Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy wrote of the 2012 team, “The worst Red Sox season in a generation angered and alienated a large, loyal fan base.”2 And 2012 had followed a 2011 season that had seen the team go just 7-20 in the month of September, missing the postseason on the last day of the season, while pitchers “[John] Lackey, [Jon] Lester, and [Josh] Beckett [were] swilling beer and inhaling fried chicken in the clubhouse as the pennant race went upside down.”3

Red Sox fans didn’t know what to expect in 2013 but were “ready to relish any improvement.”4

Opening Day 2013 turned out to be Boston’s first chance to show something different was in store under new manager John Farrell, with Bobby Valentine having been let go after just one year.

The Yankees had won their last 11 home openers, dating back to 1986.5 Joe Girardi, in his sixth season as Yankees manager,6 named CC Sabathia as his starter. The big left-hander had averaged more than 18 wins each of the four previous seasons. Since 2007, his 110 wins ranked tops in the majors, as did his total of 1,399 innings pitched.

Farrell, who had been Red Sox pitching coach from 2007 through 2010, was brought back after two seasons managing the Toronto Blue Jays. He selected left-hander Lester to start the Monday afternoon opener at Yankee Stadium. It was Lester’s eighth season with the Red Sox, and his third Opening Day start in a row.

The assignment put the 29-year-old Lester in distinguished company; the only two left-handers to have opened three seasons in a row for the Red Sox were Mel Parnell and, before him, Babe Ruth. Lester had pitched well for Boston, averaging more than 16 wins from 2008 through 2011, but suffered a down year in 2012, when he was 9-14 with an ERA of 4.82, more than a full run over any of the prior four seasons.7

Both lineups were missing significant star power. New York’s Derek Jeter (broken ankle during the 2012 AL Championship Series), Alex Rodríguez (offseason hip surgery), Curtis Granderson (broken forearm from spring training hit-by-pitch), and Mark Teixiera (wrist injury during World Baseball Classic) were sidelined. Boston’s David Ortiz was rehabilitating from a 2012 Achilles tendon injury, and new shortstop Stephen Drew was recovering from a spring-training concussion.

Dustin Pedroia singled off Sabathia in the first, the only Boston baserunner. The only New York baserunner in the bottom of the inning was their second baseman, Robinson Cano, who reached on a two-out strikeout – thanks to a wild pitch.

In the top of the second, the Red Sox scored four runs. Catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia walked with one out. DH Jonny Gomes singled off the glove of a leaping Jayson Nix at third. Jackie Bradley Jr., playing left field in his major-league debut, walked, loading the bases.

Shortstop Jose Iglesias singled to shortstop Eduardo Nuñez, who had to lunge deep and to his right to catch the ball; his throw to second was too late to beat the hustling Bradley, and one run scored.

Jacoby Ellsbury grounded to first baseman (and former Red Sox star) Kevin Youkilis, who threw home for a force out.8 Shane Victorino singled past Nuñez and into left, driving in two more. Pedroia singled to right-center, driving in Ellsbury with the fourth Boston run. 

Lester walked one in the second but kept the ball in the infield for each of the three outs.

In the third, the Red Sox went down in order. The Yankees got their first hit, a Brett Gardner single; he took second on another wild pitch but advanced no farther.

The Red Sox singled twice in the fourth, but the score remained 4-0 until the Yankees got a pair of runs in the bottom of the inning. Youkilis led off with a double over third base and into the left-field corner, which turned out to be the only extra-base hit of the game for New York. After a walk to Vernon Wells and a foul popup, Ichiro Suzuki dropped a single into center to load the bases.

Lester struck out Nix, but catcher Francisco Cervelli singled down the left-field line, scoring Youkilis and Wells.

Though Boston loaded the bases in the fifth on a two-out double by Saltalamacchia and two walks, Iglesias popped up to first for the third out. Cano singled in the bottom of the inning, but Lester struck out two and got Youkilis to fly out to center.

Sabathia had thrown 102 pitches in five innings, and right-hander David Phelps relieved him in the sixth. Though Ellsbury led off with a triple to the wall in right-center, Phelps frustrated the next three Boston batters and the score remained 4-2. Pedroia’s one-out grounder to Nix saw Ellsbury thrown out at the plate.

Lester was done after five innings and 96 pitches, and the Red Sox put in Koji Uehara, in his first season for Boston. He retired the side in order in the one inning he pitched.

Phelps was back on the mound in the seventh, but two eight-pitch walks put Will Middlebrooks and Saltalamacchia on base. After Gomes flied out into the right-field corner, Middlebrooks tagged and took third, and Girardi brought in left-hander Boone Logan.

Bradley slapped a ball that caromed off Logan’s glove to Cano, who threw Bradley out at first, but Middlebrooks scored on the play. It was 5-2, Boston.

