Baseball
- 16 January – Former Yankees teammates Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Mantle becomes only the seventh player to make it in his first try. His 536 home runs with the Yankees ranked second only to Babe Ruth and he played in more games (2,401) than any other pinstriper, including Lou Gehrig. Ford was arguably the greatest Yankees pitcher of all time, retiring with more wins (236), more innings (3,171), more strikeouts (1,956), and more shutouts (45) than anyone in club history.
- Frank Robinson becomes the first African-American manager in Major League Baseball.
- 8 April – Hank Aaron hit home run# 715 in the fourth inning off Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing breaking Babe Ruth's career home run record.
- 4 June – The Cleveland Indians hosted "Ten Cent Beer Night", but had to forfeit the game to the Texas Rangers due to drunken and unruly fans.
- World Series – Oakland Athletics win 4 games to 1 over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
- 14 October – Shigeo Nagashima, a well known sports player from Japan, retires from the Yomiuri Giants of Tokyo, after a 17-year baseball player career.
Read more about this topic: 1974 In Sports
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“When Dad can’t get the diaper on straight, we laugh at him as though he were trying to walk around in high-heel shoes. Do we ever assist him by pointing out that all you have to do is lay out the diaper like a baseball diamond, put the kid’s butt on the pitcher’s mound, bring home plate up, then fasten the tapes at first and third base?”
—Michael K. Meyerhoff (20th century)
“Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceiling one afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)