This date in baseball
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.
1942 Major league owners decide not to allow furloughed players in the military to play.
1969 The Seattle Pilots trade minor league outtfielder Lou Piniella to the Kansas City Royals. Piniella will go on to win American League Rookie of the Year.
1970 An investment group headed by Bud Selig bought the Seattle Pilots for $10.8 million.
1972 The first collective players strike in major league history began. The strike lasted 12 days and canceled 86 games.
1988 For the first time since 1956, the Special Veterans Committee does not elect anyone to the Hall of Fame.
1989 A. Bartlett Giamatti took over as baseball commissioner.
1996 Longtime umpire John McSherry collapsed and died from a heart attack on Opening Day at Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, in the first inning of a game between the Reds and Montreal Expos. The game is cancelled.
2001 The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Texas Rangers 8-1 when the major league baseball season opened in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2008 The New York Yankees set a major league record by winning their 11th consecutive home opener.
2013 Bryce Harper homered in his first two at-bats, Stephen Strasburg retired 19 batters in a row and the defending National League 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.
2018 Three days after starting at designated hitter on opening day in his major league debut, Japanese phenom Shohei Ohtani makes his debut on the mound, pitching 6 innings in leading the Los Angeles Angels to a 7 - 4 victory over the Oakland Athletics.
--The Associated Press