Seeing double? Tune in Friday for an MLB first

Anderson vs. Anderson in Milwaukee, Gray vs. Gray in Denver makes history

July 12th, 2019

Baseball returns in full force Friday, and you don’t have to look past the starting matchups to find a strangely entertaining reason to tune in.

Friday’s series opener in Milwaukee will see the Brewers’ take on Giants starter Shaun Anderson at 8:10 p.m. ET. A half hour later in Denver, Colorado’s takes on Cincinnati’s . Anderson vs. Anderson … and Gray vs. Gray. Yes, it’s weird.

And, as it turns out, historic. According to research done by Miami University’s Jon Becker, Friday is the very first day in Major League history to feature a pair of starting pitcher matchups with the same last name.

There have been near misses on the MLB calendar before. Rangers pitcher Bobby Witt beat Angels pitcher Mike Witt (unrelated) on Sept. 28, 1986, and the pair were followed just one day later by brothers Greg and Mike Maddux in the sixth outing of Greg’s career. Brothers Phil and Joe Niekro faced each other nine times, and other famous siblings, including Gaylord and Jim Perry, Pedro and Ramon Martinez and Jered and Jeff Weaver, have toed the same big league mound without another same-name matchup on the calendar.

Friday had a chance to set even more history: Astros ace Gerrit Cole and Angels righty Taylor Cole are also scheduled to pitch, but they’ll be roughly 1,400 miles away from each other in Arlington and Anaheim, respectively.