CLEVELAND -- Only 276 players in Major League history have 2,000 hits.
Jason Giambi became No. 276 on Sunday with a single to left in the top of the ninth for the Indians. (If years only since 1901 are considered, after the dead-ball era, he’s the 245th).
The 2,000th hit came more than 18 years after Giambi’s first hit, on May 8, 1995, but he remembers the first as well as his 2,000th.
“Roger Pavlik, breaking ball or changeup into right field,” Giambi said before Monday’s game against the Royals.
He also remembered his first home run.
“David Cone, (in) Oakland,” he said. “Right-center. Fastball in.”
He’s saved the ball from each, and from his 1,000th hit, though he doesn’t remember the details on that one. He does remember that he hit a walk-off Grand Slam for the Yankees, that his first walkoff home run was against Mike Stanton, and that he had the last base hit in old Yankees Stadium. Given the names that have played there -- Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle -- that one means a lot to Giambi.
“At the time we didn’t even know,” Giambi said. “I think the last hit was in the seventh inning. I got a hit to left field. Then they were going over everything … last homer, last hit. I was like, ‘Oh, I got the last one, better get my stuff.’”
He kept his batting glove, cleats and hat from that day.
Giambi talked about the journey he’s undertaken in his baseball career, and it’s been quite a trip. From rock star in Oakland to leader in New York to elder statesman in Colorado and Cleveland, from PED use to admitting his mistake and playing clean for more than a decade, Giambi has seen a lot.
But he respects the game as well as anyone, and has the utmost respect of his manager and teammates, who left the dugout to applaud on the track when he got No. 2,000.
Giambi appreciates the significance of the number in a sport of numbers.
“Especially when you can’t run,” he said. “I earned every one of them.”
Giambi is not alone remembering his firsts. Manager Terry Francona knows the pitch and the pitcher from his first hit in Montreal.
“John Montefusco, ‘The Count,’” Francona said. “I hit a pinch-hit base hit up the middle in Atlanta. I’ll never forget it.”
The pitch?
“Fastball,” he said. “I never hit a curveball. Ever.”
His first home run? Against St. Louis.
“Bruce Sutter,” he said of one of the original split-finger pitchers. “Only because I didn’t know who he was.”
He said it was a pinch-hit home run, but he started the game and that hit helped tie a 3-1 game in the eighth that Montreal won in extra innings.
Francona said he did not have any walk-off hits though.
“I was pinch-hit way before then,” he said.
Giambi said the walk-off home run he hit this season that made him the oldest player in the majors to achieve that feat will be one of his most memorable, as will his milestone hits. But he didn’t have a long list of memorable hits.
“They all become special and memorable in a way,” he said.
