July 9, 2000: Tyler Houston’s three home runs upstage Hideo Nomo’s triumph in Milwaukee Sausage Race

Between 1901 and 2000, there were 165 major leaguers who both struck out four times in a game and hit three home runs in a game.1 None did both in the same game, but on July 9, 2000, Tyler Houston of the Milwaukee Brewers became the first to hit those marks in back-to-back games.2 Yet when ESPN broadcast highlights of that second game, played on the Sunday before the All-Star break, it wasn’t Houston’s long balls that got first billing but rather the triumph of an undercover sausage.3

The second overall pick in the June 1989 amateur draft, Tyler Houston came out of the same Las Vegas school, Valley High School, that had produced Hall of Famer Greg Maddux.4 After seven years in the Atlanta Braves farm system, he earned the final roster spot for the defending National League champions heading into the 1996 season, only to be traded to the Chicago Cubs in midseason.5

A backup catcher and corner infielder for three years with Chicago, Houston signed with the Brewers as a free agent in the winter of 1999. He spent the first two months of the 2000 season backing up Henry Blanco behind the plate before becoming the left-handed-hitting half of a first-base platoon with 13-year veteran Charlie Hayes. Heading into the next-to-last game of a 10-game homestand before the 2000 All-Star break, Houston was hitting a modest .235, with 6 home runs and 14 RBIs.

Batting second against former Brewer Hideo Nomo in a July 8 interleague matchup with the Detroit Tigers, Houston singled twice but grounded into a double-play and struck out four times in a 4-2, 15-inning loss that evened the three-game series at one game apiece. In that game, Milwaukee fanned a then-franchise-record 20 times.6 When Houston arrived at County Stadium the next day, he was determined to do better.

Longtime American League rivals before the Brewers moved to the NL in 1998, Milwaukee and Detroit entered their Sunday afternoon series finale similarly situated in their respective divisions.7 The Brewers were 36-51 (.414), 14½ games behind the St. Louis Cardinals in the NL Central Division and the Tigers were 38-45 (.458) and 15½ games behind the AL Central-leading Chicago White Sox. Both sides looked to secure a series win to give them momentum heading into the three-day All-Star break, but even with a win, Milwaukee was guaranteed the worst first-half record in franchise history.8

Right-hander Jason Bere, a former All-Star in his second year with Milwaukee, took the mound for first-year manager Davey Lopes. Two starts removed from striking out 13 Philadelphia Phillies, Bere came into the game with a 5-6 record and a 4.96 ERA.

Opposing Bere was Willie Blair, 5-1 with a 4.37 ERA, a winner of three straight decisions after being moved into the rotation by Detroit manager Phil Garner. In this series, Garner, Milwaukee’s skipper from 1992 to 1999, was making his first County Stadium appearance since he was fired as Brewers manager the previous August.

A modest crowd of 19,037 was on hand for the game, played under a mostly cloudy sky, with a gametime temperature of 73 degrees. Detroit’s first batter, Rich Becker, drew a full-count walk, the third time in three games that a Brewers starter had done just that. Struggling to find his control, Bere issued four-pitch passes to Bobby Higginson and Damion Easley before wriggling out of the inning with a strikeout of Juan Encarnación.

Milwaukee broke the ice in the bottom of the second. After both Hayes, playing third base, his natural position, and Geoff Jenkins took called third strikes to start the frame, José Hernández lined a single to left. Houston, batting seventh, fouled off three straight two-strike fastballs from Blair, then squared up the fourth, pulling it into the right-field bleachers.9 A double down the left-field line by Blanco, followed by an RBI single to left by Bere, put the Brewers up 3-0.10

Detroit clawed a run closer in the fourth on a one-out home run to right by Easley, but the Brewers scored a pair of runs in the bottom of the inning. Just as in the second, it began with a Hernández single, this one an infield hit that third baseman Dean Palmer booted.11 Houston deposited Blair’s next pitch, a low and inside breaking ball, into the right-field seats for the second multi-home-run game of his career.

