Jay Gainer

In their inaugural season of 1993, few will dispute that the biggest bat in the Colorado Rockies lineup belonged to Andres “Big Cat” Galarraga. Aided by the rarefied air in Denver, Galarraga won the NL batting title that year with a .370 average, had an OPS of 1.005, and drove in 98 runs in 120 games.

On May 14 Galarraga was dealing with a torn hamstring that landed him on the disabled list. His roster spot was filled by Jay Gainer, a 26-year-old left-hand-hitting first baseman.

At the time of his call-up from Triple-A Colorado Springs, Gainer had been hitting .331 with 5 home runs and a Pacific Coast League-leading 39 RBIs.

Gainer arrived in Cincinnati three hours before game time and when he got to Riverfront Stadium, he discovered that Rockies manager Don Baylor had enough confidence not only to plug him in as the starting first baseman, but to also bat him in Galarraga’s usual cleanup spot.1 

In major-league baseball history, only 2.6 percent of all players made their debut as their team’s cleanup hitter.2  

“No hesitation at all,” Baylor told the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph of batting Gainer cleanup. “He’s only going to remember his first major league at-bat anyway so what difference does it make where he bats?”3

Born Johnathan Keith Gainer on October 8, 1966, in Panama City, Florida, Gainer began his baseball journey as a self-described “clumsy 11-year-old kid” who was given the opportunity to receive guidance from two of his early coaches and mentors, Jim Stafford (Little League) and Dave Goodwin (American Legion).4   

Gainer’s natural abilities were cultivated as his career progressed through Rutherford High School in Panama City and the University of South Alabama, where he drew the attention of scouts and was selected by the San Diego Padres in the 24th round of the 1990 amateur draft. The signing scout was Hosken Powell. Gainer was listed as 6 feet tall and 190 pounds, batting and throwing left-handed. 

Gainer started his professional career that year with the short-season Spokane Indians (Northwest League) where he played first base and led the league in batting (.356) average and hit 10 home runs in 76 games. He moved up to the high-A High Desert Mavericks (California League) for 127 games in 1991 (.263/32/120), leading his team in both homers and RBIs for manager Bruce Bochy. He was promoted to Double-A Wichita (Texas League) in 1992 and hit .261 in 105 games with 23 home runs and 67 RBIs.

Unfortunately for Gainer, the Padres already had future Hall of Famer Fred McGriff entrenched at first base.

In late March of 1993, in the midst of the expansion Colorado Rockies’ first spring training, they swapped left-handed pitcher Denis Boucher to the Padres for Gainer. Little did Gainer know that another roadblock loomed: Galarraga.5

“At first, I thought I’d done something wrong,” Gainer recalled of the day he was told he’d been traded. “It turned out it wasn’t a bad deal. I was actually OK with the idea of being the left-handed bat off the bench behind McGriff. But I guess my success with the Padres pushed me into a spot where I’d gotten exposed a little bit.”6

Gainer continued to put up impressive numbers rising through the ranks to Triple-A Colorado Springs, where he was regarded as one of the Rockies’ top prospects.

There’s a reason why coaches at the minor-league level are constantly telling their players to be ready at the drop of a hat – or in this case, the pull of a hamstring. With Galarraga tearing up the NL, Gainer figured his season would be spent in the Pacific Coast League. Then on May 13, Galarraga began the first of two stints on the disabled list.

Colorado Springs manager Brad Mills gave Gainer the news that he was going to join the Rockies in Cincinnati.

“The ride from the airport to the ballpark in Cincinnati was like 30 miles,” Gainer remembered. “So I had a lot of time to reflect. People ask me if I was nervous. No, I just took things in stride and did what I always did. I walked into the clubhouse and put my bags in my locker. The lineup card was right in front of my face. I saw that I was hitting cleanup. I said OK, here we go. I was going to come out swinging.”7

Pitching for the Reds that evening was Tim Pugh, a 6-foot-6 right-hander. Pugh retired the Rockies in order in the first inning, meaning Gainer would lead off the top of the second.

The first pitch to Gainer was what he remembered as a “sinker that didn’t sink.”8 Gainer connected and sent the offering 375 feet over the outstretched glove of right fielder Reggie Sanders and into the seats.

“I told the guys at Triple A that I was going to swing at the first pitch and try to hit one out,” Gainer said. “But I was joking. No one does that. Afterward, I was thinking, my God, what did I do? It was like I did something I shouldn’t have done.”9

“I was off and running, man,” Gainer said. “By the time I looked back up and saw the umpire giving the home run sign, I was already rounding second base.”10

Gainer became the 67th player to hit a home run in his first major-league at-bat, a list that through the 2023 season had grown to 135.11

Gainer was the first Rockies player to accomplish the feat and through 2023 was still the only one to do so.

Even rarer, Gainer’s homer came on the first pitch to him, making him at the time the 15th player to do so and one of 31 through 2023.12 (Cincinnati, however, won the game, 13-5.)

Gainer appeared in 11 games in May, batting .172 with no further homers or runs batted in, and then was sent back to Colorado Springs. He was recalled in early September and got into another 12 games.

Gainer finished the season having played in 23 major-league games. He went 7-for-41 (.171). Three of his hits were home runs (as it happened, all in team losses). He drove in six runs, all via homer. On September 20 at Mile High Stadium in Denver, he pinch-hit and slugged a fourth-inning grand slam off the San Diego Padres’ Doug Brocail. He hit his third home run off Rod Beck of San Francisco on September 28 at Candlestick Park. Gainer played in his final major-league game on October 2 as a pinch-hitter for Lance Painter. 

