June 11, 1963: Boston’s Dick Radatz strikes out 11 batters in relief

They called him “The Monster” – in large part because he was large: 6-feet-6 and listed at 230 pounds. In Dick Radatz’s rookie season of 1962, the right-handed Boston Red Sox pitcher led the American League in relief appearances (62, finishing 53 games) and retroactively credited saves (24), with a 2.24 earned-run average. He struck out 144 batters in 124⅔ innings.

Though Radatz didn’t lead in any of those categories in his sophomore season of 1963, he lowered his ERA to 1.97, earned 23 saves, and could also boast of a 15-6 won-lost record for a better winning percentage than anyone else on the team.

Lengthy relief stints were not unfamiliar to Radatz. In 1962 he worked four or more innings six times. On September 9 he threw nine innings of relief against the New York Yankees in the second game of a doubleheader, coming into the game in the seventh, pitching through the 15th, and emerging the winner when the Red Sox broke the tie in the 16th.1

Entering Boston’s June 11 game at Tiger Stadium in 1963, Radatz had already booked three games of four or more innings, the most recent being the Red Sox’ 14-inning win on June 9 in Baltimore. He had worked six innings and struck out 10 batters to improve his record to 5-1, and his sacrifice had set up Chuck Schilling’s go-ahead RBI single.

Radatz got one day off before being summoned from the bullpen yet again, for what proved to be an even longer stint.

For the Tuesday afternoon game in Detroit, Tigers manager Bob Scheffing started veteran Jim Bunning. Bunning had been 19-10 (3.59) in 1962. His 13 starts so far in 1963 had netted a 4-5 record and a 2.90 ERA. In Detroit’s 15-inning loss to the Red Sox at Fenway Park on April 20, Bunning had gone 12 innings for a no-decision, as Radatz picked up the win with a seven-inning relief outing.

Red Sox manager Johnny Pesky went with 21-year-old lefty Wilbur Wood, who was in the early stages of a 17-season career but still looking for his first big-league win. This was his second start of 1963 and ninth major-league appearance.

In the 10-team American League, the Red Sox were in sixth place (25-25) and the Tigers were in ninth (24-29), but only 7½ games behind the first-place Chicago White Sox. Detroit had beaten Boston, 6-1, the night before.

Neither team scored for the first three innings on June 11. Wood stranded Al Kaline at third after a two-out triple in the first. With one out in the bottom of the fourth, Wood hit Kaline in the foot with a pitch and Rocky Colavito walked. One out later, Norm Cash singled to right field, driving in Kaline with the game’s first run.

The Red Sox collected only two hits off Bunning through five innings, but they finally got to him in the top of the sixth. Second baseman Schilling led off with a double down the left-field line. Center fielder Román Mejías homered to left-center field, one that “cleared the nine-foot fence 400 feet from the plate,” reported the Boston Globe.2 Left fielder Carl Yastrzemski doubled off the screen in right-center field, and third baseman Frank Malzone – leading the league in batting average at .346 – singled him home.3 The Red Sox had a 3-1 lead.

The Tigers narrowed that lead, scoring once in the bottom of the sixth. Bubba Phillips and Kaline both singled, before Colavito stalled the rally by hitting into a 5-4-3 double play. Still, Phillips took third on the play and scored on Gus Triandos’s single to left.

Bunning retired the Red Sox in order in the seventh, and Wood took the one-run lead to the bottom of the inning. Don Wert led off with a single to left, and Dick McAuliffe sacrificed him to second base. Bill Freehan, a 21-year-old rookie backup catcher who had spent much of his childhood in Detroit, pinch-hit for Bunning.

Pesky made a move, replacing Wood with Radatz – like Freehan a Detroit native. Scheffing countered, pinch-hitting Whitey Herzog for pinch-hitter Freehan. Radatz struck out Herzog but walked second baseman Jake Wood. Billy Bruton, batting for Phillips as Scheffing’s third pinch-hitter of the inning, singled, tying the score. Radatz closed out the inning by getting Kaline, whose 45 RBIs entering the game led the majors, to ground into a force at second.  

Terry Fox was Detroit’s new pitcher. The 3-3 score held when neither team got a baserunner in the eighth. A one-out single by McAuliffe yielded the only runner of the ninth, and the game went into extra innings.   

With two outs in the 10th, Mejías singled and Yastrzemski walked, but Malzone hit a ball back to Fox, who threw to first. The Tigers went down in order, in part because, per the Boston Herald, “Yaz made a great catch” leaping to catch a drive off Colavito’s bat.4

Only one man reached base in the 11th, Boston’s Eddie Bressoud on a two-out walk. Only one reached in the 12th – Detroit’s McAuliffe with a leadoff single. Neither got to second, McAuliffe watching in vain as a foul popup, strikeout, and outfield fly removed any further threat.

