Record Day: 6 Homers, 16 RBIs for Seminole

Marshall McDougall, a junior second baseman for Florida State, made baseball history Sunday by hitting six home runs in a nine-inning game against Maryland at College Park, Md.

The six home runs are an NCAA record, and McDougall also set an NCAA record with 16 RBIs, as the Seminoles beat the Terrapins, 26-2.

Maryland pitcher Aaron McFarling chose to pitch to McDougall in ninth inning with two runners on base.

“It’s the only drama left in the game when we’re down 23-2,” McFarling, a senior, told the Diamondback, the Maryland student newspaper.

“The last thing I want to do is hit the guy or walk the guy and look like a coward.”

So he pitched to McDougall, who deposited the ball over the center-field fence at cozy Shipley Field for his history-making home run.

“I threw him a slider,” McFarling said. “It was down in the zone, but he went down and got it. I don’t know if he was looking for it or not. I didn’t think he would swing on a first-pitch slider. Most guys don’t.”

Why not? McDougall, from Valrico, Fla., hit everything else.

“Luckily we had people on base so they couldn’t walk me,” he said.

McDougall had a single in the first inning, then a solo homer in the second to left-center field, a three-run homer in the fourth to right-center, a solo homer in the sixth to left, a three-run shot in the seventh to left, a grand slam in the eighth to center and the three-run homer to center in the ninth at Shipley Field, which has 320-foot foul line measurements and is a bandbox-like 355 feet to center field.

He is a right-handed hitter who didn’t really benefit from the strong wind that was blowing so hard to right field that the American and Maryland flags on the center-field pole stayed straight out all day long.

“I’ve been in this game for 47 years and I’ve never seen what I saw today,” Florida State Coach Mike Martin said.

Neither has anybody else.

The record for home runs in a college game was five, by Henry Rochelle of Campbell College, N.C., in a 38-0 win over Radford, Va., in 1985.

The record for RBIs in a game was 14, by Louisville’s Jim LaFountain against Western Kentucky in 1976.

The major league record for homers in a game is four, done nine times, most recently by Mark Whiten, then with St. Louis, against Cincinnati in 1993. He shares the RBI record, 12, with Jim Bottomley, also of the Cardinals, who set the record in 1924.

“It’s pretty special to me,” said McDougall, who leads the Atlantic Coast Conference with 23 home runs. “I would never think about it in my wildest dreams, because I didn’t hit home runs coming into this year, and for some reason I’ve hit a lot this year. I just got the ball up in the air and it carried for me.”

McDougall is in his first season with the Seminoles after transferring from Santa Fe Junior College in Gainesville, Fla. He has been drafted by both the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees and had hit 12 homers in two junior college seasons.

By the time McFarling faced McDougall in the ninth inning, everybody in the crowd of 357 had a sense of what was unfolding and wanted to see history.

They stood as he swung.

“It was a great feeling because everyone was rooting for me,” McDougall said. “Seeing my teammates react and the fans react, it was great.

“They were laughing and jumping around. They couldn’t believe it.”

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.