The names that highlighted the New York Yankees’ offense in a 6-3 win over Toronto in the Stadium on July 3, 2017, could be referred to as the usual suspects, but the manner of their production was a bit different.
Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez each scored after stroking back-to-back singles in both the first and eighth innings. Three of the team’s six runs scored on a bases-loaded hit by pitch, then walk in the first, and an error in the four-run eighth, the frame that featured the team’s only run-scoring hit, a Chase Headley two-run double.
Masahiro Tanaka was superb, with eight punch outs, just five hits, and one (unearned) run over seven. It was Block Party night, with lots of free food specials and autograph opportunities of former and current players for early-arriving fans before the game.
Bob Meusel and Babe Ruth homered back to back and Carl Mays won his 22nd straight vs. the Athletics in a 12-1 victory on this day in 1922, but the most memorable stat on the day was Meusel hitting for the cycle for the second time in his career.
On July 3 1966, Mickey Mantle, tacking onto a streak he had begun the day before, hit his third home run in consecutive at bats for the second time in the same week, when he went yard in the first and the Yanks took a 5-0 lead over the Senators. But it took Bobby Richardson‘s 11th-inning home run to close out the Yankee 6-5 victory.
Joe Torre let Andy Pettitte throw 143 pitches in a 3-2 win over the Orioles in Yankee Stadium on July 3, 1998. Chad Curtis knotted the game at two with a fourth-inning home run, and the Yankee left fielder also scored the winner in the bottom of the ninth on Scott Brosius‘s single off Jesse Orosco.