The Yankees brought the tying run to the plate in the seventh when Andrew Miller replaced Uehara and walked the first two batters he faced – but then struck out the next two. Farrell had Andrew Bailey replace Miller, and Bailey struck out Youkilis for the third out. After the three strikeouts to end the threat, the New York Times reported “an eerie silence, reminiscent of the one in the next-to-last game at the Stadium last October when Jeter broke his ankle.”9

Neither team scored in the eighth, Shawn Kelley pitching for New York and Junichi Tazawa pitching for Boston. Travis Hafner, who had entered the game to pinch-hit in the sixth (but popped up to short), singled with one out, but Tazawa turned Ichiro’s comebacker into a 1-6-3 double play.

A strong wind began to pick up, and a bit of very light rain began to fall. Fans were seen departing in droves as early as the seventh.10 The Stadium was more than half-empty when Joba Chamberlain took over in the top of the ninth, kicking off his seventh season with the Yankees.

He struck out Middlebrooks, then gave up a walk, a single to left by Gomes, and another walk. One out later, Ellsbury reached on an infield single (the ball took a hop and then was bobbled by Cano) that scored two runs, Gomes hustling and scoring from second.

Victorino singled to right field, driving in Bradley and making it 8-2, Red Sox.11 Cody Eppley, the Yankees’ sixth pitcher of the game, replaced Chamberlain and got the third out when Pedroia grounded out, short to first.

Joel Hanrahan, Boston’s sixth pitcher, retired the Yankees in order in the ninth.

The Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo was effusive: “To a man, and that includes players, manager, coaches, general manager, equipment manager, trainers, you name it, the Red Sox executed perfectly Monday.”12

Winning pitcher Lester gave a lot of credit to manager Farrell: “He’s a very positive, upbeat guy. He’s always prepared, always full of information if you need [sic]. That trickles down to the coaching staff and to us. I think a lot of us felt embarrassed about what happened to us last year. We’re busting our butts to try not to let that happen again.”13

As the 2013 Red Sox season played out, Lester and his teammates gave their city a wire-to-wire performance far removed from last-place 2012.They took two of the three games in New York to start the season, then the home opener back in Boston on April 4. At no time in 2013 did the Red Sox have a losing record.

They finished 97-65, winning 28 more games than in 2012 and taking the AL East by 5½ games over the Tampa Bay Rays. (The Yankees were third, 12 games back.)

Boston won the ALDS against the Rays, the ALCS against the Detroit Tigers, and the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. It proved to be a worst-to-first season. In 2013 exultant Red Sox fans saw their team win the World Series at home, celebrating on the Fenway Park field for the first time since 1918.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play by play. He also reviewed highlights of the game on YouTube.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA201304010.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B04010NYA2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mn-w_6_wu0

Notes

1 New York beat Baltimore in the AL Division Series, but was swept by the Detroit Tigers in the ALCS.

2 Dan Shaughnessy, “As Season Opens, Rookie Bradley Gives Sox a Ray of Sunshine,” Boston Globe, April 1, 2013: A1.

3 Kevin Paul Dupont, “In Other Words, Au Revoir,” Boston Globe, January 13, 2012: C2. 

4 Brian McQuarrie, “Pragmatic Red Sox Fans Ready for a Fresh Start,” Boston Globe, April 1, 2013: B1.

5 Overall, the team was 35-14-1 in home openers.

6 Girardi’s teams had three first-place finishes in the preceding five years, and a World Series championship in 2009.

7 This was the first opener Lester won. The Boston Globe’s Julian Benbow devoted a column to Lester and his successful performance. Julian Benbow, “Lefty Able to Make It All Right,” Boston Globe, April 2, 2013: C6. After the game, Lester said, “It’s just nice to get that first one off our back. Guys can kind of relax a little bit and go out there and play on Wednesday and we’re not chasing that elusive first win. So that’s big for us.”

8 Youkilis was one of six players on the team who made their Yankees debuts in the game. Ben Francisco, Travis Hafner, Shawn Kelley, Lyle Overbay, and Vernon Wells were the others. There were “dark forecasts that the injury-depleted Yankees will join their forever rivals at the bottom of a talent-endowed division.” Harvey Araton, “For Yankees, Uncertainty Is Yet Another Newcomer,” New York Times, April 2, 2013: B8. Neither team finished at the bottom. The Yankees finished tied for third; the Red Sox won it all. Araton quoted Andy Pettitte saying, “I don’t know if we’ve ever had the kind of turnover we’ve had this spring.”

9 David Waldstein, “For Yanks, a Chill in the Air and in the Stands,” New York Times, April 2, 2013: B11.

10 After the game, Vernon Wells said, “At the end, it was ugly out, on the field and off. I don’t blame them for heading home a little early.” See Waldstein. It had been 62 degrees at first pitch and attendance was reported as 49,514, the largest home opener since the new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009.

11 It was newcomer Victorino’s third RBI of the game. Bradley went 0-for-2 in his first major-league game, but walked three times, scored twice, and drove in a run with his grounder in the seventh. The New York Times ran a nice feature on him the following day. Tim Rohan, “Red Sox Phenom Arrives Before His Time, as Good as Hoped,” New York Times, April 2, 2013: B13. Dan Shaughnessy devoted a full column expressing his own appreciation. Dan Shaughnessy, “It’s a Show-Stopping Beginning by Bradley,” Boston Globe, April 2, 2013: C1. Saltalamacchia also walked three times. Yankees pitchers threw 190 pitches in all. Sabathia’s fastball topped out at 91 mph.

