Baltimore’s Manny Machado joined an extremely short list in the game on Sunday, August 6, when he hit home runs in each if the first three innings. Before the All-Star infielder performed that rare hat trick against the Chicago White Sox, you have to look back eighty six years to find the only other player to ever accomplish that feat.
Perhaps it is appropriate that Machado achieved the feat while playing the White Sox, for it was a member of that very team who first hit three home runs in the first three innings. Carl Reynolds was an outfielder for Chicago back on July 2, 1930, the day he went deep in the first, second, and third innings.
Unlike Machado, who hit 35 home runs in 2015 and is on pace to reach forty this season, Reynolds was never really considered a power hitter. Even with the three he hit on July 2, Reynolds finished the 1930 season with 22 home runs. Only one other season in his twenty year career did he even reach double figures, and that was when he hit eleven the previous season.
Of his three home runs that day eighty seven years ago, two were of the inside the park variety. In addition to those Reynolds had two more hits, finishing the game five for six with eight runs batted in.
Just as impressive as the three homers in three innings is the fact that he did it against New York at Yankee Stadium, where the home team boasted three future Hall of Famers who had just two years before won the World Series. A player named Babe Ruth was in the outfield, and his teammate at first base was someone named Lou Gehrig. The other future Cooperstown inductee was pitcher Red Faber, the only New York hurler to get Reynolds out that day.
In spite of having three of the most famous players in baseball history on the field, the Yankees fell to Reynolds and the White Sox 15-4. Both Ruth and Gehrig went hitless, which could serve as a symbol for the Yankees in a season when they finished third in the American League.
The White Sox, other than the dominance in that game, fared even worse overall in 1930. Chicago finished second to last in the league, losing thirty more games than they won.
The club did have a bright future, however, since future a Hall of Famer Luke Appling was in his rookie season of what would be an illustrious career. They also had backup catcher Moe Berg, who after his baseball career would go on to be hired as a spy for the CIA.
Reynolds’s feat did not do much for the team’s hope of winning the championship, but Machado’s accomplishment nearly nine decades later came in the heat of a pennant race. The Orioles are battling Toronto for first place in the A.L. East, and Machado’s hat trick helped win a contest that put them a half game in front of the Blue Jays.
That game on July 2, 1930 was certainly one of the highlights of the otherwise nondescript career of Reynolds. He retired with an impressive .309 batting average, but he managed a total of just eighty home runs. More than a quarter of them came in that one season, and nearly a seventh of those came in that one game against the Yankees.
Reynolds went on to play for four more teams before retiring in 1939, and he passed away on May 29, 1978 at age 75.
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