Dodgers at Nationals, 11:05 AM PDT, TV: SPNLA, MASN, MLBN (out-of-market only)

Young RHP Ross Stripling (0-1, 2.20 ERA) opens the series with the Nationals, who send out the redoubtable RHP Max Scherzer (7-1, 1.69 ERA) to face him. Scherzer has struck out 91 this season and has a strikeout per nine inning ratio of 13.96. That’s impressive, but Stripling has a 9.73 ratio himself, albeit in 30 fewer innings.

Today in Dodgers history:

• 1929 In the doubleheader played at Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl, the teams combine to score a record fifty runs when the Dodgers outlast the Phillies, 20-16, before dropping the nightcap to the home team 8-6. In the opener, Brooklyn’s Johnny Frederick crosses the plate five times, giving him the major league mark of scoring eight runs in two consecutive games.
• 1931 Dodgers’ outfielder Babe Herman hits for the cycle for the first of two times this season. In 1933, as a member of the Cubs, he will again hit for the cycle, making him and Bob Meusel the only major leaguers to have accomplished the feat three times since 1900.
• 1942 Night games in New York are banned for the duration of WW II, leaving fans in the dark about the status of the All-Star game scheduled to be played at the Polo Grounds on the evening of Monday, July 6. The prohibition of nighttime tilts, announced by NYC Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine, will change the starting times for 28 contests involving the Dodgers and Giants. (The first night game at Yankee Stadium will be played in 1946.)
• 1998 With a 6-3 victory over the Orioles, the Devil Rays become only the second expansion team in major league history to sweep an away four-game series. The 1993 Colorado Rockies, who did it against the Dodgers, is the other team to accomplish this feat.

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