Another one-out home run in the fifth gave Detroit its second run of the game, this one by 12-year veteran Luis Polonia, hitting for Blair.13 Blair’s replacement on the mound, 23-year-old Jeff Weaver, breezed through the fifth but hit a brick wall in the sixth. With his first six pitches, he surrendered a line-drive single to right by Hayes, a home run to deep right by Jenkins, and Hernández’s third hit of the game, a double down the right-field line. Two pitches later, Houston drilled his third home run of the game into the empty center-field bleachers, 10 rows up from the 402-foot marker.14 The blast sent Weaver to the showers in favor of 1997 first overall draft pick Matt Anderson.

Witnesses to the Brewers’ biggest offensive outburst in weeks, fans were next treated to a Milwaukee tradition, the sausage race. Originally an animated contest shown on the County Stadium scoreboard, the competition between anthropomorphized meats became a live event in 1993.15 Sponsored by Klement’s Sausage Company, the races pit runners, typically ballpark or Brewers employees, dressed in sausage mascot costumes that were over seven feet tall. On June 26, 1999, shortstop Pat Meares of the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates became the first ballplayer to run in the sausage race, winning it while dressed as a bratwurst.16

Watching that race from the pitching mound was Hideo Nomo, then a starting pitcher for Milwaukee. Fascinated during his lone season as a Brewer by how unique the race was, a year later Nomo jumped at a chance to be in it.

On a day when he would typically be resting, Nomo was instead running around the dirt track that surrounded the County Stadium playing field, dressed as an Italian sausage. Ahead for much of the race, he defeated three other tubular meat mascots, including a Tigers equipment manager dressed as a Polish sausage. At the time, nobody in the stands knew that the winner was Nomo. “It was fun,” said the 1995 NL Rookie of the Year, adding, “I was trying to do a funny move but the head was too heavy.”17 Garner joked that “Nomo had to get his running in.”18

Nomo’s triumph was the last thing that went right for the Tigers on this day. After Higginson struck out looking to end the seventh with two runners in scoring position, he threw his bat, earning an ejection from home-plate umpire Gerry Davis. When Garner came out to give Davis a piece of his mind, he was tossed too.19

Milwaukee pushed the score to 10-2 in the bottom of the inning when Hernández plated Jeromy Burnitz on a one-out sacrifice fly off Anderson. Up next was Houston, with a chance to become the first Milwaukee major leaguer to hit four homers in a game since Joe Adcock did it for the Milwaukee Braves in 1954. He grounded out. “The fourth at-bat I was a little anxious,” Houston later admitted. “I was seeing the ball well and, when you have a couple of home runs, obviously you feel comfortable but you don’t think you’re going to see a fastball on the inner part of the plate.”20

With two outs in the ninth, Detroit’s Shane Halter singled Deivi Cruz home for a meaningless final run. That RBI came off Jamey Wright, who was making his first relief appearance in four years. A member of manager Lopes’s starting rotation after arriving from the Colorado Rockies in an offseason trade, Wright retired the next two batters to secure the win.21

“Houston Provides Launching Pad,” read the headline of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel game summary the next day, in a nod to the US space program.22 Houston had become the eighth Brewer in franchise history to hit three in a game, and the first to do it at County Stadium since Dale Sveum in 1987. He finished the season with career highs in home runs (18) and RBIs (43) as the Brewers wound up third in the NL Central Division.

The sausage race lived on after the Brewers moved from County Stadium to Miller Park in 2001. Three years to the day after Nomo’s joyous participation, it again drew national coverage, but for darker reasons: Pittsburgh’s Randall Simon knocked a contestant to the ground with his bat, resulting in a three-game suspension and fine from MLB and a fine for disorderly conduct from local authorities.23

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Harrison Golden and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Tyler Houston, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and Stathead.com websites, including box scores listed at the links below:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIL/MIL200007090.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2000/B07090MIL2000.htm

Notes

1 Based on the author’s analysis of data from stathead.com.

2 Jim Thome of the Cleveland Indians did both during the week of July 18,1994, but played one game in between.

3 “2000 MLB Highlights July 9,” YouTube video (SW561), 12:41 (11:37 mark), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XXWZvTLQ-w, accessed February 17, 2025.

