Josh Donaldson scores 2 millionth career Major League Baseball

In its 146th official season, Major League Baseball hit the two-million-run plateau Saturday when the Minnesota Twins’ Josh Donaldson trotted home through the milestone.

Going into Saturday’s games, there were only 13 races left to hit two million, and with several games in the afternoon, the competition was underway for who would get his name added to the record books (at least temporarily).

That honor went to Donaldson, who scored on a ground rule double by Nelson Cruz in the first inning of his team’s game against the Kansas City Royals at Target Field. Donaldson touched the plate just moments before players from other cities, including Tim Anderson of the White Sox, who played in Chicago, and Odubel Herrera of the Philadelphia Phillies, who played in Tampa.

“I don’t know what to think, I’ll be honest with you,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said in a post-game video conference. “But I know JD only does great things, so I’m not surprised to hear that he scored the two millionth run of all time.”

The Elias Sports Bureau confirmed that Donaldson was the lucky one, although his achievement received relatively little attention compared to the millionth race, which came in the middle of a national promotional campaign in 1975.

The millionth run was allegedly scored by Bob Watson of the Houston Astros, but it was later concluded that the milestone had been recorded much earlier because some major league records had not been included in the total. Similarly, Donaldson’s name will not be associated with the 2 millionth career for long, as baseball will incorporate statistics from select Negro leagues in the near future.

As the milestone approached, there had even been a debate about when it would be reached, as another respected record holder, Baseball Reference, had a slightly higher figure than Elias, at 97 races, at the start of the season. The discrepancy was due to statistical accounting anomalies such as losses, games played and games protested, and the sheer volume of more than 221,000 games over a century and a half. Elias’ total is considered the official number by MLB

The first run in MLB history was scored on April 22, 1876 by Tim McGinley, a receiver for the Boston Red Sox, the background for today’s Atlanta Braves. He scored in the top of the second inning in Philadelphia, when Boston beat the Athletics (unrelated to the modern club), 6-5, in the first game of the first season (as acknowledged by MLB).