June 2, 1989: Cincinnati’s Eric Davis knocks in 6 runs as he hits for the cycle

Eric Davis is described in his SABR biography as having “all the tools, and when his body was right, he was one heck of a ballplayer.”1 Unfortunately, he dealt with injuries for a good part of his amazing career, limiting his playing time. In 17 years in the major leagues, Davis never played more than 135 games in a season, and more than half of his seasons ended with him playing fewer than 93 games.

In 1989, his sixth season with the Cincinnati Reds, Davis appeared in more games than in all but two other seasons of his career – 131 – but he still had to work through significant injuries. He went on the 15-day disabled list on May 3 for a pulled hamstring, missing 14 games.2 Injuries had sidelined Davis periodically in 1987 and 1988, but this was his first time on the disabled list.3

He had two hitless games after returning on May 19, dropping his batting average to .217, but a 4-for-4 day against the Chicago Cubs on May 21 started his resurgence. When the Reds hosted the San Diego Padres on June 2, the 27-year-old Davis was batting .429 and slugging .629 in his past nine games.

Cincinnati had just finished a 32-game stretch against teams from the National League’s East Division, winning 18. Now they were starting a 28-game stint against West Division foes.4 Their schedule allowed for just one offday (June 19) before the All-Star break, meaning Cincinnati, which trailed the San Francisco Giants by a game in the division standings, had 38 games in 38 days.5

A pair of veterans faced off on Friday night at Riverfront Stadium. For the Reds, workhorse Tom Browning got the start. The left-hander had led the NL with 36 starts in 1988, winning 18 games. In the first two months of the 1989 campaign, though, Browning was 4-5 with a 4.05 ERA in 12 starts. He had thrown a gem in his only other start against the Padres (April 15), when he pitched into the eighth inning, allowing one earned run on six hits.

The Padres, who were a half-game behind the Reds in the division, countered with righty Walt Terrell. After posting at least 15 wins in three straight seasons from 1985 to 1987,6 Terrell’s run support from his teammates dropped in 1988, and he won just seven of 23 decisions. He had been traded to San Diego in the offseason by the Detroit Tigers for Chris Brown and Keith Moreland. So far in 1989, he also had a 4-5 record, despite a respectable 2.66 ERA.

San Diego’s Bip Roberts led off the game with a double and scored two batters later on Tony Gwynn’s sacrifice fly. The Reds answered in the bottom of the first. Barry Larkin drew a two-out walk, stole second, and scored on Davis’s double to deep left.

In the bottom of the second, Cincy took the lead. Rolando Roomes singled to start things and advanced to second on a wild pitch. Jeff Reed’s single put runners at the corners, and Ron Oester drove Roomes home with a line-drive single up the middle. Larkin doubled to begin the third, and Davis grounded an RBI single to center to extend Cincinnati’s lead to 3-1.

Meanwhile, Browning had gotten into a rhythm, facing the minimum in the second, third, and fourth innings. His teammates erupted for five runs in Cincinnati’s half of the fourth. Three straight one-out singles, by Oester, Browning, and Chris Sabo, gave the Reds a run. Todd Benzinger’s sacrifice fly brought Browning home to make it 5-1.

Larkin reached on a single and Davis launched an offering by Terrell well beyond the left-field wall, capping the Reds’ five-run frame. It was the eighth homer of the season for Davis, and his second three-run home run against the Padres.7 Terrell allowed 11 hits and eight runs, all earned, in four innings.

San Diego got back two runs in the fifth. Benito Santiago led off with a single and Luis Salazar hit his fourth home run of the season, to deep left, making the score 8-3. Two batters later, John Kruk batted for Terrell. Kruk walked but was stranded on first. It turned out to be the final plate appearance of Kruk’s four seasons in San Diego. After the game, the Padres traded Kruk and Randy Ready – who pinch-hit in the ninth inning – to the Philadelphia Phillies for Chris James.

In the seventh, the Padres added another run. Santiago led off with another single, followed by a ground-rule double by Salazar, who had a three-hit night. Santiago scored on Garry Templeton’s sacrifice fly, giving the visitors their last run of the game.

The home team scored its final tally in the bottom of the seventh against lefty reliever Dave Leiper. Larkin reached on a wild throw to first by catcher Santiago on his squibber. He scored on Davis’s liner into the right-center-field gap. Testing his tender hamstring, Davis motored around the bases and narrowly beat the throw to third for his first triple of the season. With the three-bagger, he had just hit for the cycle. Reds skipper Pete Rose sent Herm Winningham in as a pinch-runner, and Davis left to a standing ovation from the Riverfront Stadium fans.

