August 3, 1909: Record crowd in Boston hampers play during second game of Ladies’ Day doubleheader

The second game of the August 3, 1909, ladies day doubleheader between the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers was marked by an increased police presence, as a “riot call” went out between the games.2 Two ambulances and additional police squads from almost every station in Boston arrived on the scene to contain the record 29,781 fans in attendance at the Huntington Avenue Grounds that day.3

“They were lured,” wrote Boston Post baseball editor Paul Shannon, “by the Tigers’ snarl.”4

They likely were lured by the closeness of the pennant race as well. The Tigers came to Boston with a four-game lead over the Philadelphia Athletics and a 7½-game lead over the Red Sox with 62 games left to play.5 Baseball writers from both cities believed this five-game series was critical; the Tigers needed to win the series to widen their gap over the A’s and the Red Sox in pursuit of their third consecutive American League pennant, while the Red Sox needed to win the series simply to stay in the race. Behind a strong pitching performance from Smoky Joe Wood, the Red Sox had beaten the Tigers in the first game, 2-1.

The sheer size of the record crowd affected play and limited the size of the field to “an almost unimaginable degree,” the Boston Herald reported.6 An otherwise routine fly ball that dropped into the crowd in left, center, or right field was ruled a double. Together, the Red Sox and Tigers hit a whopping 16 of them.

“The police made an abortive attempt between games to force the crowd back so that there would be something like playing room,” reported the Detroit Free Press, “but when it is said that the left fielder was allowed about as much ground in his territory as the third baseman generally takes care of the story is told.”7

Rookie southpaw Ray Collins, working in just the sixth game of his major-league career, took the mound for the Red Sox. On July 25 he threw the first of his 19 career shutouts, a five-hitter against these same Tigers.8 Collins wasn’t as sharp this time around. Tigers left fielder Matty McIntrye led off and was safe at first on an error by Red Sox first baseman Jake Stahl. A single by center fielder Sam Crawford and a walk to right fielder Ty Cobb loaded the bases, but Collins managed to get out of the inning unscored on.

Tigers starter Ed Willett entered the game fourth in the American League with 14 wins, en route to a career-best 21-10 season. The right-hander pitched well against Boston in 1908, notching a 4-2 record, and he had beaten them twice in three starts so far this season. Like Collins, Willett was not as sharp on this August afternoon. He held the Red Sox scoreless in the first but ran into trouble in the second. He gave up a single to shortstop Heinie Wagner and a double to Stahl. Catcher Bill Carrigan grounded out to first base, scoring Wagner for Boston’s first run.

The Tigers tied it up in the third inning. Shortstop Donie Bush opened with a double and scored on Crawford’s single to right field.

The Red Sox jumped back into the lead in the fourth inning. With one out, Stahl hit a ball “into the left bleachers on the bound, a clean home run under any kind of ground rules,” argued the Boston Globe – but umpire Tommy Connolly awarded Stahl only two bases.9 Larry Gardner singled, and Carrigan laid down a bunt, scoring Stahl with the go-ahead run.10

The momentum swung back in Detroit’s favor in the fifth inning. With one out, Cobb hit a ball into the crowd a few yards behind third base for a ground-rule double and came home with the tying run on first baseman Claude Rossman’s single. Second baseman Red Killefer doubled and catcher Oscar Stanage singled, scoring Rossman and Killefer. Tigers pitcher Willett chipped in with a two-out double, giving Detroit a 5-2 lead.

The Red Sox responded with a pair of runs in the home half of the fifth inning, which also saw a tense moment in the outfield. After Harry Niles reached first on Killefer’s errant throw, Harry Lord hit a fly ball to right field.11 As the Detroit Free Press observed, “Cobb made a great try for the ball, leaping high and touching the ball but failing to hold it. He fell, and it was feared he was hurt, but he was able to resume play.”12 Lord took second on the play, and Niles moved to third. Killefer misplayed Tris Speaker’s groundball – his second miscue of the inning – scoring Niles. Lord scored when Wagner grounded to Rossman.

Southpaw Ed Karger came in to pitch for Boston in the sixth. He gave up a run on a Bush double and Crawford’s single to make it 6-4, Tigers.

The Red Sox got another run back in their half of the sixth. Gardner doubled, Carrigan’s fly moved him to third, and he scored on Karger’s groundout to first.

