baseball-d1 flag

Daniel Wilco | krikya18.com | May 4, 2018

Jim LaFountain and college baseball's unbreakable record

  Jim LaFountain didn't have a spectacular career, but in one game at Louisville, he set a handful of records with his bat.

It’s with a fair degree of certainty that we can mark March 24, 1976, as the day of the greatest hitting performance in college baseball history.

Let’s set the scene. Louisville is hosting Western Kentucky for a double-header. In the first game, the Hilltoppers squeak by the host team, 12-11, for just their eighth win in 17 games on the season. It was Louisville’s fifth loss in a row.

MORE: We picked Florida State baseball's all-time starting nine

The night before the game, trying to break the slump, Louisville catcher/first baseman and designated hitter Jim LaFountain studied Red Sox great Ted Williams’ “The Art of Hitting.”

Then, in the first inning of the second game, with a runner on base, LaFountain crushed a ball over the fence for a two-run homer.

It would be his worst at bat of the game.

In the second, LaFountain cleared the bases with a grand slam. In the third, he came to the plate twice. First at bat? Grand slam. Second? Take a wild guess. Yep. Grand slam.

You read that correctly. Three grand slams in a game. Two in the same inning.

Both of those are still records in college baseball. Five other players have tied LaFountain’s record of two grand slams in an inning (a feat that hadn't been achieved before 1976), yet no one but the Louisville slugger has managed three in a game.

The 14 runs batted in broke a record that had stood for nine years at 12. The new record stood for 23 years until Florida State’s Marshall McDougall drove in 16 against Maryland in 1999.

Only two players have ever managed to hit more than four home runs in a game.

Oh, one more thing we should mention about LaFountain’s record-shattering performance: It was in just five innings.

According to Louisville’s media guide, Western Kentucky asked Louisville coach Jim Zerilla to mercifully end the game after the Cardinals took a 26-4 lead in the fifth. It was probably the right call, but imagining what LaFountain could have done to those poor records with three more at bats (he was averaging 0.8 at bats per inning that game) is tantalizing.

MORE: The decline of the stolen base in college baseball

Louisville would go on to win nine of its next 13 games, averaging 9.8 runs per game during the stretch.

LaFountain racked up 84 RBI on the season, so other than the one 14-RBI outing, he averaged 1.35 per game. But how many did he read “The Art of Hitting” before?

Wisconsin continues its climb in latest women's volleyball Power 10 rankings

Wisconsin rises and Texas falls in this week's college volleyball Power 10 rankings.
READ MORE

13 best early non-conference women's basketball games

13 of the best early-season non-conference matchups in women's college basketball that you should have fixed on your TV.
READ MORE

NCAA Division I women’s volleyball committee reveals in-season top 16

The NCAA DI women's volleyball committee announced its 2024 in-season top-16 rankings during the Pitt vs. Stanford match on Sunday, Oct. 20.
READ MORE
Division I
Baseball Championship
June 13 - 23, 2025
Charles Schwab Field | Omaha, NE