October 4, 1964: Boston’s Dick Radatz sets a single-season record for relievers with 181 strikeouts

In 1964 Boston Red Sox right-hander Dick Radatz struck out 181 opponents – which more than 60 years later remained the single-season record for a pitcher who worked exclusively in relief. His 16 wins as a reliever that year set an American League record.1 

The 1964 Red Sox weren’t a winning team. They finished 72-90, in eighth place in the 10-team AL, 27 games behind the first-place New York Yankees. None of their starters had a winning record, and the team ERA was 4.50. Bill Monbouquette (13-14, 4.04) was their winningest starter.

But they had an ace closer: Dick Radatz – “The Monster.”

It was the 27-year-old Radatz’s third season with the Red Sox. As a rookie in 1962, his 144 strikeouts shattered Chicago Cubs lefty Bill Henry’s three-year-old major-league record of 115 for a pitcher used solely in relief. He’d led the league with 24 retroactively credited saves.2

In 1963 Radatz broke his own relief strikeout record with 162, and his 15 wins tied New York Yankees lefty Luis Arroyo’s AL record, set in 1961, for victories by a relief pitcher. With a 15-6 record and an ERA of 1.97 in 1963, Radatz was an AL All-Star.

Going into the final day of the 1964 regular season, October 4, Radatz had already broken his own major-league record with 179 relief strikeouts while tying his own AL record with 15 relief wins. He had booked 29 saves, enough to lead both leagues and give him wins or saves in more than 60 percent of 71-90 Boston’s total victories. He came into the final game of the season with a record of 15-9 and a 2.28 ERA.

The Washington Senators were visiting Fenway Park in Boston, and had been shut out, 7-0, the previous day by Monbouquette. The Senators were in ninth place, 62-99, and 37 games out of first place, nine games behind the Red Sox. Though the Red Sox were 44-36 at home, the Sunday attendance was reported as 3,439, leaving about 90 percent of Fenway Park’s seats empty.

Bob Heffner started for Boston. It was his sophomore season, and he came into the game with a career mark of 11-18 and an ERA over 4.00. He allowed a single and a walk in the top of the first but benefited from a double play and a strikeout – and then was treated to a 7-0 lead.

Washington manager Gil Hodges gave the start to rookie right-hander Pete Craig, just his second game in the majors and his first start. Craig had only worked one inning, back on September 6, and had been hit for four runs. In this game he didn’t even get through the first inning.

Singles by Félix Mantilla and Carl Yastrzemski and a Senators error put runners on second and third with one out. Dick Stuart was walked intentionally. Craig then produced the first run when he walked Tony Conigliaro unintentionally. Frank Malzone singled to center, driving in one more; Stuart was thrown out at the plate trying to score another run. Craig walked Eddie Bressoud, and Hodges had seen enough.3

Jim Hannan relieved Craig and gave up three straight hits – a two-run single to Russ Nixon, a two-run double to Heffner himself, and then an RBI single to Mantilla, which drove in Heffner while Mantilla was thrown out trying to get to second. Despite having two runners cut down trying to take extra bases, the Red Sox put up seven first-inning runs.

The Senators scored twice in the top of the second on a leadoff walk, a stolen base, a triple by catcher Mike Brumley, and an RBI single by Ed Brinkman. They added a third run in the third inning on a leadoff single by John Kennedy and a two-out single by Chuck Hinton.

After five full innings, the score remained 7-3 and Heffner was in line for a win if he and his teammates could hold on to the lead. In the top of the sixth, however, what had been a 7-0 lead was erased.

Hinton singled. With one out, Brumley doubled, and then Brinkman singled in Brumley. Boston manager Billy Herman – in just his second day on the job after taking over from Johnny Pesky –called on rookie reliever Jay Ritchie. In 20 appearances Ritchie was 1-1, with a 2.58 ERA.4

Swinging at the first pitch, 37-year-old pinch-hitter Roy Sievers greeted Ritchie with a game-tying three-run homer into the screen atop the wall, a 380-foot shot that went out in left-center field.5 It was the 318th – and last – home run of Sievers’ 17-season career.

