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This Day In Sports…April 30, 1961, 65 years ago today:
I listened to this game on a transistor radio in my formative years. Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants joins another elite club—those who have hit four home runs in a single game. Mays did it against the Braves at County Stadium in Milwaukee, with a couple of ‘em going over the head of future home run king Hank Aaron. The “Say Hey Kid” got it going right out of the gate, clubbing a solo home run in the first inning. Mays then went yard again in the third, sixth and eighth innings, driving in eight runs and collecting 16 total bases.
Mays reportedly was fighting a food poisoning episode all day due to some kind of snack he had eaten the night before, but he literally powered through it. According to a story at MLB.com, he told Giants manager Alvin Dark in the morning that he couldn’t play—until teammate Joey Amalfitano showed Mays his new bat and let him try it out during batting practice. Mays proceeded to hit every pitch over the wall during the practice session, and he decided to go for it.
Mays still ranks sixth on the career home run list with 660, trailing only his godson Barry Bonds, Aaron, Babe Ruth, Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez. Interestingly enough, Aaron hit two home runs himself that afternoon in Milwaukee. But none of those ahead of Mays ever hit four in one game. There have now been 21 players in MLB history who have accomplished the feat, but Mays is one of only six Hall of Famers to do it, joining (in chronological order) Ed Delahanty, Lou Gehrig, Chuck Klein, Gil Hodges and Mike Schmidt.
Entering the 2025 season, there hadn’t been a four-homer game in the majors since 2017. But incredibly, it happened three times last year. Eugenio Suarez of the Arizona Diamondbacks knocked four out against Atlanta in April, Nick Kurtz of the A’s became the first rookie ever to accomplish the feat in July, and former Boise Hawk Kyle Schwarber joined them in August. Schwarber had the rare opportunity to be the first ever to slug five homers in a game, but he popped out in his final at-bat.
(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.)