Speaking to the press after the game, with his hamstring packed in ice, Davis explained that he was “reluctant to try (for the triple) because of my hamstring. You have to take chances and I took them tonight and I won.”8 He added, “I knew I needed the triple for the cycle, but I’d rather have a healthy hamstring than the cycle.”9

In addition to hitting for the cycle, Davis drove in a career-high-tying six of Cincinnati’s nine runs. “You have to be more lucky than anything to hit for the cycle, and I was lucky tonight,”10 he said. According to Terrell, who had yielded the single, double, and home run to Davis, “All three hits [off me] came on changeups. I got them inside, and you can’t do that with him.”11 Padres manager Jack McKeon praised Davis’s performance with “I thought he was supposed to be hurt. You know he can be that kind of player. He can do so many things, hit with power and run.”12

Rob Dibble and Norm Charlton finished the game for the Reds, shutting out the Padres on one hit and a sacrifice fly in their combined three innings of work. Browning improved his record to 5-5. The win kept the Reds just a game behind the Giants, while the Padres dropped to 2½ games back.

Larkin scored on each of Davis’s four hits. (He had two hits but reached on an error and added a base on balls as well as a stolen base.) His batting average increased to .337.

With his six runs batted in, Davis now had 34 RBIs and passed teammate Paul O’Neill (33) for the club lead. In his last 10 games, though, Davis hit .487 (19-for-39) and knocked in 15 runs. Further, the Cincinnati center fielder had collected multiple hits in four straight games, catapulting his average to .298.

It had been 30 years since the last Cincinnati player hit for the cycle (Hall of Famer Frank Robinson on May 2, 1959) in an official game. Rose, who spent 19 of his 24 major-league seasons with the Reds, never hit for the cycle as a major leaguer, even though he had more hits and played in more games than anyone else in big-league history.13 (Davis hit for the cycle in a 1985 spring-training game against the Philadelphia Phillies,14 and Rose claimed to have hit for the cycle, in “my first professional game,”15 in Geneva, New York.)

Davis and his hamstring stayed healthy for the next few months. He batted .281 with a .908 OPS, belting 34 home runs and knocking in a career-high 101 runs. Outside of missing four games with a wrist injury in September after running into the outfield wall at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh to catch a fly ball in foul territory, Davis avoided significant injuries after May.16 He was named to his second All-Star team, won Gold Glove and Silver Slugger Awards, and finished ninth in the NL Most Valuable Player voting.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks John Fredland for newspaper sources, especially accounts for Pete Rose’s first game.

Photo credit: Eric Davis, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, MLB.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CIN/CIN198906020.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1989/B06020CIN1989.htm

Notes

1 Norm King, “Eric Davis,” SABR Biography Project, accessed May 25, 2024.

2 Davis had severely pulled his hamstring in a loss to the Montreal Expos on May 2.

3 Jerry Crasnick, “Davis Finds First Stint on DL a Painful Experience,” Cincinnati Post, May 4, 1989: 3D.

4 The Reds and Padres were fighting the San Francisco Giants for the NL West lead. At the end of play on June 1, the Giants held just a one-game lead over Cincinnati and a 1½-game lead over San Diego. The Houston Astros (also 1½ games back) and the Los Angeles Dodgers (3½ games back) made it a five-team race with almost a third of the season in the books.

5 Cincinnati’s schedule had them play 38 games from June 2 to July 9. The All-Star break ran from July 10 to 12. There were two doubleheaders scheduled, due to rainouts from April 8 and June 20.

6 Terrell’s win totals were second to Detroit’s Jack Morris each season.

7 Davis’s first three-run homer against the Padres came on April 15 in San Diego, leading Cincinnati to a 6-3 victory.

8 Bill Begley, “Feel the Heat: Davis Hits for Cycle in 9-4 Win,” Troy (Ohio) Daily News, June 3, 1989: 4.

9 Curt Holbreich, “Padres Deal Kruk, Ready to Phillies for Chris James,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1989: III-1.

10 Mark Maloney, “Davis Hits for Cycle, Gets 6 RBI as Reds Roll 9-4,” Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader, June 3, 1989: 40.

11 Holbreich.

12 Begley.

13 Less than three months after this game, on August 24, Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti announced a lifetime suspension for Rose, based on evidence that Rose had bet on baseball while managing the Reds.

14 Maloney. Hal McCoy, “Eric Davis Hits the Cycle to Lead 19-Hit Reds over Phillies,” Dayton Daily News, March 16, 1985: 11.

15 Barry Bloom, “What Would Davis Do if He Weren’t Hurt?” San Diego Tribune, June 3, 1989: C-7. Rose hit just one home run in the 1960 season, where he played in 85 games for the Geneva Redlegs, in the Class D New York-Pennsylvania League. A review of the box scores and game account in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, shows Rose did not hit for the cycle in his first professional game. See Dave Rosenbloom, “Redlegs Divide With Wellsville, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 18, 1960: 21.

16 King.