SCOREBOARD
Thursday, May 17
San Francisco at Houston (8:05 p.m. EDT). Giants rookie Tim Lincecum faces off against Astros ace Roy Oswalt.
STARS
Tuesday
-Dan Uggla, Marlins, hit two homers and had four RBIs to lead Florida past Pittsburgh 9-3.
-Edgar Renteria, Braves, hit two home runs in Atlanta’s 6-2 win over Washington.
-Carlos Ruiz, Phillies, hit a game-winning solo homer to lift Philadelphia over Milwaukee 4-3.
-Brendan Harris, Devil Rays, had four hits, including a game-winning RBI single in the 10th inning of Tampa Bay’s 4-3 win over Texas.
-Carlos Lee, Astros, hit two home runs, including a 10th inning walkoff shot, and Houston topped San Francisco 6-5.
-Ichiro Suzuki, Mariners, had his sixth five-hit game to lead Seattle over Los Angeles 11-3.
ONE SHY
Rafael Furcal has four hits in three straight games, one game shy of the major league record, following Los Angeles’ 9-7 win Tuesday night over St. Louis. He is the first to accomplish that feat since Marcus Giles did it for the Atlanta Braves in 2003. The major league record for consecutive four-hit games is four, set by Brooklyn’s Milt Stock in 1925.
GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION
Five years ago, Jesse Litsch was a bat boy for Tampa Bay, fetching lumber for current Baltimore players Chris Gomez and Aubrey Huff. On Tuesday night he pitched 8 2-3 innings against the Orioles to earn the win in his major league debut. Litsch gave up a first-inning run and allowed four hits in Toronto’s 2-1 win to become the first Blue Jays player to win his debut as a starter since Gustavo Chacin beat New York on September 20, 2004, at Yankee Stadium. Litsch’s effort was the longest outing ever by a Toronto player in his major league debut.
STREAKS
mpa Bay.
SNAPPED
Texas’ Mark Teixeira went 0-for-5 to snap a 12-game hitting streak in a 4-3 loss Tuesday night to Tampa Bay. … Washington had a four-game winning streak ended in a 6-2 loss to Atlanta. … The Braves snapped a two-game skid with the win. … The Cubs had been 0-for-17 with the bases loaded dating to April 30 before Aramis Ramirez’s sixth-inning grand slam in Chicago’s 10-1 win over New York. … Los Angeles snapped a 10-game losing streak to St. Louis with a 9-7 win.
SPEAKING
“We talked about it in the kitchen when we were eating dinner. It was, ‘Man, we don’t have that spark right now,’ and he said, ‘We’re not showing up to play.’ You go through spurts like that and for whatever reason we weren’t scoring any runs. We tried to get out of that as soon as possible.” – Florida second baseman Dan Uggla, on star pitcher Dontrelle Willis expressing his frustration after a 7-2 loss to Pittsburgh Monday night. The Marlins hit four home runs, two by Uggla, in a 9-3 win over the Pirates Tuesday night.
SEASONS
May 17
1925 – Cleveland’s Tris Speaker got his 3,000th career hit, off Tom Zachary, in a 2-1 loss to the Washington Senators.
1939 – The first baseball game on television was broadcast by W2XBS, an experimental station run by NBC in New York. Bill Stern handled the play-by-play as Princeton beat Columbia, 2-1, in 10 innings.
1945 – For the fourth time in four days, every American League game in the country was postponed by rain.
1961 – Roger Maris hit his first home run of the season at Yankee Stadium (fourth overall) on his way to a record 61.
1963 – Don Nottebart pitched Houston’s first no-hitter and the Colt .45s defeated the visiting Philadelphia Phillies 4-1.
1970 – Hank Aaron scratched out an infield single against Cincinnati’s Wayne Simpson to become the ninth player with 3,000 hits. The hit came in the nightcap of the Atlanta Braves’ doubleheader loss to the Reds in Cincinnati.
1977 – The Chicago Cubs hit seven home runs in beating the San Diego Padres 23-6 at Wrigley Field. Larry Biittner, Jerry Morales and Bobby Murcer hit consecutive home runs in the fifth for the Cubs.
1979 – Dave Kingman of the Cubs hit three home runs and Mike Schmidt of the Phillies hit two, and Philadelphia beat Chicago 23-22 in 10 innings at Wrigley Field. Bill Buckner had a grand slam and seven RBIs for Chicago. The game included 11 home runs and 50 hits.
1984 – Alan Wiggins of the San Diego Padres tied a National League record by stealing five bases in one game. He joined three others who have performed the feat – Dan McGann in 1904, Davey Lopes in 1974 and Lonnie Smith in 1982.
1992 – Toronto surpassed the 1-million mark in attendance earlier than any team in major league history. It took the Blue Jays 21 dates to draw 1,006,294. The previous record was shared by the 1991 Blue Jays and the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers.
1998 – David Wells pitched the 13th perfect game in modern major league history and the New York Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins 4-0.
2002 – Arizona’s Erubiel Durazo hit three home runs, a double and drove in nine runs as the Diamondbacks defeated Philadelphia 12-9.
Today’s birthdays: Jeremy Sowers 24; Nick Masset 25; Jose Guillen 31.