September 25, 1956: Pedro Ramos’s dominance of Red Sox gives way to Ted Williams home run

With only five games to play in the 1956 season, the Boston Red Sox were in fourth place but just two games ahead of the fifth-place Detroit Tigers. Finishing fourth in the eight-team American League placed a team in the “first division” and thus earned a share of postseason money, but finishing fifth left a team out of the money. Aside from individual statistics, and pride in one’s work, this was a meaningful game for the team. It was less so for the seventh-place Washington Nationals, playing for manager Chuck Dressen. Washington had lost nine in a row and was aiming to break that streak.

Dave Sisler was manager Pinky Higgins’ choice to start for the Red Sox. The 24-year-old Sisler was a right-hander, 7-8 with a 4.63 ERA in his first season of major-league baseball. His father, Hall of Fame first baseman George Sisler, had played for Washington in 1928, during the waning seasons of his Hall of Fame career.1 Against Boston, Dave Sisler retired the first three batters he faced.

The Red Sox got two runs in the first inning off Pedro Ramos, also a right-hander, in his second big-league season and hailing from Cuba. The 21-year-old Ramos entered the game 12-9, with a 4.99 earned run average, but he had been particularly effective against Boston. His record against the Red Sox was 6-0 on the season.2

Red Sox second baseman Gene Mauch was first up and walked. Shortstop Billy Klaus grounded to Nationals second baseman Herb Plews, advancing Mauch to second. Left fielder Ted Williams—whose .350 batting average at the start of play trailed Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees by just six points for the AL lead—also grounded to Plews, with Mauch running to third base.

First baseman Mickey Vernon followed. Vernon was in his first season in Boston after spending 14 of his big-league campaigns in Washington, Ramos let loose a wild pitch and Mauch scored. Vernon then homered to into the right-field grandstand seats, his 15th of the season. The Red Sox led, 2-0. Ramos walked Jackie Jensen and saw Jimmy Piersall single, but got out of the inning when Boston third baseman Ted Lepcio grounded to into a force play at third.

Sisler walked the first batter in the second, left fielder Roy Sievers. A fly ball, a grounder leading to a force play at second base, and a strikeout followed.

Catcher Sammy White was the first out in the bottom of the second, grounding to second base. Sisler reached on an infield single to shortstop Lyle Luttrell. Mauch singled to right field, Sisler going to second base. Klaus doubled to center, Sisler scoring. Mauch stopped at third base but simply trotted home when Williams hit a 2-and-2 pitch for a three-run home run over the visitors’ bullpen in right field. It was Williams’ 24th homer of the season—all hit after June 22—and 418th of his career.

Two groundouts followed. The inning was over, but Boston had a 6-0 lead.

Luttrell flied out to center field, leading off the top of the third. Ernie Oravetz pinch-hit for Ramos. He struck out. Plews flied out to left.

The new Washington pitcher was left-hander Bob Wiesler. He was 3-12 with a 6.30 ERA.. Sammy White got a two-out single, but Wiesler had a good inning.

Sisler walked center fielder Whitey Herzog in the fourth. First baseman Pete Runnels, in his sixth year with the Nationals, hit a home run—the first hit of the game off Sisler.3 Sievers drew a base on balls, but the next three batters all made outs. It was a 6-2 game.

Wiesler got Mauch to fly out to right field in the bottom of the inning, then got both Klaus and Williams to ground out.

Wiesler singled with one out in the top of the fifth. Plews followed him with a walk. But Herzog popped up to shortstop and Runnels grounded out, Sisler fielding and throwing to Vernon.

Whatever Wiesler had had, he seemed to lose in the Red Sox half of the fifth. He walked Vernon and Jensen. Piersall doubled and drove them both in, making it 8-2. Lepcio popped up to short for the first out. White hit a grounder to second and was thrown out as Piersall ran to third. Sisler walked. Mauch singled to left and Piersall scored. Klaus walked, loading the bases. Williams was up and he walked, too, forcing in the 10th Red Sox run. Vernon, up for the second time in the inning, popped up to shortstop. Wiesler had walked five Boston batters in the inning and paid a price.

