April 9, 1976: Ferguson Jenkins outdueled by Jim Palmer in Red Sox debut

On November 17, 1975, the defending American League champion Boston Red Sox acquired right-handed pitcher Ferguson Jenkins from the Texas Rangers in exchange for backup outfielder Juan Beníquez and a pair of minor league pitchers, Steve Barr and Craig Skok. The Red Sox—less than a month after falling to the Cincinnati Reds in a thrilling, seven-game World Series—were expecting Jenkins to upgrade their rotation. But he turned 33 in December, had averaged 300 innings over his last nine seasons, and had posted a career-worst 3.93 ERA in 1975. Nevertheless, the seven-time 20-game winner was confident in his ability to return to form.

“If the Rangers think I’m washed up,” Jenkins said, “they’re wrong, I’ll pitch until I’m 37.”1

A strong spring – shortened by a two-week lockout imposed by the owners in early March – convinced Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson to start Jenkins on Opening Day ahead of Luis Tiant, who had started the previous three openers for Boston.2 It would be Jenkins’ seventh career Opening Day start.

The Red Sox began the 1976 season with a three-game series in Baltimore, starting on Friday afternoon, April 9. The Orioles had finished 4½ games behind the Red Sox in the AL East Division in 1975 and had emerged as their primary challenger after making a blockbuster deal a week earlier, acquiring superstar outfielder Reggie Jackson and 18-game-winner Ken Holtzman from the Oakland Athletics in a six-player swap.

Jackson’s number 9 jersey was now hanging in the Orioles’ locker room, but the slugger was back home in Arizona, holding out for a multi-year contract. He missed Opening Day for the first time since his initial call-up by the A’s in June 1967, and Jackson marked the occasion by sending a telegram to his new teammates, wishing them luck. (At least one Oriole was unimpressed by the gesture: as a large group gathered around a bulletin board in the clubhouse to read the telegram after the game, a player was heard muttering, “You’d think we just got a call from the President.”3)

Meanwhile, the Orioles’ Opening Day starter and reigning AL Cy Young Award winner, Jim Palmer, had become the franchise’s highest-paid player when he signed a three-year contract extension on April 7. Palmer was pleased with his new deal, which paid him $177,000 in 1976: “I think it’s a reasonable contract. I just felt I would have been stupid not to sign before the season starts.”4

As Palmer warmed up on a chilly 47-degree afternoon with the wind blowing in at Memorial Stadium, Baltimore third baseman Brooks Robinson prepared for his 20th consecutive Opening Day start, tying Willie Mays for the longest such streak.5 Robinson had hit just .201 in 1975 and was being pushed by 25-year-old Doug DeCinces, but the veteran had finished spring training strong and usually played well in openers, entering the game with a career batting average of .329 on Opening Day including 7-for-15 over his last four.6

The 46,425 fans in attendance—a new record for an Orioles home opener—discovered several improvements around the park. Worn-out wooden bleachers beyond the outfield had been replaced with gold-colored aluminum benches (with backs), and wood chairback seats in the upper deck were being swapped out for red aluminum ones. Meanwhile, the grass had been completely re-sodded after the end of the Baltimore Colts’ football season, and the outfield fences had been moved in by  five to 10 feet in center field and the alleys.7

At 2:13 PM, Red Sox leadoff hitter Cecil Cooper swung and missed at Palmer’s first pitch of the season.8 Palmer and Jenkins both retired the side in order in the first inning before Boston threatened in the second. Jim Rice led off with a drive to left-center that Paul Blair caught as he crashed into the fence with his back to the infield. Carl Yastrzemski doubled to left and Carlton Fisk walked. But Palmer induced Dwight Evans to hit a roller in front of the plate for an easy out at first and got Rico Petrocelli to hit a wind-blown pop up to second baseman Bobby Grich to end the inning.9

Through three innings, the Orioles managed just two baserunners off Jenkins, including Tony Muser, who reached on an error by Rice in the second. Darrell Johnson had divided Rice’s playing time between the outfield and designated hitter in 1975 but elected to give the 23-year-old slugger his first Opening Day start in left field in ‘76. It marked the first opener where Rice and a pair of 24-year-olds—Fred Lynn and Evans—started alongside each other in the outfield for Boston.10

