This Date in Baseball
(April 17
1892 In the first Sunday game in National League history, Cincinnati defeated St. Louis 5-1.
1924 Baby Doll Jacobson of the St. Louis Browns hit for the cycle in a 6-3 loss at the Chicago White Sox.
1932 New York first baseman Bill Terry tied an NL record with 21 putouts as the Giants beat Boston 5-0 behind Hal Schumacher’s two-hitter.
1951 In his first major league game, Mickey Mantle went 1-for-4 as the New York Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox 5-0.
1953 Mickey Mantle cleared the bleachers at Griffith Stadium with a 565-foot home run off Chuck Stobbs. The shot came in the fifth inning of a 7-3 win over the Senators.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2015 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.