Phil Nevin doesn’t fancy himself a superstitious baseball player. That said, he loved the Padres’ camouflage jerseys. He homered twice on this date — April 13 — in 2000, the first time the Padres trotted them out to honor military servicemen and military servicewomen.
“Anytime you hit two home runs,” Nevin said, “of course, you’re going to want to keep wearing them.”
Nevin, however, could not continue to wear the particular No. 29 that he wore while swatting home runs off the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Brian Anderson. It was packed off to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, as no other team had ever paid tribute to the military as the Padres had when they began a tradition that continues today via Military Appreciation Sundays.