12 Nick Cafardo, “Things Being Done Differently, It Seems,” Boston Globe, April 2, 2013: C1. “The only thing they didn’t do was hit the ball out of the park.”

13 Peter Abraham, “Quality Start,” Boston Globe. April 2, 2013: C1, C5. Farrell said he’d seen the chemistry of the team in spring training. “Wins certainly are the biggest factor with chemistry and how we jell as a unit. These guys, their priority is the game. They’ve got a strong passion for it, they love to work, and that was evident throughout an entire spring training. Today is Day 1, but I think that showed in the intensity and mentality of this group.”

Red Sox starter Jon Lester already had all the run support he needed, and third baseman Will Middlebrooks was on his way to a career highlight day.

It was a Sunday afternoon at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, the sixth game of the 2013 season and final game of Boston’s season-opening road trip. The Red Sox had taken two out of three from the Yankees in New York and split the first two games of a weekend series in Toronto. The Blue Jays had yet to go on the road and were 2-3 at home against the Cleveland Indians and Boston.

Jays manager John Gibbons was starting his sixth season at the helm in Toronto; he had led the team from 2004 into 2008, when he was fired in midseason. After the 2012 season, he was hired as Blue Jays’ manager again, taking over from John Farrell, who had led the team in 2011 and 2012 but been hired by the Red Sox after that team’s last-place finish under Bobby Valentine in 2012. So the weekend pitted Gibbons in his second incarnation as skipper against Farrell, who was himself returning to Boston, where he had been pitching coach from 2007 to 2010.

R.A. Dickey started for Gibbons. Knuckleballer Dickey had won the National League Cy Young Award in 2012, with a record for the New York Mets of 20-6 (2.73), but a December 2012 trade brought him to Toronto. Dickey broke into the big leagues as a reliever in 2001 with the Texas Rangers, then became a successful starter with the Mets in his mid-30s after developing a knuckler. Now 38 years old, Dickey had been Toronto’s Opening Day starter on April 2, losing 4-1 to the Cleveland Indians.1

Dickey had a really rough first inning. Leading off, center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury lined a double into left-center, a ball hit so hard that even though it ticked off the glove of shortstop Jose Reyes, it went all the way to the wall.2 Right fielder Shane Victorino singled into center, Ellsbury going to third. Dustin Pedroia grounded a single between first and second base, Ellsbury scoring the first run of the game and Victorino going to second.

On the seventh pitch he saw, DH Mike Napoli doubled in both Victorino and Pedroia with a drive into the left-field corner.3 Swinging at the first pitch, Middlebrooks homered down the right-field line to make it 5-0 – after 19 pitches, and there was still nobody out.

“Boos cascaded down,” reported the Toronto Star.4 Two deep outfield flies and a strikeout ended the top of the first.

Middlebrooks had signed with the Red Sox out of high school in 2007. His major-league debut year had been 2012, and he hit .288 in 75 games, with 15 homers and 54 RBIs, despite a hit-by-pitch fractured right wrist ending his season prematurely on August 10. He’d started 2013 hitting a leadoff homer in the ninth on Friday night April 5, providing an insurance run in the 6-4 Red Sox victory.

Staked to a 5-0 lead, Lester took the mound for his second start of the season. He had won the Opening Day game on April 1 at Yankee Stadium, an 8-2 win for the Red Sox with Lester working the first five innings and giving up two runs. Lester was in his eighth year with Boston. He’d been 65-32 from 2008 to 2011 but had an offyear in 2012 (9-14, with a 4.82 ERA).

Lester made it look easy in the first, with two infield groundouts sandwiched around a three-pitch strikeout of right fielder Rajai Davis. Eight pitches in all, and Lester’s inning was done.

Red Sox shortstop Jose Iglesias led off the second with an infield single but Dickey retired the next three batters, striking out two of them. Lester gave up singles to J.P. Arencibia and Maicer Izturis but no one got past second base.

In the third, a one-out double to left field by Middlebrooks led to a sixth Red Sox run when it was followed by a passed ball and a sacrifice fly to deep right by first baseman Daniel Nava. Reyes singled in Toronto’s half but was forced at second, and it was another scoreless inning for Lester.

Boston added a seventh run in its half of the fourth on a double by Iglesias and a single by Ellsbury. A walk and a double steal followed but no further scoring. Lester hit a batter in the bottom of the fourth but never saw a ball hit out of the infield.

In the fifth Middlebrooks led off, hitting a homer on a full count into the second deck in left-center for an 8-0 lead.5 It gave Middlebrooks his second two-homer game of his career; on May 7, 2012, in just his fourth major-league game, he had hit two against the Kansas City Royals.

Dickey set down the next two batters, but after a walk to Jackie Bradley Jr., Gibbons called in a reliever – Dave Bush, who got the third out and allowed nothing but a single by Pedroia in the sixth. Lester retired the side in the bottom of the sixth.

