Scroll Down to Read Today’s Essay

Subscribe to Baseball History Comes Alive for automatic updates (sign-up block found in right side-bar)

As a Free Bonus for subscribing, you’ll get instant access to my two Special Reports: Memorable World Series Moments and Gary’s Handy Dandy World Series Reference Guide!

“Players Who Hit Two Grand Slams In One Game” Photo Gallery
Click on any image below to see photos in full size and to start Photo Gallery:

More Fun With Baseball Rarities:

Two Grand Slams in One Game!

I always enjoy trying to uncover rarities that occur on the baseball field. In the past, I’ve written about perfect games, unassisted triple plays, four home runs in a game, and cycles (including natural cycles and even reverse natural cycles). These are some of the rarest feats in the game.

Some of you may remember my recent post about “immaculate innings” in which I learned that only two players in baseball history have three “immaculate innings”: Sandy Koufax and Chris Sale. With only two players achieving this, you’d have to conclude it’s pretty rare.

How rare is it?

According to Baseball-Reference, there have been approximately 3.9 million innings over 145 seasons since the founding of the National League in 1876. So two divided by 3.9 million comes to .0000005. In other words, the chances of a pitcher throwing three immaculate innings in his career are five one-hundred-thousandths of one percent!

I Found Something Even Rarer!

But hold on…I think I’ve uncovered something even rarer, something that’s only happened once. Want to guess what that might be? Try two grand slams in the same inning!

That’s right… Cardinals’ third baseman Fernando Tatis, Sr. is the only player in

baseball history to have hit two grand slams in the same inning. His historic performance occurred in the third inning of a game between the Cardinals and the Dodgers played at Dodger Stadium on April 23, 1999 in front of 46,687 fans. Remarkably, he hit them off the same pitcher, the Dodgers’ Chan Ho Park. Again, using 3.9 million innings as the total innings, one occurrence comes to .0000002, or two one-hundred-thousandths of one percent!

Fernando Tatis, Sr. is the only player to hit two in one inning, but a total of 13 players have hit two in one game, making this also an extremely rare achievement. Dividing 3.9 million innings by 9.5 (to account for extra-inning games), we get approximately 410,526 games played. So two grand slams in one game happen approximately once every 31,579 games.  

The first player to do it was Tony Lazzeri on May 24, 1936 (pictured above), and the last was Josh Willingham, on July 27, 2009, 12 years ago. 

Here’s the names of all the players who have hit two grand slams in one game: Tony Lazzeri (May 24, 1936), Jim Tabor (July 4, 1939), Rudy York (July 27, 1946), Jim Gentile (May 9, 1961), Tony Cloninger (July 3, 1966), Jim Northrup (June 24, 1968), Frank Robinson (June 26, 1970), Robin Ventura (September 4, 1995), Chris Hoiles (August 14, 1998), Fernando Tatis (April 23, 1999), Nomar Garciaparra (May 10, 1999), Bill Mueller (July 29, 2003), Josh Willingham (July 27, 2009).  

Some Interesting Trivia About Two Grand Slams In One Game

Since we’re all baseball fans, that means we enjoy useless trivia…so take a guess what I have for you here:

• In Tony Lazzeri’s game, he also hit another home run and just missed a fourth, giving him 11 RBIs for the game, an American League record that still stands.
• Only nine times in history has a player hit a grand slam and then come up again with the bases loaded in the same inning. Carl Furillo is the only
  

  Carl Furillo came to bat twice with the bases loaded in the same inning

  player in history to come to bat twice in that situation. Both times he made an out.

• In Tatis’s game, he also set a major league record for eight RBIs in a single inning.
• Tony Cloninger is the only pitcher to have done it.
• Bill Mueller, a switch hitter, is the only player to hit his from both sides of the plate.
• Jim Northup is the only player to hit his on consecutive pitches in the fifth and sixth innings.
• Surprisingly, Nomar Garciaparra is the only player to hit his at home (Fenway Park). All the others have been hit on the road.
• Robin Ventura hit more career grand slams than any player in the group (18), while Frank Robinson is the only member of the 500 home run club.

To read more about just how rare this feat of hitting two grand slams in the same inning is, here’s an article by Andrew Simon from MLB.com that talks about it.

I think we can all agree that hitting two grand slams in a single game is a baseball oddity, but hitting two in one inning maybe baseball’s rarest feat of all!

Gary Livacari 

Information: Excerpts edited from Two Grand Slams in a Game Wikipedia page; and from article by Andrew Simon