Sisler gave up a single to Sievers in the sixth. Right fielder Jim Lemon also singled, putting two Nationals on base. Catcher Clint Courtney grounded out to first base, unassisted, Sievers scoring. Third baseman Harmon Killebrew singled to third base, Lemon scoring on the play to cut the deficit to 10-4. Luttrell lined out to Williams in left field. Eddie Yost pinch-hit for Wiesler. He flied out to Williams.

Dean Stone took the mound for the Nationals and got three outs without the ball leaving the infield.

The Red Sox brought in Ike Delock to relieve Sisler, who had developed a blister on the middle finger of his right hand.4 Plews singled, but Delock and Sammy White combined a strike’-em-out, throw-‘em-out double play, White throwing to second base to gun down Plews stealing. Runnels grounded the ball right back to Delock, who threw to first.

Billy Consolo had taken over at second base in the sixth, replacing Mauch, who had hurt his back earlier, sliding into third base in the second inning. Consolo came up with two outs in the seventh and drew a base on balls. Klaus singled, but Williams made the third out on a fly ball to Sievers in left. Williams had driven in four runs, but with a 1-for-4 game hadn’t really gained ground in his battle against Mantle for the batting title.5

Delock retired Sievers, Lemon, and Courtney in the top of the eighth.

The Red Sox got one baserunner when Piersall walked, but Lepcio flied out to left field for the third out.

In the top of the ninth, Delock secured a strikeout from Killebrew, got Luttrell to hit a groundball to shortstop, and then faced pinch-hitter Lou Berberet, batting for Stone. Berberet struck out.

It was a 10-4 Red Sox win. They held onto their position in fourth place—where they ultimately finished the season. The crowd at Fenway Park was a very small one: Paid attendance was only 2,073.

The Nationals’ loss was their 10th in a row. They lost the next day as well. Their record over the final 20 games of the 1956 season was 2-18. Against the Red Sox for the full season, however, they were 13-9.

Sisler pitched a complete-game win against New York at Yankee Stadium on September 30, giving him a winning 9-8 record. After the 1958 season, Sisler worked mostly in relief, his last year being 1962.

For Ramos, it was his last game of the season. He stuck with the Nationals long enough to pitch for the Minnesota Twins when the franchise relocated in 1961; he returned to Washington in 1970 to pitch the final four games of his career for the city’s second AL franchise. Lifetime, Ramos went 25-22 in 76 appearances against the Red Sox, including 44 starts, with a 3.44 ERA.

The Williams home run proved the game-winner.6 Williams hit .365 in 63 career at-bats against Ramos, with a .730 slugging percentage and six home runs. Each one of the last four home runs were game-winners. He also hit home runs 430 (June 2, 1957), 482 (September 28, 1958), and—the next-to-last homer and final game-winner of his career—number 520 (September 17, 1960).

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas J. Brown Jr. and copy-edited by Keith Thursby.

Photo credit: Ted Williams, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference, Retrosheet, and a number of additional newspaper accounts of the game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS195609250.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1956/B09250BOS1956.htm

Notes

1 Dave Sisler’s older brother, outfielder/first baseman Dick Sisler, who had played in the majors from 1946-1953, was in the Pacific Coast League in 1956.

2 Ramos had won games on April 25, May 25, May 27, August 11, August 17, and August 19. He had been laid low for three weeks with some illness – a “bug” – and when he returned had been hammered for 12 runs in his final 3⅔ innings of the season. See Burton Hawkins, “Ramos’ Failure Proves Jolt to Worried Griffs,” Washington Evening Star, September 26, 1956: C1, 4.

3 Runnels was traded to the Red Sox in a three-player deal in January 1958. He went on to win two batting crowns in Boston.

4 F. C. Matzek, “Williams, Vernon Homer in 10-4 Blast on Nats,” Providence Journal, September 26, 1956: 18.

5 Mantle finished the season with a .353 batting average and Williams was second at .345.

6 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 it 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.)