Middlebrooks led off the seventh inning and homered again – his third of the game – to deep left-center.6 Nava was up next and he homered, too, the ball bouncing off the top of the center-field wall and then going out. The score was now 10-0, Red Sox. Bush then got three outs. Lester allowed nothing in the bottom half but a fruitless single.

Bush was back on the mound in the eighth inning. For the third time in the game, a Boston batter led off with a home run – this time, it was Ellsbury, who hit one into the second deck down the line in right field. The first out followed, but Pedroia walked and Napoli homered to left center, making it 13-0, the fourth home run off Bush and Boston’s sixth of the game.

There was no more scoring in the game. The Red Sox had enough, and the Blue Jays never did score.

Clayton Mortensen worked the final two innings for Boston, allowing a single in the eighth and another in the ninth.

The win went to Lester, who in seven innings struck out six without walking a batter. He allowed six hits – all singles. He was 2-0, headed for wins in his first six decisions of 2013.7 Dickey, of course, bore the defeat.8

The 13-0 win turned out to be the biggest shutout victory of the year for Boston.9 The three home runs by Middlebrooks were the only time in 2013 that a Red Sox player hit three in one game. He had four RBIs in the game, as did Napoli.

By season’s end, Middlebrooks had 17 homers and 49 RBIs but hit for only a disappointing .227 batting average.10 He was the team’s anchor at the hot corner, the Red Sox third baseman, appearing in 94 games as the team made its way to its third World Series championship in a 10-year stretch.

In 2011 the Red Sox had lost every one of their first seven road games. In 2012 they had lost five of the first six. With this win, the Red Sox wrapped up the first six games of the season with a 4-2 record and headed to Boston for the Fenway Park home opener on April 8.

“We had two good series,” Lester said after the shutout in Toronto, “and that’s big for us. For us to go home where we’re at, it beats the hell out of the alternative that we’ve been in the last two years.”11

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Adrian Fung for providing access to Toronto newspaper coverage of this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR201304070.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B04070TOR2013.htm

Notes

1 Dickey’s second book had just been published the week before the season began. Throwing Strikes: My Quest for Truth and the Perfect Knuckleball, published by Penguin on March 26.

2 Robert McLeod, “‘We Laid an Egg,’” Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 8, 2013: S3.

3 McLeod. David Ortiz, who went on to lead Boston in DH appearances in 2013 and play a central role in the Red Sox drive to the World Series championship, was sidelined while rehabilitating a 2012 Achilles tendon injury; he did not make his 2013 debut until April 20.

4 The sentence continued: “… and this is a fan base primed to love the dickens out of Dickey, given half a chance. … It got ugly in a hurry.” Rosie DiManno, “Knuckler Declines to Dance,” Toronto Star, April 8, 2013: S1. The author suggested that “[T]he lusty raspberry artists should have saved some of their leather-lunged caterwauling for later because there was a lotta hideous still to come. …”

5 After the game, Lester offered some hyperbole: “He had about 2,000 feet of homers.” Ian Harrison (Associated Press), “Middlebrooks Swats Three HRs for Boston,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 8, 2003: 7C.

6 The three home runs in one game matched the Red Sox record; Middlebrooks was the 26th Red Sox to do so. The immediately preceding one was Dustin Pedroia in Colorado on June 24, 2010. Middlebrooks’ eighth-inning drive was caught on the warning track in left field. Adding in his April 5 home run, he had four for the season, more than eight other entire major-league ballclubs had at the time. The Red Sox had hit six home runs in just this one game. According to the daily Red Sox Notes, distributed to media before the next game, it was the 26th time in club history the team had hit six in a game.

7 With a season-end record of 15-8, Lester led the 2013 Red Sox in wins, with a 3.75 ERA.

8 The winner of the 2012 American League Cy Young Award was also hammered on April 7, Tampa Bay’s David Price losing by the same 13-0 score in a game against Cleveland. Price gave up three-run homers to Mark Reynolds and Lonnie Chisenhall. After Dickey’s loss, he simply said, “Throughout the course of the season, you’re going to have a clunker or two.” Harrison. Dickey finished the 2013 season with a 14-13 record and a 4.21 ERA.

9 It was not Boston’s biggest margin of victory in 2013. That was the 20-4 win over the Detroit Tigers on September 4 when the Red Sox hit eight home runs, including one each by Middlebrooks and Napoli. The Red Sox were also shut out 13-0 at home on April 23 in a rain-shortened seven-inning game against Oakland.

10 Middlebrooks played in 10 postseason games in 2013, with just one run batted in, in Game One of the Division Series (hitting .160 in the postseason). He played his position well enough but for a ninth-inning error that led to St. Louis winning Game Three of the World Series.

11 Peter Abraham, “Sox Overpower Jays,” Boston Globe, April 8, 2013: C1, C5.

Given that the 2013 Red Sox were following up on two dispiriting seasons—a late and utter collapse in 2011 and a last-place finish in 2012—winning their first two road series against the Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays, then returning home with a 4-2 record and pleasing the sold-out crowd of 37,008 on Monday afternoon, April 8, was a good way to start the season.

