Rockies Reeling as Record Tied

The Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies tied a 115-year-old record Saturday by having eight players with three or more hits.

Six of them were members of the Reds, who accumulated 21 hits to rout the reeling Rockies, 12-5.

“We aren’t doing it with home runs. We are hitting line drives up the middle,” Cincinnati Manager Jack McKeon said after his team handed Colorado its seventh consecutive loss.

Barry Larkin, Bret Boone, Eddie Taubensee, Chris Stynes, Dmitri Young and Jon Nunnally each had three hits for the Reds. Larkin hit his first homer and Boone drove in three runs.

Colorado’s Mike Lansing had four hits and Vinny Castilla three as the teams matched the major-league record set by Chicago and Detroit on Sept. 6, 1883.

On four occasions since 1928--twice in the National League and twice in the American--teams had combined for seven batters with at least three hits. Houston and Cincinnati were the most recent, on Aug. 3, 1989.

Larkin, Taubensee, Nunnally and Willie Greene had two RBIs apiece.

“Things are just clicking for us,” Larkin said. “Jack changed some of the personnel out there to give us matchups in our favor lately. But we haven’t changed anything else.”

Meanwhile, the Rockies stranded a club-record 16 baserunners.

Cincinnati’s Mike Remlinger (1-2) went six innings, allowing 11 hits and five runs. Stan Belinda pitched three scoreless innings for his first save.

Rockies starter John Thomson (1-1) allowed five runs on five hits in the first inning, including Boone’s two-run double. The Reds added four more runs on six hits in the second, keyed by Greene’s two-run single.

“John went out there with pretty good stuff, but it just got hit,” Colorado Manager Don Baylor said. “No one has been able to stop it yet. Somebody has to give us a good strong performance. We haven’t had that in over a week.”

The 75 runs given up by the Rockies in the last six games are the most given up in a six-game stretch in club history, easily eclipsing the 55 given up in August 1995.

“I don’t remember ever having a string of games like this,” Baylor said, “not even in our first year [1993]. I don’t remember day after day of this--the runs we’ve given up, the hits.”

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