Opening Day Home Runs: The Records, Streaks, and One Wild Coincidence

The all-time record for Opening Day home runs is a three-way tie, and I feel like they couldn’t be more different from each other. Frank Robinson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Adam Dunn each hit eight home runs on Opening Day across their careers, putting them atop a list of 15 players in MLB history who have gone deep at least six times in the first game of the season.

Opening Day isn’t just another game. It’s a reset button. Hope is undefeated, every team is in first place, and for one day, every swing feels like it could define the season.

But some hitters don’t wait around for the story to build…they start immediately.

Here’s a look at the greatest Opening Day home run performances in MLB history, including the records, the streaks, and one genuinely bizarre coincidence.

Related: A Complete Guide to Single-Season (& Single-Game) HR Performances

Players With the Most Opening Day Home Runs

As mentioned above, only 15 players have hit at least six Opening Day home runs in their careers. But for now, Robinson, Griffey Jr., and Dunn stand alone at the top with eight apiece. 

Robinson and Griffey are the most similar among this trio. After all, they’re both Hall of Famers in the 500-homer club. There’s no way you can’t call Robinson a home run hitter — his 586 career taters still rank 10th on the all-time list. But he was a totally different hitter than Griffey.

While he slugged 30-plus homers 11 times during his 21-year career, Robinson only surpassed the 40-homer plateau once (49 in 1966 for the Orioles). That was also the only time he led the league in dingers, too.

As for Griffey, hitting lots of homers will always be part of his identity. His 630 homers are seventh-most in MLB history, and the way in which he got there was different than Robinson. The Kid had nine seasons of 30-plus homers, but seven of those campaigns finished with more than 40 (and two of them were beyond the half-century mark). Griffey also led the league in homers on four different occasions.

And then there’s Dunn, your prototypical three-true-outcomes hitter who liked to walk, strikeout, and mash taters. He also had nine years with 30-plus homers, with six of those seasons finishing with 40-plus. More noteworthy, Dunn hit 40-plus homers five years in a row between 2004 and 2008, hitting exactly 40 each year from 2005-08.

Most Consecutive Opening Days With a Home Run

Can any active players join or surpass the current all-time Opening Day home run kings? The answer to that question is technically yes, but it’ll take a big day at the dish.

Tyler O’Neill and Bryce Harper are tied for the active lead with six Opening Day taters, but let’s focus on O’Neill because he transforms into Babe Ruth when this date rolls around.

The muscular right-handed slugger has already set a new MLB record for the most consecutive Opening Days with a home run. He’s done it each year from 2020 through 2025. This has been accomplished across playing for three teams, too. O’Neill did it with the St. Louis Cardinals from 2020-23, the Boston Red Sox in 2024, and the Baltimore Orioles in 2025.

The Youngest Player to Homer Twice on Opening Day

Harper did everything in overdrive at the beginning of his career. He graduated high school early so he could start playing JUCO ball before the Nationals made him the top pick of the 2010 MLB Draft as a 17-year-old.

It unsurprisingly didn’t take him long to work his way through Washington’s minor-league system. Harper was in the bigs by the time he was 19 and immediately started raking. He slashed .270/.340/.477 with 22 homers, 26 doubles, 59 RBI, and 98 runs scored across 139 games in 2012.

That performance led to his first All-Star Game selection, a 30th-place finish in National League MVP Award voting, and the NL Rookie of the Year Award. His age-20 campaign wasn’t the leap forward some were probably expecting (he posted a .854 OPS in 118 games), but his season got off to an incredible start.

His first two at-bats of the 2013 season both concluded with him trotting around the bases. According to MLB.com, Harper was the fourth-youngest player to homer in his team’s first game of the year, the first player in franchise history to homer in his first two at-bats of the season, and the youngest player ever with a two-homer performance on Opening Day.

Most Home Runs in One Opening Day (& a Crazy Coincidence)

If you liked the trifecta of players at the top of the all-time Opening Day homer leaderboard, you’re going to love this. The most homers slugged in a single Opening Day is three, and it’s been done by four players.

George Bell was the first to accomplish this feat. After slugging 47 homers with 134 RBI and bringing home the 1987 American League MVP Award, he came back to enjoy a three-homer game on Opening Day, which happened on April 4, 1988 (remember that date).

The next player to do it was Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes for the Chicago Cubs. If you haven’t heard of him, it’s probably because he appeared in just 225 games across six big-league seasons. He only hit 13 career MLB homers, but all three of these Opening Day taters came off Dwight Gooden of the Mets…on April 4, 1994.

And then it was Dmitri Young’s turn to mash a trifecta of dingers, doing it during the Tigers’ home opener. He finished the year with 21 homers and 72 RBI across 126 games. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Young’s feat happened on…yup, you guessed it: April 4, 2005.

You can’t make this stuff up, folks!

The most recent three-homer performance on Opening Day came from Matt Davidson for the White Sox. The date symmetry unfortunately ends here, though — this one took place on March 29, 2018. Davidson hit 54 homers during his MLB career, and 46 of them came in 2017 and 2018 for Chicago.