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4/24/1955: In the second game of a scheduled double-header, Dee Fondy and Harry Chiti of the Cubs both hit home runs off Reds pitcher Corky Valentine in the bottom of the second inning. The game was rained out in the bottom of the third inning with Chicago leading 3-0.

ByTom

4/24/1955: In the second game of a scheduled double-header, Dee Fondy and Harry Chiti of the Cubs both hit home runs off Reds pitcher Corky Valentine in the bottom of the second inning. The game was rained out in the bottom of the third inning with Chicago leading 3-0.

At Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium, the White Sox tie a modern major league mark for most runs scored by a single team in a game as they drub the A’s, 29-6. The Red Sox also scored 29 runs against the Browns in 1950.

ByTom

At Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium, the White Sox tie a modern major league mark for most runs scored by a single team in a game as they drub the A’s, 29-6. The Red Sox also scored 29 runs against the Browns in 1950.

Though the Brooklyn Dodgers take a 3 – 0 lead into the 8th inning, their 10-game winning streak ends as the New York Giants win, 5 – 4. Don Zimmer is called out at home plate on a squeeze play by Jackie Robinson that would have tied the game.

ByBaseball

Though the Brooklyn Dodgers take a 3 – 0 lead into the 8th inning, their 10-game winning streak ends as the New York Giants win, 5 – 4. Don Zimmer is called out at home plate on a squeeze play by Jackie Robinson that would have tied the game.

Brooklyn Dodgers beat Robin Roberts and the Philadelphia Phillies for their 10th consecutive victory

Brooklyn Dodgers beat Robin Roberts and the Philadelphia Phillies for their 10th consecutive victory

ByTom

1955 – At Ebbets Field, the Brooklyn Dodgers beat Robin Roberts and the Philadelphia Phillies, 14 – 4, for their 10th consecutive victory from the start of the season, setting a major league record that will last until 1981.

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4/20/1955: Felipe Montemayor of the Pirates hit a three-run home run (which would have been his first major league homer) off Giants pitcher Ruben Gomez in the bottom of the third inning. The game was rained out in the top of the fourth inning with Pittsburgh leading 3-0.

ByTom

4/20/1955: Felipe Montemayor of the Pirates hit a three-run home run (which would have been his first major league homer) off Giants pitcher Ruben Gomez in the bottom of the third inning. The game was rained out in the top of the fourth inning with Pittsburgh leading 3-0.

Roberto Clemente’s first major league home run – a 440- to 450-foot inside-the-parker off Giants southpaw Don Liddle – arrives three games into his big league career and it’s just his luck that it occurs in the one stadium that, due to its freakish configuration, could possibly have contained this blast, namely the Polo Grounds, that semi-rectangular oddity wherein 279- and 257-foot foul lines coexist with 455- and 449-foot power alleys. This first New York visit also has a deeper significance for Clemente since, in his third major league game, he’s playing on the same field with both his new mentor and role model, Willie Mays (alongside whom he was playing just two months earlier in Santurce), and his boyhood hero, Monte Irvin, whose winter ball career Clemente monitored religiously in the late 1940s and who, in the interim, has himself become both a teammate and something of a mentor to Mays.

Roberto Clemente’s first major league home run – a 440- to 450-foot inside-the-parker off Giants southpaw Don Liddle – arrives three games into his big league career and it’s just his luck that it occurs in the one stadium that, due to its freakish configuration, could possibly have contained this blast, namely the Polo Grounds, that semi-rectangular oddity wherein 279- and 257-foot foul lines coexist with 455- and 449-foot power alleys. This first New York visit also has a deeper significance for Clemente since, in his third major league game, he’s playing on the same field with both his new mentor and role model, Willie Mays (alongside whom he was playing just two months earlier in Santurce), and his boyhood hero, Monte Irvin, whose winter ball career Clemente monitored religiously in the late 1940s and who, in the interim, has himself become both a teammate and something of a mentor to Mays.

ByBaseball

Roberto Clemente’s first major league home run – a 440- to 450-foot inside-the-parker off Giants southpaw Don Liddle – arrives three games into his big league career and it’s just his luck that it occurs in the one stadium that, due to its freakish configuration, could possibly have contained this blast, namely the Polo Grounds, that semi-rectangular oddity wherein 279- and 257-foot foul lines coexist with 455- and 449-foot power alleys. This first New York visit also has a deeper significance for Clemente since, in his third major league game, he’s playing on the same field with both his new mentor and role model, Willie Mays (alongside whom he was playing just two months earlier in Santurce), and his boyhood hero, Monte Irvin, whose winter ball career Clemente monitored religiously in the late 1940s and who, in the interim, has himself become both a teammate and something of a mentor to Mays.

Roberto Clemente Debut

Roberto Clemente makes his major league debut for the Pittsburgh Pirates

ByThis Day in Baseball

On April 17, 1955, At Forbes Field, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 20-year-old rookie Roberto Clemente makes his major league debut, playing both ends of a doubleheader, ironically but perhaps fittingly, against the Brooklyn Dodgers, the team that first signed him but left him unprotected in the 1954 Rule V draft. In his first at-bat, the future Hall of Famer rifles one back through the originator, Johnny Podres, and…