Drayer: Mike Cameron had extra fuel for his former team in 4-HR game

Jun 9, 2020, 3:16 PM | Updated: 3:23 pm

Mike Cameron is on a short list of MLB players to hit four home runs in one game. (Getty)

(Getty)

Mariners Insider, Seattle Sports

With baseball season delayed for the foreseeable future, 710 ESPN Seattle is broadcasting a different classic Mariners game every night. Today, Mariners insider Shannon Drayer looks at the night Mike Cameron tied the MLB record with four home runs in a single game, and he did it against his former team, who he always went out of his way to make pay for trading him. Hear the broadcast of the 2002 game between the M’s and White Sox at 7 p.m. on 710 ESPN Seattle.

May 2, 2002

If you were one of the 12,891 in attendance at Comiskey Park that Thursday night, perhaps you thought you were seeing history made in the first inning when Bret Boone and Mike Cameron hit back-to-back home runs not once but twice as the Mariners put 10 runs on the board. Of course one half of the historic duo was only getting going.

Mike Cameron came into the game on a 4-for-37 slide and having not hit a home run in 13 games. While a bit down with the slide, he was definitely not out, and being in Chicago taking on the White Sox was the perfect place for him to come out of his slump.

For Cammy, there was always a little extra saved for his former team. The games against the White Sox were always personal after he had to learn in 1998 that he had been traded to Cincinnati for the man who stood on first base that night (Paul Konerko) by reading it off of a sports ticker at the bottom of a screen while folding laundry on a day off during winter ball in the Dominican Republic.

It's no coincidence that former #Mariners outfielder Mike Cameron's four-homer game came against a team that had spurned him early in his career.@shannondrayer breaks down tonight's #MarinersClassics game on 710 with some help from Cammy himself.

Story: https://t.co/vHxdVoXSzt pic.twitter.com/u2YihfVjLd

— 710 ESPN Seattle (@710ESPNSeattle) June 9, 2020

“No one every called me,” he said. “No one ever told me anything. I remember tucking it in my little back pocket and remembering that any time I played against the White Sox it was going to be some type of hell I gave them every single time.

“It goes really deep when we start talking about the White Sox.”

On May 2, 2002, it went really deep four times – and almost five.

Lineups!

Mariners

Ichiro, RF
Bret Boone, 2B
Mike Cameron, CF
John Olerud, 1B
Ruben Sierra, DH
Carlos Guillen, SS
Mark McLemore, LF
Ben Davis, C
Jeff Cirillo, 3B

James Baldwin, P

White Sox

Kenny Lofton, CF
Ray Durham, 2B
Frank Thomas, DH
Magglio Ordonez, RF
Paul Konerko, 1B
Jose Valentin, 3B
Carlos Lee, LF
Mark Johnson, C
Royce Clayton, SS

Jon Rauch, P

Cameron had never hit more than two home runs in a game before, but when it was all said and done he had become just the fifth player in baseball history to hit four home runs in a game in consecutive plate appearances.

“I wasn’t thinking about anything,” he said after. “I was like MJ when he hit those six threes against Portland. I just shrugged my shoulders and told my teammates, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.'”

Boone in another corner of the clubhouse was making wisecracks about Cameron taking away from “The Boone’s” big night. When Boone hit his second home run in the first inning he became just the second player in baseball history to accomplish the feat. That distinction was wiped out in the very next at-bat. The next time Boone stepped up to the plate he struck out. This was Cameron’s night.

“I was chillin’, I was like a willow tree in South Georgia, just hanging out in the wind. At the park that night I was like a kid going out to play baseball. Kids have no future and no past. They just live for the day’s game.” – Mike Cameron