updated August 2025
At D.C. Stadium on August 29, 1963, the Minnesota Twins tied the then-major-league record for home runs in a game by one team with eight. Harmon Killebrew had two round-trippers. Bob Allison had one. Both had been sluggers with the old Senators. A future expansion Nat, Bernie Allen, hit one. The eight round-trippers came off four different Senators’ pitchers.
The Twins won, 14-2, in the first game of a double-header, handing the woeful expansion team its 84th of what turned out to be 106 losses in 1963. First baseman Vic Power hit two homers, rookie slugger Jimmie Hall and third baseman Rich Rollins hit the other two.
Nats starter Don Rudolph yielded the first homer to Power, the second batter in the top of the first. With two outs and a man on, Allison hit the second homer of the inning. A triple by Allison in the third put the Twins up, 4-0.
Rudolph was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the third. Pete Burnside took over and yielded Killebrew’s first homer, a solo shot to deep center with two outs in the fifth.
Ron Moeller took over in the sixth. A two-out double scored the Twins’ sixth run. A walk put two men on for Vic Power, whose second homer, deep to left, put Minnesota up 9-0. After Hall singled, Killebrew’s second homer made it 11-0.
With the game essentially out of reach, Moeller stayed in. The Twins didn’t score in the seventh. Ken Retzer’s two-run homer in the bottom of the seventh was all the scoring the Senators could muster. Hall got one of the runs back with a solo homer off Moeller in the eighth.
Veteran Ed Roebuck came to pitch the ninth for Washington. Bernie Allen, not a big power hitter, greeted Roebuck with a homer to deep right. After Twins’ starter and winner Lee Stange grounded out, Minnesota’s Rich Rollins hit the Twins’ eighth home run, this one deep to left.
The Twins continued the homer barrage in the second game. Killebrew, Hall and Allen each hit another one, joined by Zoilo Versalles, Two of those were off Burnside, called on to pitch again. Minnesota won 10-1 for the sweep.
The first team to hit eight home runs was the New York Yankees on June 28,1939, against the Philadelphia A’s. The record stood for 22 years. A list of Hall of Famers and All-Stars hit New York’s homers: two by Joe DiMaggio, one by Bill Dickey, one by Joe Gordon, one by Tommy Heinrich, one by George Selkirk and two by Babe Dahlgren. Selkirk and Dalgren each had five RBIs in the Yankees’ 23-2 rout.
Like the Twins-Senators match-up, this was a seriously mismatched double-header. The Yanks won the second game, 10-0, with five more homers, two by Gordon and one each by DiMaggio, Dahlgren and Frankie Crosetti.
The eight-homer record was first matched by the San Francisco Giants on April 30, 1961, against the Braves. This was the record-tying four-homer game by Willie Mays, who drove in eight runs in the Giants’ 14-4 win. Light-hitting Jose Pagan hit two homers, while Orlando Cepeda and Felipe Alou hit the other two. (Hank Aaron’s two homers drove in all four Milwaukee runs.)
After the Twins did it in 1963, it took until 1977 for another team to hit eight in a game: the Red Sox on July 4 that season against the Blue Jays. Since then, a dozen other teams have hit eight homers in a game, establishing each team’s record.
On September 14, 1987, in Toronto, the Blue Jays set what remains the all-time record for homers by one team – 10 – against the Orioles. Catcher Ernie Whitt hit three homers in the 18-3 rout. George Bell, the eventual ’87 MVP, hit two of his career-high 47 and Hall-of-Famer Fred McGriff hit one. Rance Mulliniks also hit two, Lloyd Moseby one and Rob Ducey one.
In the second game of the 2025 season — March 29 — the Yankees broke their own 1939 team record by hitting nine home runs, tied for the second-most in a game in MLB history, New York beat the Brewers 20-9, setting several records in the process. The first three batters — Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge each homered on the first pitch they saw, an MLB first. Aaron homered in his next two plate appearances.
Then on August 19, 2025, Judge, Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton hit consecutive first-inning home runs against the Tampa Bay Rays. The Yanks went on to hit nine homers in a game again, the first team ever to do that twice.
On September 4, 1999, in Philadelphia, the Cincinnati Reds set the N.L. record with nine home runs in a 22-3 rout of the Phillies. No team other than the Reds and Blue Jays has hit more than eight homers in a game. The Reds’ record eight individual sluggers that day were Ed Taubenese, who hit two, Greg Vaughn, Aaron Boone, Jeffrey Hammonds, Dmitri Young, Pokey Reese, Mark Lewis and Brian Johnson. Even the most ardent fans might not recognize a couple of these names.
Then on August 19, 2025, Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton hit consecutive first-inning home runs off the Rays’ Shane Baz as they returned to their spring home with a flourish, matching a franchise record by belting nine home runs in a 13-3 thumping of the Rays.
The Nationals’ team record of eight was set against the Brewers on July 27, 2017, a game in which Washington hit four consecutive homers and five in the third inning against Michael Blazek – the most homers ever yielded by one pitcher in an inning.
Not a single grand-slam homer was hit by the teams that set or matched the all-time record at the time.
SABR Games Project essays are accessible on SABR.org for a number of these record-setting games.
Washington baseball history 