It was three-up, three-down for both teams in the 13th, Radatz striking out Colavito and catcher Triandos.

Lou Clinton got to Fox for a two-out single in the top of the 14th. Radatz followed him, and grounded into a force play, short to first.5 Fox had now worked seven innings of relief.

Radatz had worked 6⅔ innings. He kept going. In the bottom of the 14th, he struck out McAuliffe, got Wert to pop up foul to Malzone at third, and struck out Cash.

Fox – who had turned in an eight-inning relief outing a season earlier in a 22-inning loss to the Yankees – was pitching an equally impressive game, but everything went wrong for him in the 15th. Schilling reached first on a fielding error by second baseman Wood, then took second on Mejías’ sacrifice. Fox intentionally walked Yastrzemski to face Malzone, who was 1-for-6 on the day.

This time, Malzone lined a one-strike pitch over Colavito, over the screen, and into the left-field seats – a three-run home run, his eighth of the season. Dick Stuart followed that with a towering homer of his own to the same place, making it 7-3, Red Sox.

“He went one inning too long,” said Scheffing of Fox after the game.6  

Radatz took the mound again to close things out in the bottom of the 15th. With the six innings he’d worked on June 9, it was his 15th inning of work in roughly 48 hours.

Frank Kostro pinch-hit for Tom Sturdivant, who had replaced Fox after Stuart’s homer. Radatz struck him out, his 10th K of the game. Jake Wood hit a fly ball, caught by first baseman Stuart. Radatz then struck out Bruton. The game was over, a 7-3 Red Sox victory. It was Boston’s second 15-inning win over Detroit in 1963, after Radatz’s April 20 win at Fenway Park.

Joe Falls of the Detroit Free Press wrote, “It was like a horror movie … only this time the ‘Monster’ won.”7

Radatz had failed to hold the lead in the seventh inning – costing Wilbur Wood the chance at his first big-league win8 – but he went on to earn a win in the 15th, improving to 6-1 for the season. He had struck out 11 batters in an 8⅔-inning relief appearance, retiring the final 12 batters in order, striking out six of the last eight he’d faced.

It was the 13th consecutive outing in which Radatz had thrown scoreless relief.9 With the 10 batters he had struck out just two days earlier, he had thrown 14⅔ innings and struck out 21 opponents in the two games. 

Future Hall of Famer Al Kaline declared, “Radatz is the best relief pitcher I’ve ever seen.”10 By year’s end, Radatz had struck out 162 batters. In 1964, he struck out 181, which remains through the 2025 season the record for strikeouts by a relief pitcher.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Madison McEntire and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Dick Radatz, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Gary Gillette for providing coverage from Detroit newspapers.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET196306110.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1963/B06110DET1963.htm

Notes

1 Red Sox catcher Bob Tillman doubled to lead off the 16th inning and took third base on a wild pitch from New York reliever Marshall Bridges, who was in his own ninth inning of relief. Radatz was due to bat with one out. Billy Gardner pinch-hit for him and bunted successfully to score Tillman for a 5-4 edge. Chet Nichols relieved Radatz and picked up a save.

2 Roger Birtwell, “Radatz, HRs Win for Sox in 15,” Boston Globe, June 12, 1963: 33, 34.

3 Kaline was second in batting average at the time, at .337.

4 Henry McKenna, “Radatz, Malzone Do It, 7-3,” Boston Herald, June 12, 1963: 27, 28.

5 Radatz finished his career with a .131 batting average, but had been .097 in 1962 and was on his way to batting .069 in 1963.

6 Watson Spoelstra, “Radatz Unscored On in 13 Relief Efforts,” Detroit News, June 12, 1963: 53.

7 Joe Falls, “Bosox HRs beat Tigers in 15th,” Detroit Free Press, June 12,1963: D-1. Falls wrote, “Radatz … is so mean and menacing that he makes Boris Karloff seem like a sorority sister.”

8 Wood, a local phenom from Belmont (Massachusetts) High School, pitched in 36 games for the Red Sox and never was credited with a win. In September 1964, his contract was sold to the Pittsburgh Pirates. He did not attain his first major-league win until winning in relief for the Pirates against the Houston Astros on August 29, 1965, in the 67th appearance of his big-league career – reportedly longer than it had taken any previous American or National League pitcher to record his first win. His career blossomed with the Chicago White Sox, and he led the majors with 90 wins from 1971 through 1974.

9 Two articles that assessed Radatz’s skills and some physical problems he had overcome in spring training are Will McDonough, “Arch Support Relieves Pains in Radatz’s Back” and Arthur Siegel, “Radatz Making Most of Gifts.” Both appear on page 55 in the June 12, 1963, Boston Globe.    

10 Falls.