Dodgers: JD Martinez Makes History With Move to Los Angeles

Look, when you have a chance to do something only one player in baseball history has done before, you have to jump on it, right? JD Martinez probably wasn't motivated by history when he signed with the Dodgers over the weekend, but it's a fun side effect.

small sample size, but fun:

there have been 18 4-homer games in MLB history

J.D. Martinez’s at LAD on 9/4/17 is the most recent

he would be the 2nd player to play FOR a team AFTER hitting 4 HR vs them, joining Chuck Klein w/PIT (1936 4 HR game vs, played 85 games for in ’39) https://t.co/5NAzHP1Sjp
— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) December 18, 2022

On July 10, 1936, Chuck Klein went 3-for-4 with three home runs and five RBIs through nine innings of a game at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, but in the bottom of the ninth innings, Claude Passeau and Bucky Walters combined to squander a 6-4 lead and allowed the Pirates to tie the game at six. Walters did get future Hall of Famer Paul Waner to ground out to second with the bases loaded and the winning run at third, sending the game to extra innings.

The extras gave Klein one more at-bat, and he took advantage of it, leading off the top of the 10th with his fourth homer of the game, giving Philadelphia the win and making Klein just the second player in history with a four-homer game.

Three years later, the Phillies released Klein midseason, and he signed with Pittsburgh and spent the rest of the season playing for the team he had destroyed three years earlier.

Martinez now joins the Dodgers six years after hitting four homers against them and joins Klein in the history books. We'll hope Martinez has a bit more left in the tank than Klein did; Klein played pretty well for Pittsburgh, but then he went back to Philadelphia for a third stint with the Phillies and and posted an OPS+ of 60 over his final five seasons.

It's probably worth noting that Mike Cameron's four-homer game in 2002 came against the White Sox, the team he played his first four seasons with from 1995-98, and it appears he's still the only player to hit four homers in a game against a former team.