This Day In Yankees History : 4/2/13

This Day In Yankees History... April 2nd

The Yankees for the first time since 1962 started a rookie short stop to start a season and his name was Derek Jeter. Derek responded by hitting a home run off of Dennis Martinez in a 7-1 Yankees victory over the Cleveland Indians. He wen't on to hit a few more base hits in his career if I remember correctly.

In the same game of the Derek Jeter Opening Day home run the Yankees also trotted out a new manager, Joe Torre, after the Buck Schowalter fiasco. Joe would win his first game of 1173 victories with the Yankees in his 12 seasons as a Yankees manager. That included ten American League East titles, a post season birth all twelve seasons, six American League pennants, and four World Series rings.

Roger Clemens, also on opening day but this time in 2001, passed Walter Johnson to become the American League's all time strike out king when he sat down Kansas City's Joe Randa for his 3509th K of his career. This would put him at 7th all time on the Major League strike out list.

In 2003 Todd Zeile hit a home run in his first at bat as a Yankee which is obviously not that uncommon. What was uncommon was Todd became the first player in Major League history to hit a home run for ten different teams. Those teams were obviously the Yankees, Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies, Orioles, Dodgers, Marlins, Rangers, Mets, and Colorado Rockies.