Boston almost tied the game in the seventh, but a questionable call from the umpires prevented the tying run from scoring. With two out and Speaker on second, Wagner lined a single to left fielder McIntyre, who momentarily fumbled the ball. As Speaker rounded third, he “got mixed up with [Tigers third baseman George Moriarty],”13 wrote one sportswriter, while another claimed he was “jostled out of the path by Moriarty.”14

The tussle between Speaker and Moriarty bought McIntyre enough time to retrieve the ball and throw home. Umpire Connolly called Speaker out, and both teams erupted, “with the exception of a few Tigers, including Moriarty, who stood near the plate and waited, with a bored expression, for the trouble to blow over.”15

Both teams scored a run in the eighth. In the top of the inning, Crawford doubled, went to third on Cobb’s out, and scored when Carrigan muffed Lord’s throw home on Rossman’s grounder.  In the bottom of the eighth, Carrigan reached on a fielder’s choice, Karger was hit by a pitch, and Niles doubled, scoring Carrigan.

The Tigers did not score in the top half of the ninth, so the Red Sox came to the plate needing one run to tie, two to win. Speaker drew a walk to start the inning and was forced out at second on Gessler’s grounder. Wagner hit what should have been “an easy bounder” to Willett, but he “threw poorly to second.”16 With one out and two runners on base, Stahl lined the ball into the crowd in right field, “scoring Doc] Gessler with the tying run, and the ground fairly rocked with applause,” wrote the Globe’s Murnane. “The crowd went so wild, the game was delayed for several minutes while the players figured out the next move to make.”17

With one out and runners now on second and third, Tigers manager Hugh Jennings tapped left-handed rookie Kid Speer to face left-handed hitter Gardner. Red Sox manager Fred Lake responded by pulling Gardner in favor of right-handed Pat Donahue. On June 2, the Red Sox had overcome a five-run deficit against these same Detroit Tigers and won the game in the bottom of the eighth on a pinch-hit RBI single from the hero of the hour, Pat Donahue. Could he do it again?18

Donahue was “wreathed in smiles as he strode to the plate,” wrote Murnane. “Sixty thousand and a few more eyes were on him, and he was satisfied that he would turn the trick. The crowd cut off its rooting and the scene was like a picture.”19

Speer’s first pitch was a tad high for Donahue’s liking, and he watched it sail past.

Speer’s second offering was also high, and again Donahue did not swing.

The third pitch was a fastball, and Donahue was ready for it. He deposited the ball in right field, and Wagner came home with the winning run.

The crowd surged onto the field. Donahue may have made the trip to first base on foot, but “he traveled back on the shoulders of rabid fans in the midst of a howling mob. The yelling was incessant even then,” noted the Boston Herald, “and then it was all over and the cars began to attempt to take care of the thousands.”20

Boston and Detroit played a doubleheader the next day in front of another massive crowd, 25,427.21 The Tigers managed only one victory in the series; they took the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader, 10-3.22 The Red Sox came back to win the second game, 2 -1, kicking off an 11-game winning streak. The fifth and final game of the series was rained out.

Detroit ultimately prevailed, besting both Boston and Philadelphia to win its third consecutive American League pennant. (The Tigers lost the World Series in seven games to the Pittsburgh Pirates.)

But those early August games, with their pennant-race implications, captivated the hometown fans. As Boston Globe columnist Melville Webb Jr. noted, “For 29,000 to turn out on a weekday simply for the games, without it being the opening of a new park or something like that, is the most remarkable thing that ever happened in baseball in this city.”23

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Boston Globe, August 4, 1909.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author also consulted Mark S. Halfon’s Tales from the Deadball Era: Ty Cobb, Home Run Baker, Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Wildest Times in Baseball History (Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books, 2014), and the Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org websites.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS190908032.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1909/B08032BOS1909.htm

Notes

1 Another large crowd of nearly 30,000 fans witnessed a doubleheader between the Boston Americans and the New York Highlanders on October 8, 1904, at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. As of November 2025, Baseball Reference and Retrosheet erroneously listed 35,000 as the total paid attendance for this doubleheader. An update in 2026 was planned to amend this figure to the correct number of 28,040. “The Great, Orderly, Delighted Multitude,” Boston Sunday Post, October 9, 1904: 12.

2 “All Attendance Records Broken,” Boston Post, August 4, 1909: 9.

3  The official paid attendance was 29,781, almost triple the capacity of the ballpark. That number did not include the more than 1,000 women in the crowd (who were admitted free of charge, as was the custom for ladies day promotions) and the many hundreds of children who managed to sneak in. Melville E. Webb Jr., “Boston’s Biggest Baseball Crowd,” Boston Globe, August 4, 1909: 5.