The Red Sox struck back decisively with back-to-back singles by Bressoud and Nixon off Jim Bronstad. After striking out pinch-hitter Al Smith (batting for Ritchie), Bronstad walked Mantilla and gave up a two-run double to right fielder Lee Thomas.6 Ron Kline relieved Bronstad. He intentionally walked Yastrzemski. Kline’s former Pittsburgh teammate Stuart doubled in two more runs. After Román Mejías – who had also played on the Pirates with Kline – struck out, Malzone singled in the fifth and sixth runs of the sixth inning. The Red Sox had reestablished a solid lead, now 13-7.

Herman brought in Radatz for the seventh. A leadoff single was followed by a 4-6-3 double play. A base on balls was followed by a fly ball out to right field.

With one out in the bottom of the Red Sox seventh, Radatz came to bat. Over his first two seasons, he had 60 at-bats, with five base hits. In 1964 he was 5-for-36. Earlier in the year, on May 16, he’d been allowed to bat with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the 10th, and singled to right, beating the Twins, 6-5. In this game, Radatz singled to right, took second on a single by Mantilla, and took third on a single by Thomas.7

Yastrzemski hit a grounder to first base and Dick Phillips threw home, Brumley tagging out Radatz. Dick Stuart was up next, and he struck out, but not before a wild pitch allowed Mantilla to score, making it 14-7, Red Sox.

Brumley and Brinkman both singled to left to lead off the top of the eighth. Don Zimmer pinch-hit for Kline and struck out. Don Blasingame hit a fly ball to left field, deep enough to score Brumley. John Kennedy grounded out, short to first.

 The Red Sox didn’t get a man on base in the bottom of the eighth. Buster Narum retired the side in order, with Don Zimmer catching – only his second professional game as a catcher. (Zimmer caught 33 games in 1965, with a .966 fielding percentage.)

Radatz likewise retired the three batters he faced to close out his majors-best 67th game finished. The final out with a strikeout of Don Lock – his second K of the game and his 181st of the season, setting a record for major-league baseball – followed by two more outs. Bronstad, in his last of 47 major-league appearances, took the loss.

Radatz worked 157 innings, thus averaging 1.153 strikeouts per inning. Second on the list for most strikeouts by a reliever, through the 2024 season, is Mark Eichhorn of the 1986 Toronto Blue Jays, with 166. Radatz’s 1963 strikeout total still accords him third place on the list and his 1962 total sees him seventh.

Radatz was also awarded the win. Roger Birtwell of the Boston Globe explained the decision to award him the honors. Ritchie “was the pitcher of record when the Sox went ahead. But the official scorer could hardly give the victory to a man who pitched to three hitters and yielded a three-run homer.”8

More than 60 years later, Radatz’s 16 wins as a reliever in 1964 remain the Red Sox team record.9

Addendum

In his own experience, official scorer Bob Ellis said that he believes the current rule 9.17(c) – which governs the awarding of wins to relief pitchers – applied to this game, and that he is aware of two other times that rule 9.17(c) was invoked. Once in a New York Yankees-Baltimore Orioles game on September 12, 2013, in Baltimore at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and once in a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on July 17, 2017. He was the scorer in that Jays-Sox game. He recounts that Dominic Leone came in to pitch for Toronto with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, his team leading, 3-2.

“The first batter that Leone faced was Dustin Pedroia. Pedroia drilled the first pitch off the wall in left-center. Christian Vázquez scored from second, but Mookie Betts was thrown out at the plate (8-6-2) to end the inning.” The score was tied; the Blue Jays scored a run to retake the lead in the top of the eighth and then held it. As scorer at the 2017 game, Ellis was faced with a challenging situation. “I deemed the Leone one-pitch performance ‘brief and ineffective.’”10

Ryan Tepera, who pitched a scoreless bottom of the eighth against the Red Sox, was credited with the win, with a save to Roberto Osuna.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Larry DeFillipo and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Dick Radatz, SABR-Rucker Archive.

