park.” Clemente’s fellow Pirate and fellow Puerto Rican Fernando Gonzalez is on hand and his recollections will later be recorded by Clemente biographer Kal Wagenheim: “That day in Aguadilla, he spent the whole afternoon under the sun – giving a clinic for the kids. At one point he was giving batting pointers, and there was a kid – about eighteen years old – pitching to him. The people in the stands kept yelling, ‘Roberto, bet you can’t hit a homer!’ Finally, on the last pitch, he smacked the ball right out of the stadium. He gave the kid the bat as a souvenir, and somebody else got the ball. Afterward, they erected a small monument to mark the spot where the ball fell. I think that was the last time Roberto swung a bat, and he hit a home run.”
2012: OF Hideki Matsui announces his retirement at a press conference in New York, NY. He had hit .304 with 332 home runs as a three-time MVP during his prime in Japan, then added 175 homers, a World Series MVP award and a .282 average winding down his career in the US.
2020: Stories circulate that the Rays have traded former Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell to the Padres in return for four prospects. Snell was at the center of the most controversial play of the most recent postseason when Rays manager Kevin Cash took him out of a dominating start against the Dodgers in Game 6 of the World Series, only to see his bullpen cough up the lead and the game in short order, giving the Dodgers the title.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: In order to make it worth your while, here’s a clip from the 2020 NLCS (before, you know, things went poorly for the Atlanta Braves)]: