Outfielder Brant Alyea was a September call-up for the expansion Senators in 1965. Manager Gil Hodges sent him up as a pinch-hitter in the sixth inning against the Angels in D.C. on September 12. He hit lefty Rudy May’s first pitch over the left-field fence. The three-run homer put the Nats up 6-0 on the way to 7-1 win.
Alyea, 24, officially had made his major league debut the day before and almost got up. He was announced into the game as a pinch-hitter, but when the Angels removed lefty starter George Brunet for a right-hander, Hodges switched to lefty-batting Jim King. (King hit a three-run homer, but Washington still lost 6-5.)
So in what technically was his second game, Alyea was able to become the ninth man to homer on the first pitch he saw in the majors. Since then, it’s been done 22 more times, including seven times by pitchers. One of the seven was Tommy Milone of the Nationals, who did it during his first game, a start, on September 3, 2011.
Alyea spent all of 1966 or ’67 in the minors, but appeared in 55 games for the Senators in 1968 and 104 more in 1969, when he hit 11 homers and had a .341 on-base percentage. He was traded to the Twins in late March 1970 for pitchers Joe Grzenda and Charlie Walters. Alyea had his best season there in a platoon role, hitting .291 with 16 homers and an OPS of .897.
Milone, 24 at the time, is one of two left-hand throwing (and batting) pitchers to hit a first-pitch out of the park.The others were all right-handers. An eighth pitcher, a righty who pinch-hit in his first MLB at-bat but didn’t pitch in a blowout defeat, also went deep on the first pitch he saw. Milone is the only one of the seven who actually pitched to hit his first-pitch homer with men on base.
Facing the Mets’ Dillon Gee with two on in the second inning of his first game, Milone hit the first pitch deep down the right-field line, giving the Nats a 5-0 lead. Unfortunately, Milone didn’t make it out of the fifth inning on the mound. He gave up four runs. The Mets eventually led 7-6 going to the bottom of the ninth, but Ryan Zimmerman won it for the Nationals with a walk-off, two-run, single.
During his 13 seasons in the majors, Milone never hit another home run or had an extra base hit. He played for nine teams but spent the bulk of his time in the American League. His lifetime batting average was just .156. The Nationals traded him with three other prospects to Oakland for lefty Gio Gonzalez on Dec. 23, 2011. Milone won 13 games for the A’s in 2012 and 12 in 2013 as a starter, but ended his time in the majors with a 4.59 earned run average. As of May 2023, he was still pitching at AAA Tacoma.
With the designated hitter now in both leagues, Milone should remain the last pitcher to hit the first pitch he sees out of the park.
One other expansion Nat homered in his first plate appearance in the majors: Infielder John Kennedy, 21, pinch-hitting on Sept. 5, 1962, did it against Dick Stigman of the Twins in the sixth inning. Batting for pitcher Ed Hobaugh with two outs and Washington behind, 5-0, Kennedy’s solo shot cleared the left field fence at D.C. Stadium. The Senators tied it with a four-run rally in the bottom of the ninth, but Minnesota won, 9-7 in 11 innings.
Kennedy was part of the major trade that sent him and lefty Claude Osteen to the Dodgers for slugger Frank Howard, third baseman Ken McMullen, pitchers Pete Richert and Phil Oretga and first baseman Dick Nen in December 1964.
A version of this appeared in July 2023 in Here’s the Pitch, the daily online newsletter of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America.
Washington baseball history 