The 93-win Orioles had finished in second place in the American League East in 2012, edged out of the playoffs in the AL Division Series by the Yankees. They arrived in Boston with a 3-3 record after winning two of three from the Tampa Bay Rays and losing two of three against the Minnesota Twins.

Opening ceremonies featured a celebration of the 60th year of the Red Sox’ support for the Jimmy Fund and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, fighting cancer in children.1

New Red Sox manager John Farrell had Clay Buchholz start. The 28-year-old right-hander was in his seventh season in Boston. He’d had an exceptional 2010 season (17-7, 2.33), in which he’d made the AL All-Star team, but two less-stellar seasons since. He’d had a winning record each year, despite the team having a losing record in 2012, but his ERA had climbed more than a full run each year—to 3.48 and then 4.56. He had won his first start in 2013, allowing just one run in seven innings against the Yankees on April 3.

Starting for Buck Showalter’s Baltimore Orioles was a left-hander, Taiwan native Wei-Yin Chen. At 27, Chen was in his second year in the majors, and he had been 12-11 (4.02) as a rookie, finishing fourth in the AL Rookie of the Year voting.2 He’d had a no-decision against the Rays in his first 2013 start, on April 3.

Neither team scored for the first six innings.

Leading off the first for the Orioles was left fielder Nate McLouth. He singled up the middle but never got as far as second.

Buchholz walked Chris Davis to lead off the second inning.3 The Baltimore first baseman likewise advanced no farther.

In the third, Buchholz gave up back-to-back two-out singles to Manny Machado and Nick Markakis but struck out Adam Jones to strand them.

The only Boston baserunner off Chen in the first three innings was left fielder Daniel Nava, who walked in the second.

Davis again worked a walk off Buchholz to lead off the fourth, but he was forced at second and then J.J. Hardy hit into a 4-6-3 double play. In the bottom of the inning, Shane Victorino singled to left off Chen, Boston’s first base hit, but he was caught stealing. After Dustin Pedroia walked, Mike Napoli—who had homered and driven in four runs in the previous day’s 13-0 rout of the Blue Jays—hit into a 4-6-3 double play.

McLouth drew a walk in the top of the fifth. Nava singled in the bottom of the fifth. Neither got as far as second base.

Each pitcher retired the side in order in the sixth. Chen hadn’t allowed a Red Sox runner to get past first base.

Matt Wieters walked to lead off the Orioles’ seventh, but a strikeout, groundout, and another strikeout—Buchholz’s eighth of the game—kept the Orioles off the board.

The game was still scoreless at the seventh-inning stretch. Pedroia started the bottom of the seventh with an infield single to short. Napoli doubled off the wall in left-center, and the Red Sox had runners on second and third with nobody out for Will Middlebrooks, who had hit three home runs a day earlier. But Chen fanned Middlebrooks for the first out.

Then, on a 1-and-1 count, Nava hit a three-run homer over the Green Monster in left field—“so far out of the old ballpark that it crossed Lansdowne Street,” reported the Boston Globe.4 Suddenly it was 3-0, Red Sox. Nava had signed with Boston for a bonus of just one dollar in 2008.5 He’d hit a grand slam in his first big-league at-bat, on June 12, 2010, and his home run off Chen was his second in two days.

Showalter summoned Tommy Hunter to relieve. Hunter got the final two outs.

Farrell turned to his bullpen, too, calling on Andrew Bailey, who got two strikeouts and a fly out to center in the top of the eighth. Hunter put the Red Sox down one-two-three in the bottom of the inning.

It was the top of the ninth, and Farrell turned to the pitcher he’d planned as closer—newcomer Joel Hanrahan, acquired in an offseason trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates and two saves shy of 100 for his career. Hanrahan had recorded saves in both of his first two save opportunities of 2013.6   

First up was Adam Jones, who broke the shutout with a long home run over the wall in left-center. Davis grounded out to first, Hanrahan taking the feed from Napoli. Wieters struck out.

With two out, Hardy kept the visitors’ hopes alive with a double to center. On a 2-and-0 count, though, second baseman Ryan Flaherty fouled out with a popup to Middlebrooks at third base.  

The game was over. The Red Sox had won their ninth consecutive home opener.7 They were 5-2 in 2013, their best start since 2007. The Red Sox had not committed an error in any of their first seven games, setting a team record.8

“You can’t say enough about what Clay did for us,” enthused Farrell. “The way Chen was pitching it was a classic pitchers’ duel and one swing of the bat becomes the difference.”9

The Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy devoted a column to how loyal Red Sox fans were, even to a team that had just come off its worst season in 47 years. Loyal, perhaps to a fault. “Just give us some crumbs. Just give us a reason to believe.”10

The Orioles’ record was now 3-4 in 2013—the first time they’d had a losing record since 2011—but they knew the season was young. Adam Jones sarcastically said, postgame, “We might spend … all day tomorrow crying as a team, holding each other’s hands, just walking through the Prudential Center, just crying.” He continued, “It’s seven days into the season. It’s not like we just got blown out. We got beat.”11

Chen hadn’t won a game since August 19, 2012, but the Orioles had averaged only 1.7 runs per game while he was the pitcher of record.12 Showalter praised Chen’s work: “He gave us a good chance to win. I wish we could have gotten one for him. He deserved a ‘W’ today.”13 Chen finished the season 7-7.

