Rangers" Hamilton Hits Four Homers Against Orioles We have not even finished the second week of May, and already this is a baseball season like no other. For the first time in history, the most precious achievements for a pitcher and a hitter have occurred in the same season. Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers belted four home runs on Tuesday night in Baltimore, just 17 days after Philip Humber of the Chicago White Sox tossed a perfect game in Seattle. The Rangers thumped the Orioles, 10-3, with Hamilton adding a double to set the American League's single-game record for total bases, with 18. He tied the major league record, set by Joe Adcock of the Milwaukee Braves in 1954. "Obviously it's, other than being in the World Series, the highlight of my big-league career," Hamilton told reporters in Baltimore. I was saying after I hit two, I've never hit three in a game before, and what a blessing that was. Then to hit four is just an awesome feeling, to see how excited my teammates got. It reminds you of when you're in Little League and a little kid, and just the excitement and why we play the game. Things like that. You never know what can happen. Hamilton is the only active player with a four-homer game, but Humber is hardly the only active pitcher to be perfect. There have been five perfect games since the last four-homer game, by Toronto's Carlos Delgado in 2003. Four of those perfect pitchers - Mark Buehrle, Dallas Braden, Roy Halladay and Humber - are still active. Among his hitting peers, Hamilton stands alone. The achievements are not quite identical, but they are close cousins, and the four-homer game is more unusual. There have been 21 perfect games in major league history, but just 16 in which a player hit four home runs. Two hitters - Seattle's Mike Cameron and the Los Angeles Dodgers" Shawn Green - performed the feat in 2002. The last before them was Mark Whiten of St. Louis in 1993. Hamilton, who also homered in his final plate appearance on Monday, has five home runs in his last six times to the plate. He is batting .406 with 14 homers and 36 runs batted in, including eight on Tuesday. Each of Tuesday's homers came with one runner on base. Hamilton connected off Jake Arrieta in the first and third innings. After his double in the fifth, he homered off Zach Phillips in the seventh and off a former teammate, Darren O'Day, in the eighth. His last home run came on an 0-2 pitch and cleared the center-field wall at Camden Yards. "I heard he hit three to center field," said the Yankees" Curtis Granderson, who homered three times against Minnesota on April 19 but singled twice with a chance to hit his fourth. Anytime you can do that, that's pretty good; it doesn't matter what ballpark you're in. It was not the first record-breaking game for the Rangers in Baltimore. On Aug. 22, 2007, Texas set a single-game American League record for runs in a 30-3 thrashing of the Orioles. That was the year before Hamilton joined the team, in a trade from Cincinnati for pitcher Edinson Volquez. Hamilton had played one season for the Reds, who purchased him from the Chicago Cubs after the Rule 5 draft in Dec. 2006. Hamilton, a former No. 1 overall pick by Tampa Bay, lost three years in the minors to drug suspensions. But he was a revelation in Texas, hitting .304 with 32 home runs and a league-leading 130 R.B.I. in 2008. He also electrified the old Yankee Stadium with a prodigious display of power at the All-Star home run derby. In 2010, Hamilton won the league's Most Valuable Player award while leading the Rangers to their first World Series appearance. When the team returned last October, Hamilton was nearly the hero. His two-out homer broke a tie in the top of the 10th inning of Game 6 in St. Louis, but the Rangers never secured the final out they needed to win the championship. This could be Hamilton's last chance to carry the Rangers to a title. He can be a free agent after the season, and although the Rangers have re-signed starter Derek Holland and second baseman Ian Kinsler, they have not reached a deal with the 30-year-old Hamilton. It is safe to say his price has gone up.