The opening day battle in Detroit recalls a unique fight between Babe Ruth’s Yankees and the Red Sox

Home runs, which hit record numbers last year, promise to be even more prominent in 2018. Opening Day featured plenty of long passes, including three from the same player.

Chicago designated hitter Matt Davidson hit a trio of home runs in a 14-7 blowout against Kansas City, and White Sox teammate Tim Anderson cleared the fence twice in that game. New York’s Giancarlo Stanton also hit two home runs on Opening Day, his first hits as a Yankee after winning the 2017 NL MVP award as a member of the Miami Marlins.

The barrage of home runs makes what happened in Detroit, where the most runs were scored, even more anomalous. It wasn’t necessarily remarkable that the Pirates and Tigers scored 23 runs in a game that lasted 5 1/2 hours, but the fact that they did so without hitting a home run in nine innings.

You have to go back nearly a hundred years to find the last time many runs were scored in an Opening Day game without a home run, which was on April 12, 1926. In that game the Yankees beat the Red Sox 12-11 and, Despite the many sluggers in both lineups, not a single home run was hit.

Lou Gehrig was batting third with Babe Ruth behind him in the cleanup slot, and while neither future Hall of Fame Yankee went deep, the duo combined for three doubles and a half-dozen RBIs. That production led the Bronx Bombers to an 11-1 lead in the fifth inning, making it look like the game was going to end in a landslide victory.

Boston, however, scored two runs in the bottom of the fifth, and then the Red Sox rallied to score five more in the sixth. By then, nineteen runs had been scored, all without a ball going over the Green Monster at Fenway Park.

Fortunately for the Yankees, Ruth and Gehrig weren’t the only future Hall of Famers in their lineup that day. Second baseman Tony Lazerri doubled in the seventh to bring in Ruth, and outfielder Earle Combs singled to score Lazerri with an extra run for sure.

Since the Red Sox put on another rally, that extra run ultimately proved essential. New York not only held on to that Opening Day victory, but also won the pennant.

On the other hand, the losing team that day kept losing all year, almost double what they won. In fact, when the Yankees celebrated their pennant at the end of the season, Boston had suffered 103 losses.

Neither opponent in this year’s Opening Day game is likely to win a pennant like the Yankees did, nor is it expected to lose as many games as the Red Sox of 92 seasons ago. The Tigers and Pirates, however, managed to score twenty runs in nine innings without hitting a home run, as did their rivals.

And to think, for a few minutes the run total was 21, when Detroit’s Nick Castellanos was originally declared safe at the plate. That run prompted the Tigers to storm the field to celebrate their 11-10 win, only for the call to be rescinded after a review revealed Catellanos was out.

Manager Ron Gardenhire, who was managing his first game as Detroit’s captain, was ejected after discussing the overturned decision. It was probably a good thing he wasn’t on the field when, in the top of the next inning, Pittsburgh outfielder Gregory Polanco put the Pirates up 13-10.

In addition to winning the game for his club, Polanco had managed to do what no other player could do in that fight or the one between New York and Boston long ago. He had hit a pitch over the fence.