Mookie Betts put his name on a strange and shiny Dodgers milestone Saturday night, launching the 10,000th home run in Los Angeles franchise history with a solo shot in the first inning against Miami Marlins right-hander Tyler Phillips.
Betts went deep with two outs in the opening frame, and Max Muncy immediately followed with another solo homer to make it back-to-back blasts and push the Dodgers’ Los Angeles total to 10,001.
The number fits the moment. Muncy’s homer was the latest in a career that has already piled up 237 with the Dodgers, the fifth-most in franchise history.
Betts, meanwhile, moved to 172 career homers and passed Pedro Guerrero for 11th place on the club’s all-time list. Since the team moved to Los Angeles, Muncy ranks second in homers and Betts is seventh.
The milestone also brought a little history lesson with it. Dodgers team historian Mark Langill recently wrote about the approaching mark and highlighted Dick Gray, whose two-run homer against the San Francisco Giants at Seals Stadium on April 16, 1958, was the first home run hit by a Los Angeles Dodger in the team’s second game on the West Coast.
Gray finished with 12 career home runs, 11 of them with the Dodgers, and, as Langill noted, he also homered on April 18, 1958 at the Los Angeles Coliseum, making him the first player to hit both the first home and first road home runs in LA Dodgers history.
Betts has now homered four times in September and has 20 on the season, giving him his ninth career year with at least 20 home runs. He also scored in the first inning Saturday, extending his run to 11 straight games with a run scored. That leaves him one game short of the LA Dodgers record, which he shares with himself from May 13-24, 2022, and Rafael Furcal from June 24-July, 2010.
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