The 85-77 Orioles finished third in the AL East, six games out of a wild-card slot. The Red Sox went on to win the World Series. Buchholz’s record was 12-1 with a 1.74 season ERA.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Malcolm Allen for supplying access to Baltimore newspaper coverage.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201304080.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B04080BOS2013.htm

Notes

1 Michael Vega, “Pregame Festivities a Winner, Too,” Boston Globe, April 9, 2013: C3.

2 Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim won the 2012 AL Rookie of the Year Award.

3 Davis had homered in each of Baltimore’s first four games of the season and already had 17 RBIs after just the first week. Indeed, he had driven in 16 runs in just those first four games, obliterating the old major-league record of 12. He was named AL Player of the Week for the first week of play. Eduardo A. Encina, “Davis Named AL Player of the Week,” Baltimore Sun, April 9, 2013: D1.

4 Peter Abraham, “Right at Home,” Boston Globe, April 9, 2013: C1. Abraham explained that Nava had been surprised to be in the lineup against the left-handed Chen because even though he was a switch-hitter, he hit much better against right-handers. He had hit just .185 when batting right-handed in 2012.

5 For more background on Nava, see Nick Cafardo, “Having a Blast,” Boston Globe, April 9, 2013: C2.

6 Indeed, the Red Sox had any number of pitchers in the bullpen who could have closed for them, including Bailey, who had closed 133 games in his first three seasons, with Oakland. His 26 saves in 2009 had earned him AL Rookie of the Year honors. After this game, Bailey remarked of Boston’s bullpen, “We’ve got seven closers down there.” Julian Benbow, “They’re Happy to Work Late,” Boston Globe, April 9, 2013: C2. In early May, after working in just nine games, Hanrahan suffered season-ending tendon damage in his right elbow. Boston’s closer for 2013 came to be Koji Uehara, who closed 40 games in the regular season with seven saves in the postseason.

7 The streak ended at the 2014 home opener, a 6-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on April 4. By then, the Red Sox were the reigning World Series champions, so perhaps that was forgiven by their faithful fans.

8 The eighth game of the year, though, had two Red Sox errors, both by outfielders. Peter Abraham cited the errorless streak. Peter Abraham, “Lackey Decision Delayed,” Boston Globe, April 9, 2013: C4.

9 Christopher L. Gasper, “Buchholz Is Happy to Hand O’s Zeroes,” Boston Globe, April 9, 2013: C1, C5.

10 Dan Shaughnessy, “Bonding Experience Endures for Fans,” Boston Globe, April 9, 2013: C1. Interestingly, despite this win on Opening Day, the very next Red Sox home game attracted “only” 30,862 fans—the first Fenway Park game since May 2003 that was not sold out. Beginning on May 15, 2003, through this date—April 8, 2013—the Red Sox sold out 794 consecutive regular-season games. See Jason Mastrodonato, “Red Sox Sellout Streak Comes to an End,” MLB.com, April 10, 2013. https://www.mlb.com/redsox/news/red-sox-sellout-streak-comes-to-an-end/c-44449444. Accessed December 4, 2022.

11 Eduardo A. Encina, “‘One Mistake’ Is Too Costly for Scuffling O’s,” Baltimore Sun, April 9, 2013: D1.

12 Apparently the Orioles found their bats only after he’d left the game—in addition to his four 2012 losses after August 19, he had four no-decisions. The Orioles rallied to win all four.

13 Encina, “‘One Mistake’ Is Too Costly for Scuffling O’s.”

In a battle of left-handers, the starting pitcher for manager John Farrell’s Red Sox was two-time All-Star Jon Lester, while Rays manager Joe Maddon went with the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, David Price, who had been 20-5 with a 2.56 ERA in 2012. Both starting pitchers performed well, going at least six innings and giving up just one run apiece. By the time the game was over, though, the Rays used six pitchers and the Red Sox five.

The Rays scored first, in the top of the third. Lester had walked one in the first inning and given up back-to-back two-out singles in the second.

In the third, Rays center fielder Desmond Jennings led off with a single off the scoreboard in straightaway left. First baseman Sean Rodríguez followed with a double down the line in left, with Jennings scoring from first.

Third baseman Evan Longoria came to bat and Lester let loose a wild pitch, enabling Rodríguez to take third with still nobody out. But Lester struck out Longoria, right fielder Ben Zobrist lined out to first base, and DH Shelley Duncan grounded out, third to first.

Price walked one in the first inning and one in the second, and gave up a single to right fielder Shane Victorino in the third. Victorino stole second, but second baseman Dustin Pedroia struck out.

Both pitchers traded one-two-three innings in the fourth. Lester again set down the side in order in the top of the fifth, and the Red Sox got to Price for a run in the bottom of the inning.

After two outs, catcher David Ross, who had started 2013 just 1-for-10, worked a 3-and-2 count and, on the seventh pitch of the at-bat, hit a solo home run completely over the Green Monster in left, tying the score 1-1.1 Center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury grounded out to first base unassisted.