With one out in the fourth, Baltimore’s Lee May reached when his ground ball to short led to a high throw by Rick Burleson that ricocheted off Yastrzemski’s glove at first. “I thought I had the ball,” Yastrzemski later told reporters. “I even tagged May out, then looked in [my] glove…”11

Grich followed with a shot off the end of his bat that dropped into shallow left-center. Lynn fielded the ball and fired it to Petrocelli at third as May slid into the bag, but his one-hop throw bounced wildly off Petrocelli’s shoulder. May scrambled home, scoring on a head-first slide while Grich took third on the play. Lynn—the reigning AL Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year, and a 1975 Gold Glove winner—was charged with an error.12

“I saw Rico looking for the ball,” May explained later. “I didn’t know where it was but I figured he’d have to find the ball and make a perfect throw to get me.”13 A little hustle and two Boston errors had given Baltimore a 1-0 lead.

And that ended the scoring for the day.

Jenkins got out of the inning with no further damage (Robinson made the final out, part of an uneventful 0-for-3 afternoon) and retired 13 Orioles in a row until Al Bumbry tripled to deep right-center with two out in the bottom of the eighth.

Palmer continued to keep the Red Sox off the scoreboard, but he was laboring. “I’ve had a sore spot in the back of my shoulder ever since spring training when I didn’t follow through on a pitch against Kansas City. I’ve also got a knot on my rib cage,” Palmer said later. “I wasn’t throwing hard consistently and I didn’t have good velocity but it was a tough day to hit with all that wind.”14

After fielding a one-hop smash by Lynn to end the eighth inning—which prompted Lynn to compare Palmer to hockey goalie Ken Dryden15—Palmer told manager Earl Weaver that he “didn’t have much left.”16 Weaver pulled him from the game; Palmer had thrown 104 pitches, given up six hits and two walks, while striking out three.

Dyar Miller worked a perfect ninth to close out the Orioles’ seventh consecutive Opening Day victory. “I wanted that baby,” Miller said. “I knew that we didn’t get a save until June [16] last year and I wanted to make sure it was much earlier this season.”17

Jenkins, who had allowed three hits and no walks while throwing 114 pitches, took the loss in stride, saying, “If I keep throwing like that, I’ll take my chances on winning some ballgames.”18

Johnson agreed, telling reporters after the game that Jenkins had “outpitched” Palmer,19 while Weaver also praised Jenkins—and Palmer—by saying that “[Jenkins] hits all the spots, changes speeds and gets his breaking stuff over. He’s a master. … Of course, we had one [Palmer] out there ourselves.”20

Palmer was humble in victory: “I feel very fortunate to win a game like that. Especially over a great pitcher like Ferguson Jenkins. But I’ll take 19 more like that.”21

As it turned out, Palmer earned 21 more like that in 1976, along with a second consecutive AL Cy Young Award. Jackson ended his holdout without signing a long-term deal, and made his Baltimore debut on May 2, but the Orioles and Red Sox spent most of the season fighting for second place. The New York Yankees moved into first for good on May 4 and were 14 games in front by late July. Baltimore finished second again while Boston, who fired Darrell Johnson on July 19, fell to third.

Three days before Johnson was fired, Jenkins aggravated a right Achilles tendon injury. He returned to action after missing a couple of starts, but would tear the tendon completely on September 1 while running to cover first base, ending his season.22 Jenkins recovered in time to start Boston’s 1977 opener but clashed with Johnson’s replacement, Don Zimmer, joining a group of teammates, including fellow pitcher Bill Lee, to form an anti-Zimmer group dubbed the “Loyal Order of Buffalo Heads.”23 The Red Sox shipped Jenkins back to Texas in December 1977 for minor league pitcher John Poloni, an inglorious end to his two-season stay in Boston.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Troy Olszewski and copy-edited by Keith Thursby.

Photo credit: Ferguson Jenkins, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball Reference and Retrosheet for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL197604090.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1976/B04090BAL1976.htm

Notes

1 “Jenkins Not Delighted, Insists He Can Pitch,” Boston Evening Globe, November 18, 1975: 28. Jenkins pitched until he was 40, retiring after the 1983 season.

