August 15

2018 – Jose Urena of the Marlins decides that the only way to stop Ronald Acuna, who has led off his last three games with a homer and has homered in five straight, is to hit him with his first pitch of the game. He plunks the Braves’ 20-year-old budding superstar on the elbow, prompting a bench-clearing brawl. Urena is immediately ejected, as is Braves manager Brian Snitker. Most commentators call for exemplary punishment for a stupid gesture that even manager Don Mattingly refuses to defend. The Braves go on to win again, 5 – 2, but Acuna has to leave in the 2nd inning with a bad bruise. Urena will be suspended six games and fined an undisclosed amount for his antics.

2015 – The Red Sox put up a football score in defeating the Mariners, 22 – 10, at Fenway Park. The two teams combine for 7 homers and 39 hits. The Red Sox chase Felix Hernandez with 10 runs in 2 1/3 innings, then both teams go wild in their last two turns at bat, with 7 runs for Boston and 8 for Seattle. Jackie Bradley has a game for the ages, with 3 doubles, 2 homers, 5 runs and 7 RBIs, while Blake Swihart has 4 hits, 4 runs and 3 RBIs and Xander Bogaerts also has 4 hits. Lost in all the scoring, Boston starter Wade Miley has a solid game, giving up only 2 runs in 7 innings to earn the win. The Sox are the first big league team to have 15 runs and 20 hits in back-to-back games since they had done so in 1950, while the Mariners allow the most runs in team history.

The Tampa Bay Rays shut out the Yankees, 5 – 0, behind Alex Cobb, to reach the .500 mark at 62-62. What is remarkable is that they were 18 games below .500 on June 10th, making them only the fourth team in history to return to parity from such a deficit. The 1899 Louisville Colonels were 22 games below before reaching .500 for the all-time record.

Mo’ne Davis of Philadelphia, PA strikes out eight in a two-hitter to beat Nashville, TN, 4 – 0, in the 2014 Little League World Series. She is the first girl to throw a shutout at a Little League World Series. Sports Illustrated will make her the first Little Leaguer to appear on its cover as a result.

2013 – At the quarterly owners meeting held in Cooperstown, NY, Commissioner Bud Selig announces a plan to expand video review, which is now limited to home runs, significantly. Under the proposal, a manager will have the right to request up to three reviews per game – one in the first six innings and two in the last three – and will not otherwise be allowed to argue such “reviewable” calls. A number of decisions will remain non-reviewable, however. The plan still needs to be fleshed out, in particular by defining which calls are reviewable and which are not, before being submitted for formal approval at the next winter meetings. The Player’s Union and Umpires Association will also need to agree to the changes.

A proposal that would dramatically increase the number of plays that can be reviewed during a game is presented at the quarterly Owners Meetings by a committee consisting of Braves president John Schuerholz and former major league skippers Joe Torre and Tony La Russa. The rule change, which will be formally voted on by the owners in November, will allow a manager to inform an umpire that he wants to initiate a play review, with challenges being permitted once in the first six innings and twice more from the seventh through the end of the game, without any provision to cover the possibility of an obviously missed call late in the game when all of a team’s challenges have been used.

At Petco Park, Jason Isringhausen becomes the 23rd major league pitcher to record 300 career saves when the Mets defeat San Diego in 10 innings, 5-4. The 38 year-old right-handed closer is the third pitcher, along with John Franco (1996) and Billy Wagner (2006), to achieve his 300th save wearing a Mets uniform.