August 31, 1941: Ted Williams hits one into a stiff wind for 31st home run of season

True, a hitter going for .400 doesn’t like outs – but was this taking things a little too far? Bob Dunbar of the Boston Herald let it be known that Boston Red Sox left fielder Ted Williams had “bored a couple of holes through the left-field fence with his new rifle. … Teddy’s sharp-shooting ability was attested by the absence of one of the ‘out’ signs in the electric scoreboard.”1

A hitter doing that well also likes to hit. And the Philadelphia Athletics were pitching around Williams; he drew four bases on balls during the two games this Sunday afternoon on the last day of August in 1941 – one in Boston’s 5-3 win in the first game and three in Philadelphia’s 3-2 victory in the seven-inning second game.

The day was a chilly one for late summer, the temperature around 60 degrees, and wind gusts reported in the city at 25-30 MPH. The Boston Globe noted, “The wind was so strong that all of the outfielders played exceptionally close, even with Williams and [Jimmie Foxx] at bat.”2

Connie Mack’s Athletics knew well what could happen when they pitched to Ted Williams. Their 3-1 lead in the first game disappeared when he hit a three-run homer in the sixth on a 2-and-1 count “into the right-field wing of the grandstand right into the teeth of a nasty east wind, and with two pals on base. … It was lined eight rows deep and yards on the fair side of the yellow foul pole,” reported the Boston Herald.3 The Herald’s Burt Whitman offered the observation that “Ted the Kid stole the show … just the way Babe Ruth used to monopolize the spotlight when he was hitting them over the horizon for the old Sox and Yankees.”4

Jack Knott was the victim. It was the second time in 1941 that Williams had hit a game-winning homer off him.5 On May 29 at Fenway Park with the score tied, 3-3, in the seventh inning, Knott had delivered up a pitch that Williams had socked for a two-run home run to right field that wound up winning the game for the Red Sox.

Knott was back as the Athletics’ starter on August 31. He had a record of 12-10 and a 4.44 ERA and was 1-4 against the Red Sox to this point in 1941. Knott had won his last game, on August 26, a 2-1 victory over the Tigers in Detroit.

Pitching for the Red Sox was Dick Newsome. This was Newsome’s rookie year, though he was 31 years old. He’d spent the last few years pitching in the Pacific Coast League. Newsome was having a good year with the Red Sox and came into this game with a record of 15-8 and a 3.84 earned-run average.

Second baseman Benny McCoy started the game off with a single. Wally Moses, the A’s right fielder, sacrificed him to second. But catcher Frankie Hayes struck out and the cleanup batter, left fielder Bob Johnson, also made an out.

The first two Red Sox batters made outs, but manager Joe Cronin (playing third base in this game) singled. He moved up 90 feet when Knott threw a wild pitch. Williams was issued a base on balls. First baseman (and former Athletic) Jimmie Foxx then singled to left and Cronin scored for a 1-0 Red Sox lead.

The lead stood until the top of the fourth, when the Athletics scored three times. Hayes led off and walked. Bob Johnson laid down a bunt and wound up with Hayes on second and himself on first after Foxx committed an error by pulling his foot off the bag too soon. Then Philadelphia first baseman Dick Siebert bunted too, but this time less successfully – Hayes was forced out at third base. Sam Chapman hit a three-run homer high up in the netting above Fenway Park’s left-field wall. A couple of outs followed, but Philadelphia had a 3-1 advantage.

Three Red Sox came to the plate in the home fourth and all made outs.

Newsome walked two Athletics in the top of the fifth, but both were left stranded. The Red Sox again went down in order.

In the sixth, Newsome retired the A’s in order, and the Red Sox came from behind to take the lead. Right fielder Pete Fox led off earning a base on balls. Joe Cronin singled to left field.

With runners on first and second, walking Williams was not really a palatable option – though in retrospect, it might have been the wiser move. One reporter speculated that “[t]he wind was coming in so strongly from right field that we half suspect Knott figured he’d let Ted pull the ball to right and that it would go high and that [right fielder] Wally Moses unquestionably could pull it down.”6 Instead, Williams’s drive to right put the Red Sox ahead, 4-3.

This was a game with a Fox and a Foxx, and two unrelated Newsomes – Dick and Red Sox shortstop Skeeter Newsome. Jimmie Foxx singled after the Williams home run. Bobby Doerr sacrificed him to second base. Johnny Peacock – Dick Newsome’s catcher for the game – made an out, but Skeeter Newsome singled for the fourth run on the inning and a 5-3 lead. Newsome tried to steal second but was caught.

The Athletics went down in order in the seventh. The Red Sox got two men on base, but neither got any farther than second base.

In the eighth the Athletics also got two on base, but Siebert hit into a nicely-executed 3-6-1 double play to end the inning.

The Red Sox loaded the bases in the bottom of the eighth. Foxx (“Double X”) walked. After Doerr and Peacock both made outs, Skeeter Newsome singled and Foxx took second base. Then Dick Newsome singled and the bases were loaded, but center fielder Dom DiMaggio made the third out.

Both pitchers worked complete games. Dick Newsome left the basepaths and put on his glove. He got Sam Chapman to make an out and then faced a pair of pinch-hitters, Dee Miles batting for Al Brancato and Eddie Collins batting for Pete Suder. Neither got on base. The game was over. The Red Sox won, 5-3, the go-ahead run coming on Ted Williams’s 31st home run of the 1941 season. Newsome had thrown a five-hitter, with no more than one hit in any inning.

The August 31 games drew a respectable turnout of 22,570. Both games were concluded in a combined total playing time of 3 hours and 34 minutes. We should note that the second game was cut short after seven innings due to darkness – though the nine-inning game was played in 1:43 and the abbreviated one took eight minutes longer.

Even though splitting the doubleheader, the Red Sox moved into second place because the St. Louis Browns took two games from the Chicago White Sox, who fell to third. Boston still trailed the first-place Yankees by 19½ games.

Williams hit home runs on four game days in a row – there was no game on August 29, but he homered on August 28 against the Tigers, on August 30 and August 31 against the Athletics, and in the first and second games of the September 1 doubleheader with the Washington Nationals. We say “game days” because there was one game in the stretch when he did not homer – the second game of the August 31 doubleheader, when he walked three times. His batting average dipped from .408 to .407, but his on-base percentage increased from .549 to .550.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Ted Williams, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS194108311.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1941/B08311BOS1941.htm

Notes

1 “Bob Dunbar’s Comment,” Boston Herald, September 1, 1941: 32.

2 Hy Hurwitz, “Red Sox Split, Grab 2nd Place,” Boston Globe, September 1, 1941: 28.

3 Burt Whitman, “Ted’s Homer Gives Sox Split,” Boston Herald, September 1, 1941: 33.

4 Whitman.

5 A “game-winning home run” is defined here as a home run that provides a game’s final margin of victory, giving the winning team at least one more run than the opposing team scored. For example, if a two-run homer increased a team’s lead from 2-1 to 4-1, and the team went on to win 4-3, it qualifies as a game-winning home run. (This is different from the definition of “game-winning RBI” in baseball’s official statistics from 1980 through 1988, which counted as “game-winning” the RBI that provided a winning team the lead that it never relinquished.)

6 Whitman.