By Tom Weber, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – The Texas Rangers set a modern major league baseball record Wednesday night by scoring 30 runs in a game. Two grand slams, plus a 10-run eighth inning helped lead Texas to a 30-3 rout of the Baltimore Orioles.
But the old record had been a black mark in the history of the St. Louis Browns and Kansas City A's. Before Wednesday night, the record for most runs in a game (after 1900) was 29, and it had happened twice. The Browns and A's were on the losing end of those games.
On June 8, 1950, the Boston Red Sox beat up on the hapless Browns 29-4, according to baseballlibrary.com. Bobby Doerr hit three home runs and drove in eight runs.
The Browns went on to lose 96 games that year and finish in seventh place in the National League.
Five years later, the Kansas City A's pitching staff helped match that mark when they gave up the same number of runs to the Chicago White Sox on April 23, 1955. The final score was 29-6.
Kansas City only faired a little better that year; the A's lost just 91 games.
But even with Wednesday's drubbing by the Rangers in Baltimore, there's still a slight connection to Missouri: The Orioles, after all, used to be the St. Louis Browns.
The National League record, by the way, for most runs in a game is 28, which was set by the Cardinals when they beat up on the Phillies on July 6, 1929 in the second game of a double-header. (The Redbirds' rout also broke an 11-game losing streak).