Three groundouts constituted the Rays’ sixth; Lester had retired 12 in a row. The Red Sox got back-to-back two-out singles by first baseman Mike Napoli and third baseman Will Middlebrooks, but left fielder Daniel Nava flied out to center, ending any threat.

Shortstop Yunel Escobar broke Lester’s streak by singling to lead off the seventh, but second baseman Ryan Roberts grounded into a 4-6-3 double play and catcher Jose Molina followed with a groundout, third to first.

Maddon had Jake McGee relieve in the seventh; Price had thrown 106 pitches in six innings. McGee retired the Red Sox in order.

Andrew Bailey took over for Lester – whose final pitch count was 100 – in the top of the eighth. He faced three batters and got all three out. Joel Peralta took over for McGee and he, too, retired the side in the bottom of the eighth.

In the ninth inning, the score still 1-1, Joel Hanrahan relieved Bailey. Longoria walked on four pitches. Next up was Zobrist and, though it took eight pitches, he too drew a walk. The Rays had runners on first and second with nobody out.

Farrell beckoned Koji Uehara in from the Boston bullpen. Maddon countered with pinch-hitter James Loney. Uehara struck out Loney. Escobar lifted a fly ball to Victorino in right-center but not deep enough for Longoria to tag up and score. Roberts popped up to Pedroia.

Maddon received some criticism later for eschewing the bunt with Loney at the plate. He had been quoted as saying “the bunt is an overrated play” and, after this game, he said, “For that group out there that wants people to bunt all the time, you don’t know the outcome when you choose to do that.” He had Loney hit because “[t]he guys hitting afterward are not really tearing the ball up right now.”2

The Red Sox came to bat in the bottom of the ninth, the game on the line. Kyle Farnsworth got Napoli to ground out and Middlebrooks to line out to Zobrist in right. Maddon then brought in left-hander Cesar Ramos to pitch to Daniel Nava, and Nava singled to right.3

Maddon then set up a Gomes vs. Gomes confrontation.4 Massachusetts-born righty Brandon Gomes was called on to face Red Sox DH (and California native) Jonny Gomes. Six pitches later, Jonny Gomes was on first base with a walk. But Red Sox shortstop Stephen Drew lined out to deep center and the game went into extra innings.

In the top of the 10th, Junichi Tazawa relieved Uehara. First up was Molina, who doubled to right field. Pinch-runner Kelly Johnson replaced the 37-year-old Molina on second.

Again, Maddon had a Rays batter hit away, and left fielder Matt Joyce lined out to left-center. Jennings popped up to second baseman Pedroia in shallow center. Sam Fuld, who’d come into the game as a pinch-hitter in the eighth and stayed in to play right field, grounded out to first base unassisted.

The Rays were 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position. Longoria said postgame, “If we want to compete in this division and this season in general, we’re going to have to find a way to push across more than one run.”5

In the Red Sox’ 10th, Jose Lobaton replaced Molina behind the plate. Over his career, Molina had been effective against the running game, leading the AL in percentage of runners caught stealing twice and throwing out 37 percent of steal attempts in 15 major-league seasons. Lobaton, by contrast, had caught only 18 percent of baserunners through four big-league seasons.

The impact of Tampa Bay’s defensive substitution soon became apparent. In the bottom of the 10th, Gomes struck out Red Sox catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia looking. Ellsbury lined a single right past Gomes, up the middle and into center. With Victorino batting, he then stole second base, with relative ease, for his fifth steal in as many attempts in 2013.

The Rays battery might have been better off just letting him take the base: Lobaton’s throw “ticked off” shortstop Escobar’s glove and went out into right-center.6 Ellsbury wound up on third base, the catcher charged with an error.

The potential winning run was on third with only one out. Victorino faced a drawn-in five-man infield, with three infielders on the right side and left fielder Joyce playing third base.

On the very next pitch, with the count 2-and-2, Victorino slapped a hit to the right of pitcher Gomes, on the right-field side of second base, “a perfectly placed ground ball that shortstop Yunel Escobar snagged but couldn’t make a throw home on.”7 He’d had to dive for the ball and got it, but was unable to make a play.

Running on contact, Ellsbury scored easily, and the Red Sox had their first walk-off win of the 2013 season. “That’s the kind of game we want to play,” said Farrell. “We want to force the defense, to put pressure on them.”8

The Red Sox won their next two games against Tampa Bay as well – a 5-0 shutout for Clay Buchholz on Sunday afternoon and a 3-2 win in the 11:05 A.M. Patriots Day game on Monday.

The Patriots Day game was another walk-off, this time on a ninth-inning double by Napoli that scored Pedroia from first base. The game ended at 2:08 P.M. and both teams departed, the Rays for Baltimore and the Red Sox for Cleveland. At 2:49 P.M., two bombs exploded near the finish line at the Boston Marathon, just one mile from Fenway Park, killing three bystanders.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org and a video of the game on YouTube. Thanks to Jay Caldwell for supplying Tampa Bay Times newspaper coverage.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201304130.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B04130BOS2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwtLj_wsFtI

Notes

1 “It was a bomb, wasn’t it?” he said afterward, talking about the matchup and his home run. “It was fun. I’ve been scuffling a little bit.” Not only had he been just 1-for-10 on the season; he had been only 3-for-28 in spring training. Peter Abraham, “Ross Contribution a Big Hit,” Boston Globe, April 14, 2013: C8.

