This Week in MLB History: Looking Back on Shawn Green's Career Day in 2002

 

Welcome to "This Week in Baseball History," a new feature on B/R's Horsehide Chronicles blog meant to get you up to speed on baseball trivia. The game of baseball has provided us with a ton of memories since it was born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1846, and this is where those memories will be revisited.

Please note that we're defining "this week" to be within a couple days on either side of today's date.

A couple weeks ago, baseball fans could only watch in awe as Texas Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton blasted four home runs and racked up eight RBI in a game against the Baltimore Orioles.

While we watched in awe, Shawn Green probably yawned. Once upon a time, he had done the exact same thing, except better.

The four-homer game is one of the rarest feats in baseball. There have been only 16 four-homer games in MLB history, and Green achieved the greatest of the bunch back on May 23, 2002.

Green's Los Angeles Dodgers were in Milwaukee to play the Brewers that day, and it became clear early on that it was a good day for hitting. This was good news for the Dodgers, and not-so-good news for Brewers starting pitcher Glendon Rusch.

Green's day started modestly, as his first at-bat resulted in an RBI double down the right field line that scored Cesar Izturis to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead. If you're scoring from home, that's two total bases.

Green came to bat again in the second inning, this time blasting a three-run home run off of Rusch to stretch L.A.'s lead to 6-1. That's six total bases.

In the top of the fourth, Green led off with a solo home run off of Brian Mallette. That's 10 total bases.

In the top of the fifth, Green hit another solo home run off Mallette—14 total bases.

In the top of the eighth, Green singled off Jose Cabrera—15 total bases.

In the top of the ninth, Adrian Beltre, Green and Dave Hansen hit consecutive home runs off Cabrera.

That made it 19 total bases for Green, a new major league record for a single game.

All told, Green went 6-for-6 with four home runs, a double and a single. He scored six runs and drove in seven.

In doing so, he upped his batting average from .238 to .265, his on-base percentage from .344 to .364, his slugging percentage from .396 to .494. His OPS jumped from .740 to .858.

And boy did he need those boosts. Green was mired in an awful slump heading into his magical four-homer game, and he said afterwards that the ball just happened to look a little different that day.

"The ball had been looking like a Ping-Pong ball," Green said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "Today, it probably looked like a softball."

From that point on, Green was dialed in. In 114 games the rest of the way, he hit .304/.402/.622 with 37 home runs and 90 RBI. He ended up finishing fifth in the National League MVP voting.

His record for total bases in a single game still stands. When Hamilton had his four-homer game, he only got to 18.

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