I'm afraid I have some bad news for the gentleman who recalled that Mike Kingery swatted a pair of homers for the Mariners against Toronto in 1989. According to his entry on the Retrosheet website, Kingery never hit multiple homers in any game during his three seasons in Seattle, and he never homered against Toronto at all during his entire career.
In fact, no single Mariner had a multi-homer game against the Jays that season, and the entire Seattle roster only managed to do it once, when Greg Briley and Edgar Martinez each connected on June 18th. Beyond that, the team hit just four other homers against Toronto, one each by Briley (again), Ken Griffey Jr., Dave Valle, and Omar Vizquel, none of which were hit in the same game.
Speaking of Briley, the Mariners had only seven multi-homer games that season, and you could win a few bar bets by knowing that the only player besides Griffey Jr. to have more than one of those games was the immortal Greg "29 Career Homers" Briley. He turned the trick on July 19th against Baltimore (both solo shots) and again on August 11th against the Whtie Sox (again, both solo shots).
Despite the fact that the team included such sluggers as Martinez, Jay Buhner, Alvin Davis and Jim Presley, none of them managed to post a multi-homer game, while Jeffrey Leonard, Darnell Coles and Henry Cotto each managed to do so.
Ah, baseball's a funky game.
» You can read more of Paul White's work at www.lostinleftfield.com.
Also by Paul White
» Left Field Gold Gloves - National League
» Left Field Gold Gloves
» A Case for the Hall of Fame
» Good Manners and Poor Logic: Brock Was No Gwynn
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: The Also Rans
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: Two Right Fielders
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: Slot #5, Rich Gossage
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot - The Starters I Left Behind
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: Slot #4, Jim Rice
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: Trammell & Smith
» My 2002 Hall of Fame Ballot: Slot #1, Gary Carter
» Happy Birthday Bob Elliott
» 3,000 Hits That Don't Belong in Cooperstown
» Frankie Frisch's Sad Legacy: The Cheapening of The Hall of Fame
» Babe's MVP Snubs
» The Schalk-Schang Redemption: Two Men Who Prove That The Hall of Fame Veterans Committee Was a Sham
» Being Tony Muser
» More submissions
Copyright © 2002 by Paul White. Posted May 8, 2002.
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