2 Hugh McGovern, “Jenkins to Hurl for Sox in Opener,” Worcester (Massachusetts) Telegram & Gazette, April 4, 1976: 3C.

3 Gary Mullinax, “Orioles Defeat Red Sox,” Wilmington (Delaware) News Journal, April 10, 1976: 21. Ken Nigro, “Palmer Triumphs Without ‘Stuff’,” Baltimore Sun, April 10, 1976: B5.

4 “Birds Give Palmer $550,000 Contract,” Baltimore Sun, April 8, 1976: C13.

5 Andrew Simon, “Who Has the Longest Opening Day Streak at Each Position,” MLB.com, March 27, 2026, https://www.mlb.com/news/longest-mlb-opening-day-streaks-by-position-c164899362.

6 Peter Gammons, “It’s Jenkins vs. Palmer … But Jackson’s Nowhere in Sight,” Boston Globe, April 9, 1976: 37. DeCinces replaced Robinson as the Orioles’ regular third baseman later in the 1976 season and started in his place on Opening Day in 1977, ending Robinson’s streak. Mays’s streak was from 1954 through 1973.

7 Doug Brown, “Splinterless Seats Look On New Grass,” Baltimore Sun, April 9, 1976: C1.

8 Photo of Cooper swinging and missing on front page of the Baltimore Sun, April 10, 1976: A1.

9 Peter Gammons, “Jenkins Never Better, Throws Three-Hitter … but Errors, Wind – and Palmer Stop Sox, 1-0,” Boston Globe, April 10, 1976: 21.

10 The Rice-Lynn-Evans trio started alongside each other in the outfield 323 times over six seasons, but only twice on Opening Day, in 1976 and 1980. In 1977, Lynn missed the start of the season with a left ankle injury. In 1978 and 1979 Rice served as Boston’s DH on Opening Day with Carl Yastrzemski in left field, Lynn in center, and Evans in right.

11 Gammons, “Jenkins Never Better, Throws Three-Hitter … but Errors, Wind – and Palmer Stop Sox, 1-0.”

12 Lou Hatter, “Orioles Win Opener over Red Sox, 1 to 0,” Baltimore Sun, April 10, 1976: B5. Photo of headfirst slide in the Baltimore Sun, April 10, 1976: B5.

13 Mullinax, “Orioles Defeat Red Sox.”

14 Nigro, “Palmer Triumphs Without ‘Stuff’.”

15 Gammons, “Jenkins Never Better, Throws Three-Hitter … but Errors, Wind – and Palmer Stop Sox, 1-0.” Palmer went on to win his first AL Gold Glove award in 1976.

16 Bob Maisel, “The Morning After,” Baltimore Sun, April 10, 1976: B8.

17 Nigro, “Palmer Triumphs Without ‘Stuff’.” On June 16, 1975, Grant Jackson earned the Orioles’ first save of the season in relief of Jim Palmer as the Orioles defeated the Cleveland Indians, 8-3. Phil Hersh, “Jackson Records Orioles’ First Save,” Baltimore Evening Sun, June 17, 1975: C5.

18 Hatter, “Orioles Win Opener over Red Sox, 1 to 0.”

19 Michael Janofsky, “Birds Win, No Thanks To Reggie,” Baltimore Evening Sun, April 10, 1976: 10.

20 Hatter, “Orioles Win Opener over Red Sox, 1 to 0.”

21 Larry Whiteside, “Palmer Beats Sox on ‘Not Much at All;’ Wind Doesn’t Hurt, Either,” Boston Globe, April 10, 1976: 22.

22 Peter Gammons, “Tendinitis Puts Jenkins, Champagne Back on Ice,” Boston Globe, July 17, 1976: 22. Peter Gammons, “Red Sox in Costly Win, 3-0; Jenkins Lost for the Season,” Boston Globe, September 2, 1976: 31.

23 Jenkins was responsible for the name, as he compared Zimmer’s physique to that of a buffalo, “the ugliest, dumbest animal in captivity.” Fred Turner, “Lee, Papi and the Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” Quincy Patriot Ledger, December 8, 1978: 23.