This Date in Baseball: April 1

April 1

1931 – Pitcher Virne Mitchell, 17, signed with the Chattanooga club of Tennessee, becoming the first woman to play for an otherwise all-male baseball team.

1972 – The first collective players strike in major league history began. The strike lasted 12 days and canceled 86 games.

1996 – Umpire John McSherry, 51, who planned to see doctors the next day about an irregular heart beat, collapsed seven pitches into Cincinnati’s opener and died at a hospital about an hour later.

1970 – An investment group headed by Bud Selig bought the Seattle Pilots for $10.8 million.

1989 – A. Bartlett Giamatti took over as baseball commissioner.

2001 – The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Texas Rangers 8-1 when the major league baseball season opened in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

2013 – Bryce Harper homered in his first two at-bats, Stephen Strasburg retired 19 batters in a row and the defending NL East champion Washington Nationals opened the season with a 2-0 victory over the Miami Marlins. Harper, the reigning NL Rookie of the Year, hit solo shots over the out-of-town scoreboard in right-center field off Ricky Nolasco in the first and fourth innings.

2013 – Clayton Kershaw launched his first career home run to break a scoreless tie in the eighth inning, then finished off a four-hitter that led the Los Angeles Dodgers over the San Francisco Giants 4-0 on opening day. Kershaw became the first pitcher in the majors to homer on opening day since Joe Magrane of St. Louis in 1988. He was the first pitcher to throw a shutout and hit a home run in an opener since Bob Lemon for Cleveland in 1953.