It was one month before the country celebrated its Bicentennial, June 4, 1976 when Dave “King Kong” Kingman had his finest day of his career for the Mets.
Playing right field and batting cleanup for the Mets at Dodger Stadium in a scoreless game, after John “The Hammer” Milner singled to center leading off the fourth, Kingman hit his first home run of the day off Dodger starter Burt Hooton to center field. Tom Seaver was on the mound and had surrendered only one hit, so Mets manager Joe Frazier must have thought the Mets chances for a win were good at that point.
Frazier’s thoughts must have been even more positive in the fifth inning when, with Hooten still in the game and Mike Phillips on second and Wayne Garrett on third, Kingman hit a three-run homer over the left field wall too give the Mets a 6-0 lead.
Ed Kranepool then made it back-to-back homers to give the Mets a 7-0 lead and cause Dodger Manager Walter Alston to have Hooten hit the showers.
In the seventh inning, after Phillips and Milner singled, Kingman hit his third home run of the day, and second three-run homer off of Al Downing. Al Downing is most remembered for surrendering Hank Aaron‘s 715th home run, moving Aaron past Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list.
In the top of the ninth, Kingman again faced Downing with a chance for four home runs on the day, but this time Downing struck Kingman out.
Kingman became the first Met since Jim Hickman in 1965 to have three home runs in a single game. Kingman also set a new team record with eight RBIs in the game, which was broken by Carlos Delgado with nine during a game in 2008.
Mike Schmidt had hit four home runs just two months earlier that same season on April 17 against the Cubs in an 18-16 victory at Wrigley. As for the Mets game, the final score was 11-0 as Tom Seaver pitched a complete game shut out, striking out eight, but clearly Kingman was the star of the day for New York.
Dodger Stadium was one of Kingman’s favorite stadiums to hit in. For his career, in 49 game starts in Dodger Stadium, Kingman had 20 home runs and 51 RBIs to go with a triple slash line of .268/.333/.588, all well above his career averages.
After the game Walter Alston was quoted in the LA Times, “They got us today, we’ll have to win tomorrow and the next day to take the series.”
In comparison, on May 14, 1978 and playing for the Cubs, Dave Kingman also had a three-homer game against the Dodgers, and Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda had a very different post game response to radio announcer Paul Olden when asked about Kingman’s performance, which can be heard here.
LGM
