New York (AFP) – The New York Yankees made Major League Baseball history on Saturday with batters smashing home runs on the first three pitches their lineup faced. Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger, and Aaron Judge each smacked a homer off the first offering he saw from Milwaukee pitcher Nestor Corales, a former Yankee left-hander.
Austin Wells added a two-out homer to give the 27-time World Series champion Yankees their first four-homer inning since the club first took the field in 1903. In all, the Yankees crushed a team record nine homers off the Brewers in a 20-9 triumph at Yankee Stadium. Oswald Peraza came off the New York bench in the seventh inning and smashed a two-run blast for the record-setting homer, breaking the old Yankee mark of eight in one game, established in 1939 against the then-Philadelphia Athletics and matched in 2007 against the Chicago White Sox.
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Only twice before in MLB history had a team delivered nine homers in a single game. Toronto belted the MLB-record 10 homers in a game in 1987 against Baltimore, and Cincinnati belted nine homers against Philadelphia in 1999. Goldschmidt, Bellinger, and Judge also became the first Yankees to ever blast back-to-back-to-back homers to lead off a game.
Judge added a grand slam homer off Brewers relief pitcher Connor Thomas in the third inning and smashed a two-run homer in the fourth inning as the Yankees seized an 18-6 lead through six innings. Judge became just the fourth Yankee slugger with three homers in three or more career games, joining Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Alex Rodriguez. Gehrig had the only four-homer game in Yankees history in 1932 at Philadelphia.
The homers were the first with the Yankees for first baseman Goldschmidt, a former Arizona standout who played from 2019-2024 with St. Louis, and outfielder Bellinger, a former Los Angeles Dodger who was traded by the Chicago Cubs to the Yankees last December. Cortes, a Cuban-born American, was traded by the Yankees to Milwaukee last December for pitcher Devin Williams.
© 2024 AFP