4 Paul H. Shannon, “Enormous Crowd Frantic Over Great Ninth-Inning Rally Which Won Second Game,” Boston Post, August 4, 1909: 1.

5 “How Accounts Stand Between the Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers,” Boston Globe, August 3, 1909: 5.

6 “Detroit Drops Two Games to Boston,” Boston Herald, August 4, 1909: 4.

7 “Tiges [sic] Set a Record but Lose Two Games,” Detroit Free Press, August 4, 1909: 1.

8 Collins faced the Tigers three times in his first six starts. He made his first start against Detroit on July 23. He lost 4-2, but he struck out Cobb twice. He faced them again on July 25, on just one day’s rest, throwing a five-hitter and recording a 4-0 shutout victory. “Americans Take Last of Series,” Boston Herald, July 26, 1909: 4.

9 Before the 1931 season, a ball that bounced over the outfield fence was a home run. After 1931, the rule was changed to an automatic double. “Tigers Given Double Dose,” Boston Globe, August 4, 1909: 5.

10 Harry Wolter pinch hit for second baseman Charlie French in the home half of the second inning. Gardner came in to play second base in the top of the third.

11 The teams combined for six errors in the game: Stahl, Carrigan, and Lord each committed an error for Boston, while Detroit’s three were made by Killefer (who had two miscues in the fifth inning) and Willett. “It was not an afternoon of perfect baseball by any means,” wrote Shannon of the Boston Post. “Both teams made errors and at critical times, but those by the locals were less costly.” Shannon, “Enormous Crowd Frantic Over Ninth-Inning Rally Which Won Second Game.”

12 “Tiges [sic] Set a Record but Lose Two Games.”

13 “Detroit Drops Two Games to Boston.”

14 Boston Traveler writer Al E. Watts described it a bit less generously: “Moriarty deliberately tackled Speaker and threw him to the ground,” he wrote. “Moriarty had two objects in view: The crippling of one of the best men on the Boston team, and the prevention of a Red Sox run.” Al E. Watts, “Hub Fans are Crazy over Sox,” Boston Traveler, August 4, 1909: 5; T.H. Murnane, “Tigers Given Double Dose,” Boston Globe, August 4, 1909: 1.

15 This wasn’t the first time tempers flared between the Tigers and the Red Sox during the 1909 season, nor was it the first time Moriarty was center stage. As Eric Enders wrote in his SABR biography of Moriarty, “On May 16, 1909, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and his Tigers losing 3-2, Moriarty attempted to steal home with the game-tying run. Boston catcher Bill Carrigan not only tagged Moriarty out to end the game, but also spit tobacco juice on him, saying, ‘Don’t ever try to pull that on a smart guy.’ Moments later Carrigan was lying on his back, having been flattened by a Moriarty punch. After the game, the Boston catcher had to disguise himself as a groundskeeper in order to escape the mob of angry Detroiters that awaited him outside Bennett Park.” Eric Enders, “George Moriarty,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/george-moriarty/. Accessed January 2026; “Tiges [sic] Set a Record But Lose Two Games.”

16 Tiges [sic] Set a Record but Lose Two Games.”

17 Murnane, “Tigers Given Double Dose.”

18 Paul H. Shannon, “Wolter Saves Game for Red Sox by Great Home Run,” Boston Post, June 3, 1909: 1.

19 Murnane, “Tigers Given Double Dose.”

20 “Detroit Drops Two Games to Boston.”

21 The Huntington Avenue Grounds welcomed more than 55,298 fans over those two days in August, a two-day record for both Boston and the American League. J.C. Morse, “Remarkable Attendance at the Games of the Red Sox,” Sporting Life, August 14, 1909: 25.

22 The Tigers may have dropped three out of four in Boston, but they didn’t go home entirely empty-handed. Detroit manager Jennings “will carry away more financial balm than any other manager ever has before,” noted the Boston Post after game four. “His share, if the weather today is at all any good, should be in excess of $15,000.” The fifth game of the series was rained out, but it is likely the Tigers took home a tidy sum nonetheless. “$15,000 Will be Tigers’ Share of Receipts of Series,” Boston Post, August 5, 1909: 11.

23 The 1909 ladies day doubleheader was remarkable for another reason: More than 100 baseballs were used that day. “For a souvenir afternoon, it was also a record breaker,” proclaimed the Boston Herald. “Every time a foul ball went into the crowd, there was a mad scramble for its possession.” Melville E. Webb Jr., “Two to Two in the Second,” Boston Globe, August 4, 1909: 4; “Detroit Drops Two Games to Boston.”