This date in baseball

APRIL 5

1913 Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field hosted its first game, an exhibition. Before a crowd of 25,000, the Dodgers beat the Giants 3-2. Casey Stengel hit a an inside-thepark home run for Brooklyn.

1971 In their last opening day, the Senators, behind pitcher Dick Bosman, beat the Oakland A’s 8-0 before 45,000 fans at RFK Stadium.

1972 For the first time in Major League Baseball history, the regular season fails to open due to the player strike which started on April 1. 86 games will be lost before the labor dispute is settled.

1979 Baltimore Manager Earl Weaver got his 1,000th career victory when the Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox.

1983 The San Diego Padres beat the San Francisco Giants 16-13 in the highest-scoring opening day game in 50 years. Winning pitcher Tim Lollar also drove in three runs.

1993 The expansion Florida Marlins won their first game, 6-3 over the Los Angeles Dodgers, at Joe Robbie Stadium. The new Colorado Rockies lost to the Mets 3-0 in New York.

1998 Andy Benes pitched seven strong innings and Matt Williams had three hits and an RBI to lead Arizona to its first victory, a 3-2 victory over San Francisco. The Diamondbacks (1-5) had the second longest season-opening losing streak for an expansion team in its first season.

2003 Kansas City became the first major league team to start 5-0 after a 100-loss season.

2004 Carlos Beltran of Kansas City and Shannon Stewart of Minnesota combined to set a record. For the first time in modern history, two players hit game-winning home runs on the same day. The Royals beat the Chicago White Sox 9-7, while the Twins overcame the Cleveland Indians 7-4 in 11 innings. The Royals also were the first team since 1901 to recover from a ninth-inning deficit of four runs on opening day.

2005 The Washington Nationals, formerly known as the Montreal Expos, lost their inaugural season opener to Philadelphia 8-4.

2012 J.P. Arencibia’s three-run home run in the 16th inning sent the Toronto Blue Jays to a 7-4 victory over the Cleveland Indians in the longest opening-day game in major league history. The marathon eclipsed the previous longest openers — 15 innings between Cleveland and Detroit in 1960 and 15 innings between Philadelphia and Washington in 1926.

2021 38,238 paying spectators make their way to Globe Life Field for the Rangers’ home opener, a 6 - 2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. Because of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, it is the first time fans are allowed to a regular season game since the ballpark opened a year ago, and the first sporting event to be held without attendance restrictions anywhere in the U.S. since the start of the health crisis.