Gainer returned to Colorado Springs for the next two seasons and never played in a big-league

game again. After Galarraga moved on, first base was taken over by future Hall of Famer Todd Helton.

The players strike that shut down the major-league season in mid-1994 threatened the coming 1995 season. Baseball prepared for a shortened 144-game campaign with all 30 teams bringing in replacement players.

Had the strike not ended, we could have seen a very different starting nine in Coors Field’s debut season. Gainer planned to cross the picket line.13

The “Replacement Rockies” were actually the first team to play professional baseball at the newly opened Coors Field. On March 31 and April 1 of 1995, the Rockies welcomed the New York Yankees for a two-game exhibition series in which both teams fielded rosters of replacement players who had chosen to cross the picket line.14 

Players from all levels of the minors and former big-leaguers crossed the picket line and played in what was the first game held at Coors Field, in front of a near-capacity crowd of 47,563.15

The strike ended when Judge (and future Supreme Court Justice) Sonia Sotomayor of the US District Court in Manhattan issued a preliminary injunction against the owners on March 31. On April 2, the day before the season was scheduled to start with the replacement players, the strike came to an official end at 232 days, sending all of the replacement players back to their previous gigs. For Gainer, this was Triple-A Colorado Springs.

Gainer remained a part of the Rockies organization through the 1996 season, with his best campaign coming in 1995 when he blasted 23 homers and logged 86 RBIs along with a .291 average. After he left the Rockies organization in 1995, Gainer’s baseball journey grew geographically. He ended up playing 11 seasons as a professional, with stops in Taiwan, the Mexican League, and in Italy with the Grosseto Baseball Club.

“Taiwan … it was like another planet,” Gainer told an interviewer. “A lot of the (American) guys couldn’t handle the social stuff and the change in baseball. It was a very different game. Still a bat and a ball and three outs and three strikes, but they played the game very differently. We were treated like the hired help.”16 

Not one to have his baseball experience limited again, Gainer moved on to Mexico for three seasons. In 2000, playing for the Olmecas de Tabasco, he led his team with 31 home runs and 81 RBIs.

 After that, Gainer finished his playing days in Italy and eventually with Allentown, New Jersey, of the independent Northern League East in 1991.

“It was about Double-A level ball,” he said, referring to his stint in Italy. “I was only making barely enough money to cover my expenses there and back home, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to see Europe. I had a lot of fun.”17

Overall, Gainer hit .275 with 121 home runs and 484 RBIs in 11 minor-league seasons spanning 1990-2001. After retiring, he was the hitting coach and manager of Yakima (Washington), an Arizona Diamondbacks’ farm team in the Northwest League, and other minor-league teams including the Visalia Oaks of the California League.

In retirement, Gainer designed a training program for players called Baseball Advantage.

As of 2024, he was the coach of the A.C. Davis High School baseball team in Yakima, continuing a career in baseball that’s now surpassed 40 years.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com.

Attempts to get input or feedback from Jay Gainer for this biography were unsuccessful.

Photo credit: Jay Gainer, courtesy of the Colorado Rockies.

Notes

1 Steve Acoo, “Jay Gainer Homered in His First Major League At-Bat, on the First Pitch He Saw; Saw 23 Total ML games,” greatest21days.com, October 9, 2022. http://www.greatest21days.com/2022/10/jay-gainer-homered-in-his-first-major.html.

2 J.G. Preston, “They Batted Cleanup in Their First Major League Game,” The J.G. Preston Experience, March 23, 2013. https://prestonjg.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/they-batted-cleanup-in-their-first-major-league-game/.

3 Acoo.

4 “Jay Gainer.” https://www.babattingcages.com/jay-gainer.html.

5 Mark Knudson, “Jay Gainer Made Every Swing Count,” Fort Collins (Colorado) Coloradoan, June 1, 2018. https://www.coloradoan.com/story/sports/professional/denver/2018/06/01/jay-gainer-professional-baseball-mlb-colorado-rockies-san-diego-padres/657979002/.

6 Knudson.

7 Knudson.

8 Knudson.

9 Tim Kurkjian, “And What a Year It Was,” Sports Illustrated, October 4, 1993. https://vault.si.com/vault/1993/10/04/baseball.

10 Knudson.

11 Of all the major-leaguers who homered in their first at bat, two are in the National Baseball Hall of Fame (Earl Averill and Hoyt Wilhelm) and one is in the NFL Hall of Fame (Ace Parker). Parker homered for the Philadelphia Athletics, pinch-hitting in the top of the ninth inning at Fenway Park in Boston, a two-run homer off Wes Ferrell that bought the A’s to within 10 runs of the Red Sox, who won 15-5. He was a running back for the NFL Brooklyn Dodgers and a longtime football coach at Duke University.

12 See the list provided by Major League Baseball at https://www.mlb.com/news/home-run-in-first-at-bat-c265623820.

13 Evan Lang, “The Replacement Rockies That Could Have Been,” PurpleRow, SB Nation, January 13, 2022. https://www.purplerow.com/2022/1/13/22878513/colorado-rockies-news-thursday-rockpile-the-replacement-rockies-that-could-have-been.

14 Lang.     

15 Patrick Lyons, “Rockies Review: March 31, 1995 – Coors Field Unofficially Opens.” https://thednvr.com/rockies-review-march-31-1995-coors-field-unofficially-opens/.

16 Kevin Henry, “Colorado Rockies: May 14 Holds an Interesting Piece of trivia for the Team,” Roxpile.com, May 14, 2017. https://roxpile.com/2017/05/14/colorado-rockies-may-14-marks-interesting-piece-trivia-rockies/.

17 Henry.