Remembering: 20 K in a Game

On April 29, 1986 the Seattle Mariners visited the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.

Roger Clemens, pitching for Boston, became the first pitcher in Major League Baseball history to throw twenty strikeouts in a nine inning game.

Twenty strike outs in a game has been managed three times since. Once each by Kerry Wood and Randy Johnson. And again by Roger Clemens, making him not only the first person to do it, but the only one to do it twice.

The previous record of nineteen had been set by St. Louis Cardinal Steve Carlton in 1969, and tied by Met Tom Seaver in 1970 and California Angel Nolan Ryan in 1974.

The most strikeouts in a game is still owned by Washington Senators' Tom Cheney, who in 1962 had twenty-one strikeouts in sixteen innings.