When Nate Colbert was a boy growing up in St. Louis his father took him to a doubleheader in which Stan Musial hit five home runs in a doubleheader in 1954. Young Nate turned to his father and said, “Someday I’m going to do that”.
Now fast forward to August 1, 1972, the San Diego Padres were playing a doubleheader against the Braves in Atlanta. Colbert, nursing a bad back, wasn’t going to play. But when he took batting practice with an old bat, he hit five balls out, and a couple of more that were long gone, but just foul. Nate’s manager decided his slugger would play, so Nate taped up the old bat, and used it in the first game. He hit two out in the first game and three more in the nightcap, leading the Pads to a sweep, 9-0 & 11-7, driving in 13 runs on the day, two more than Stan the Man. Nate finished the season with 38 homers (second only to Johnny Bench’s 40) and 111 RBI’s (highest percentage of runs driven in to a team’s total runs scored in MLB history).
I still remember this big day by this big slugger, even today, but don’t ask me what I ate for breakfast!