Family Reunion for Ex-Yankee Tim Raines And His Son

This week we celebrate the 65th birthday of Tim Raines, who 23 years ago, just after he turned 42, became the first father to play against his son in a professional baseball game, and his son, Tim Jr., happened to play for the Rochester Red Wings.

It is widely known that Ken Griffey Sr. and his son, Hall of Famer, Ken. Jr, were the first father-son duo to play together on the same team in Major League Baseball history, doing so when both were members of the Mariners in 1990 and 1991.

But on Aug. 21, 2001, Tim Raines Sr., and his son, Tim Jr., became the first father-son duo to play against each other in a regular season professional game, albeit at the Triple-A level. And the kicker to this story is there was a local tie for those of us based in Western New York.

Raines Sr. was nearly at the end of his career, hanging on with the Expos, the franchise he debuted with in 1979 and would play for during 13 magnificent years. Raines Jr. was just starting his professional journey and at this point was with the Orioles’ Triple-A team, the Rochester Red Wings.

As fate would have it, Raines Sr. was sent down to Montreal’s top affiliate in Ottawa for a rehab assignment, and the Lynx just so happened to be hosting the Red Wings.

“We’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” said Raines Sr.

Father and son had to wait an additional day to make history because the series opener was postponed due to lightning and was rescheduled as a doubleheader, during which each played both ends. The younger Raines went 2-for-7 with a double and the elder went 1-for-7 with a double as the teams split, Rochester winning 4-3 in eight innings, Ottawa taking the nightcap 5-4 in 10 innings.

“It was a great day,” Raines Jr. said. “It was another learning experience. Every time he got up there, I was watching every little thing he was doing.”

Of course the 22-year-old Raines Jr. felt great when the day was done, but his 41-year-old father? Yeah, not so spry.

“After playing two games, two extra-inning games, we really don’t care, we just want to go home,” the elder Raines said with a laugh when asked about the historic occurrence, not meaning that at all.

Raines Jr. was born in 1979, the year his father got called up to Montreal to serve as a pinch runner in six games for the Expos. In 1980 he got 27 plate appearances before finally staying in Montreal for good in 1981, a year that was cut short by a strike. In 88 games Raines hit .304 and led MLB with 71 stolen bases. He went on to lead the NL in stolen bases in 1982 (78) and 1983 (90) and all the majors again in 1984 with 75 at a time in baseball when speed was almost as important as slugging.

That 1981 season started a streak of seven consecutive invites to the All-Star Game and during that time he also led MLB in runs scored twice (1983 and 1987), in plate appearances twice (1982 and 1983), and in 1986 he won an NL batting title (.334) and led the league in on-base percentage (.413).

He was traded to the White Sox in 1990 and played five seasons on Chicago’s south side and in all that time, 14 years, he appeared in only two postseason series - the 1981 NLCS which Montreal lost to the Dodgers, and the 1993 ALCS when the White Sox lost to the Blue Jays.

At the end of 1995 Chicago traded him to the Yankees and the lone return was a player to be named later who wound up being pitcher Blaise Kozeniewski, the Yankees 16th-round draft pick in 1992 who never advanced past Double-A.

Raines was 36 years old and certainly on the downside of his career when he came to the Yankees, but he became one of the leaders of the 1996 team and helped it to the drought-ending World Series championship, New York’s first since 1978. He was limited to 59 games but he hit .284, scored 45 runs and stole 10 bases while also mentoring young outfielders like Bernie Williams, Gerald Williams and Ruben Rivera.

Raines stayed with the Yankees through 1998, contributing much more to the second World Series championship in that dynastic era, but once his contract expired the Yankees did not re-sign him and he bounced to the A’s, Expos, Orioles and Marlins before finally ending his Hall of Fame career at age 42 in 2002.

His son did not have the same success. He played only 75 games in the majors for the Orioles between 2001 and 2004, then spent the next six years toiling in the minors before calling it quits. During his brief stint with the Red Wings he played in 40 games in 2001 and hit .256 with two homers, 12 RBI and 11 stolen bases.

“It was so much fun,” Raines Jr. said of his childhood and being the son of a major leaguer. “I got to hang out in the clubhouse, meet other players and take part in father-son games.”

But there was nothing quite like this father-son game in Ottawa. Both teams agreed to allow the Raines’ to meet at home plate before Game 1 to present their teams’ respective lineups to the umpire.

“We set goals three or four years ago to do that,” Raines Sr. said. “We want to be the second father-son to play in the big leagues. It looks like we’re going to have an opportunity next year.”

As it turned out, they didn’t have to wait that long because on Oct. 3, 2001, the Expos traded the elder to the Orioles as part of a conditional trade, and with junior having been called up to Baltimore on Oct. 1, father and son spent that final week of the season as teammates, joining the Griffeys as the only father-son duos to enjoy that rare feat.

And on Oct. 4, they were in the lineup together and playing in the same outfield. Raines Jr. went 1-for-4, stole a base and made two putouts while his father went 0-for-4 with an RBI and one putout during a 5-4 loss to the Red Sox at Camden Yards.

“This is something a father dreams about,” Raines Sr. said that day. “I had talked publicly for years about how I wanted to stick around long enough to play at the same time as Tim Jr. It never really occurred to me that we would ever have an opportunity to play on the same team.”

This became a reality because former Yankees pitcher Jim Beattie, who at this time was the general manager of the Expos, was aware of Raines’ desire to play with his son, so Beattie rang up Orioles GM Syd Thrift to see if they could work out something with both teams no longer in the playoff race.

“I thought he was kidding around,” Raines Sr. said when Beattie proposed it. “He assured me he wasn’t. Still, I waited to say anything to my wife, parents, and son because I didn’t want them to be disappointed in case the deal somehow fell through.”

Raines Jr. didn’t find about the trade until his father showed up on the field in an Orioles uniform for the game on Oct. 3. Raines Sr. said, “I’m sure it was the greatest surprise of his life, and I’m so grateful that the Expos and Orioles made it possible.”

• Sept. 24 1920: The reason 1920 is marked as the end of the Dead Ball era was due in large part to what happened on this day at the Polo Grounds which was then the Yankees’ home ballpark. Babe Ruth became the first player to hit 50 home runs in a single season, achieving the feat in the first inning of a doubleheader against the Senators, a game the Yankees lost 3-1.

  He would go on to finish with 54 home runs, and it was the third year in a row that he led all of MLB in home runs, but his totals were 11 in 1918 and 29 in 1919 while still playing for the Red Sox. His 54 homers were more than all but one team in MLB that season as the National League Phillies managed 64.

• Sept. 27, 2018: CC Sabathia had an innings clause in his contract for the 2018 season whereby if he reached 155 innings, a $500,000 bonus would kick in. With a playoff spot locked up, all indications were that Aaron Boone would let his veteran go long in his final start against the Rays, giving him the best chance to reach that innings mark.

  However, his catcher, Austin Romine was nearly hit by Rays pitcher Andrew Kittridge, and both benches were warned, but in CC’s own words, “I don’t really make decisions based on money, I guess.” When Jesús Sucre stepped in the box in the bottom half, Sabathia plunked him, knowing he’d be ejected short of reaching his innings bonus. The Rays chirped Sabathia as he walked off the mound, and he screamed back, “That’s for you, motherfuckers.”