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/BOS196410040.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B10040BOS1964.htm

Thanks to Bob Ellis, Carl Riechers, Lyle Spatz, and Stew Thornley for invaluable assistance.

Notes

1 Elroy Face won 18 games for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1959, for the major-league record.

2 The save as a baseball statistic only became official in 1969. Thus, prior saves on current sites are determined retroactively. Newspapers of the day, however, frequently referred to saves and tracked them as such.    

3 Craig finished the 1964 season with a 48.60 earned-run average. The Senators gave him opportunities in each of the following two seasons – he was 0-3 (8.16 ERA) in three appearances – all starts – in 1965. He pitched two innings in relief in a 1966 game, with neither a win nor a loss and a 4.50 ERA.

4 When Heffner was removed from the game, the Red Sox had set what the Associated Press dubbed “an undesirable record – fewest complete games by a pitching staff in one season – 21.” See, for instance, “Stuart, Radatz Help Red Sox Win, 14-8,” Albany (New York) Times-Union, October 5, 1964: 9. As it happens, the AP was incorrect; the Kansas City Royals threw only 18 complete games in 1964. Times have indeed changed; in 2024, the Red Sox team had just one complete game all season long, a 2-0 three-hit shutout of the Cleveland Guardians by Tanner Houck on April 17. Houck threw just 94 pitches.   

5 “Bosox Plaster Nats with 100th Loss, 14-8,” Washington Post, October 5, 1964: A22.

6 Interestingly, the umpire working second base in the game was also named Al Smith, working the final game of his five-year major-league career. Pinch-hitter Al Smith’s appearance was the final one of his own 15-year playing career. Others making their final major-league appearances in the game included Washington’s Jim Bronstad, Ken Hunt, and Dave Stenhouse and Boston’s Román Mejías.

7 It was Thomas’s third hit of the game. Mantilla, Thomas, and Nixon each had three base hits, for nine of Boston’s 17 hits. Brumley and Brinkman each had three hits for Washington. Malzone’s three RBIs led the Red Sox. Sievers’ three RBIs led the Senators.

8 Roger Birtwell, “Sox Lose Big Lead, Rally to Win, 14-8,” Boston Globe, October 5, 1964: 21. Because pitcher Ritchie had been replaced by a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the sixth before the Red Sox scored the runs that broke the 7-7 tie, he was no longer in the game as Boston took the lead for good. Another Boston-area newspaper reported, “Under the rules of baseball, Jay Ritchie was the winning pitcher yesterday as the Sox broke a 7-7 tie, even though Jay had been lifted for a pinch hitter. But the official scorer ruled that Dick Radatz was the winner on the grounds that Ritchie gave up a three-run homer to Roy Sievers during the two-thirds of an inning he worked, while Radatz checked the Nats to one run in three innings.” Lin Raymond, “Herman Thinks Yankees Too Tough for Cardinals,” Quincy Patriot Ledger, October 5, 1964: 21. His appearance, in short, had been both ineffective and brief, which went into the rules in 1951 as Rule 10.16(c)(5). In 2007, the rules added guidance on that – that in general a pitcher was ineffective and brief if he pitched less than an inning and allowed at least two earned runs, including inherited runners.

9 The Boston Record American wrote that with 16 wins and 25 saves, Radatz had figured in 41 of Boston’s 71 victories, which it said was a major-league record. United Press International made the same claim. Their totals were incorrect, however, given that Radatz had 29 saves, and thus had figured in 45 wins. Larry Claflin, “Maglie, Runnels Named New Red Sox Coaches,” Boston Record American, October 5, 1964: 41. For a UPI story, see “Sox Finish Season by Crushing Nats,” Providence Journal, October 5, 1964: 47.  

10 Email to author from Robert Ellis on March 25, 2025.