4 Houston was one of two Valley HS catchers selected in the 1989 draft. Doug Mirabelli was taken by the Detroit Tigers in the sixth round, but elected to attend Wichita State University, where he went on to earn second-team All-American honors.

5 Craig Barnes, “Atlanta’s Next Feat: Repeat,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 1, 1996: E15.

6 Vic Feuerherd, “Another Win Slips Away for Brewers,” Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), July 9, 2000: 1D.

7 From 1972 through 1993, Detroit and Milwaukee were both members of the American League East Division. Milwaukee was moved to the AL Central Division when it was formed in 1994, with Detroit remaining in the AL East until it moved over to the AL Central in 1998. Between 1972 and 1997, the two teams were evenly matched, the Brewers winning 181 of their 361 regular-season games against the Tigers, with Detroit winning 180. Through 2024, they have never faced one another in the postseason.

8 Drew Olson, “Houston Provides Launching Pad,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 10, 2000: C1.

9 John Lowe, “Doggone! Tigers Taken Deep, 10-3,” Detroit Free Press, July 10, 2000: 1D.

10 Bere was cut down at second base attempting to stretch his single into the first double of his major-league career. A lifetime .188 hitter coming into that at-bat, Bere did have one extra-base hit to his credit, a triple off Armando Reynoso of the Arizona Diamondbacks six weeks earlier.

11 “Doggone! Tigers Taken Deep, 10-3.”

12 “Doggone! Tigers Taken Deep, 10-3.” Houston’s first two-homer game came on July 3, 1998, when he hit a pair off Francisco Cordóva of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

13 Polonia’s homer was the last of 16 he hit as a Tiger. A few weeks after this game, he was released and signed by the New York Yankees.

14 “2000 MLB Highlights July 9,” 12:00 mark.

15 The inaugural live race was held on June 23, 1997, before the bottom of the sixth inning of a game between the Brewers and the Toronto Blue Jays.

16 “Meares … What a Hot Dog,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 28, 1999: B-6; Paul Meyer, “Nomo, Brewers Stymie Pirates,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 27, 1999: D1. On the disabled list at the time, Mears ran the race with a cast on his left hand.

17 “Nomo Gives Fans a Treat,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 10, 2000: C5.

18 “Nomo, as Italian Sausage, Wins Race,” Green Bay Press-Gazette, July 10, 2000: 17; “2000 MLB Highlights July 9,” 11:45 mark. Jim Schmakel, the Tigers’ equipment manager who lost to Nomo, also got into the acting, saying, “If it had been two laps, I would have gotten him.” “Nomo Gives Fans a Treat.”

19 “Doggone! Tigers Taken Deep, 10-3.”

20 “Houston Provides Launching Pad.”

21 Wright was part of a three-team trade in December that also brought catcher Henry Blanco to Milwaukee and sent fan favorite Jeff Cirillo to Colorado.

22 Drew Olson, “Houston Provides Launching Pad.”

23 As 19-year-old University of Wisconsin student Mandy Block raced by the visiting dugout dressed as an Italian sausage, Simon whacked the back of her costume head. Block fell over, taking with her another woman dressed as a hot dog. Simon was fined $432 by the Milwaukee sheriff’s department, then suspended three games and fined $2,000 by Major League Baseball. “Simon Fined $432 for Attacking Mascot,” Poughkeepsie (New York) Journal, July 11, 2003: 1F; Rod Beaton, “Assault Leads to Vacation for ‘Sausage Girl,’” Wausau (Wisconsin) Herald, March 25, 2004: C1; “Simon Suspended for Three Games,” State College (Pennsylvania) Centre Times, July 12, 2003: B1.