2 Marc Topkin, “Small Ball Not in Rays’ Arsenal,” Tampa Bay Times, April 14, 2014: 1C.

3 Though a switch-hitter, Nava had hit better facing right-handers.

4 Major League Baseball did not implement the rule requiring pitchers to face a minimum of three batters until the 2020 season.

5 Topkin.

6 Peter Abraham, “A Perfect 10th for Red Sox,” Boston Globe, April 14, 2013: C1. The error was charged to Lobaton on the throw.

7 Topkin.

8 Abraham, “A Perfect 10th for Red Sox.” Victorino said he hadn’t even noticed the five men in the infield. “Just put the ball in play.” That was his goal. Associated Press, “Sweet Victorino for Sox,” Naples (Florida) Daily News, April 14, 2013: 6C.

Just minutes after this game ended, the day’s significance was forever changed. Two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three innocent bystanders who had gone to watch the 117th annual running of the marathon. The finish line is in Boston’s Copley Square 1.12 miles from Fenway Park.1

None among the sold-out ballpark (37,449) knew the day would be marred by such a horrific event—one that even resulted in the whole Greater Boston area being urged to “shelter in place” (asked to remain in their homes) for the next few days until the bombers had been identified and neutralized.

Most at Fenway were, naturally, Red Sox fans, and pleased to see their team complete a three-game sweep of the visiting Rays, winning when Pedroia scored on Napoli’s ninth-inning double, less than 48 hours after their 10-inning walk-off on April 13 and the day after Clay Buchholz had thrown no-hit ball through seven innings. He had given up two hits in the eighth, and Boston won, 5-0.

Wins were welcome in Boston; the 2013 Red Sox were coming off a last-place finish in 2012 and a dispiriting collapse at the end of the 2011 season. The team had a new manager in John Farrell and several new players. The Rays were led by Joe Maddon.

April 15 was Jackie Robinson Day throughout baseball, with all players for all teams wearing the number 42 (Robinson’s number) to commemorate the 66th anniversary of Robinson’s breaking baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

Farrell’s starting pitcher was veteran right-hander Ryan Dempster, in his 16th year in the majors (his first with Boston but also his final one, as it transpired), while Maddon went with another righty, Jeremy Hellickson, in his fourth year with the Rays. Hellickson had been voted American League Rookie of the Year in 2011. Both starters pitched well in this game, working seven innings apiece with Dempster allowing only one run and Hellickson allowing two.

Delivering the first pitch at 11:05 A.M., Dempster retired the Rays in order in the first inning with two strikeouts and a groundout, third to first. Red Sox center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury started his morning with a leadoff triple off the base of the wall in straightaway center on the eighth pitch of his at-bat.2 Right fielder Shane Victorino hit a grounder fielded on the edge of the outfield grass by second baseman Ryan Roberts, Ellsbury scoring on the play. The next two batters made outs as well. It was 1-0, Boston.

Left fielder Matt Joyce singled on Dempster’s first pitch in the second inning, but a strikeout and double play followed. Neither team scored in the second or third, and by the end of three full, both pitchers had five strikeouts.

The Rays tied it in the top of the fourth. After two outs, third baseman Evan Longoria swung at the first pitch he saw and homered over everything in straightaway left field. That made it 1-1. It was the 27-year-old slugger’s first home run of 2013, and the first homer any Rays batter had hit in a week.

After a pair of one-two-three half-innings, the Red Sox came to bat in the bottom of the fifth and catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia restored the one-run lead with a solo home run, his second of the season, well into the visitors’ bullpen in right field. Shortstop Stephen Drew doubled off the scoreboard in left but never got past second base.

Despite a walk, stolen base, a wild pitch, and another walk, the Rays were scoreless in the top of the sixth. Hellickson set the Red Sox down in order in their half.

In the seventh, Dempster set down the Rays in order. He’d struck out 10 Rays.

Saltalamacchia walked with one out in the bottom of the seventh, but was thrown out on a stolen-base attempt as Will Middlebrooks swung and missed, striking out. It was Hellickson’s ninth K.

Koji Uehara relieved and pitched to three batters in the top of the eighth. Each one made an out. Jake McGee relieved Hellickson to pitch the bottom of the eighth. He walked one batter but nothing more eventuated.

The Red Sox took their 2-1 lead to the top of the ninth, and Andrew Bailey took over for Uehara. Center fielder Desmond Jennings led off with a single into left. While right fielder Ben Zobrist was batting, Jennings stole second. The Rays had been hitless in their last 24 at-bats with runners in scoring position, but Zobrist broke the string with a single to left, sending Jennings home with the tying run.

Zobrist took second on the throw to the plate, but Bailey struck out the next two batters, then got Roberts to pop out to second.

Joel Peralta relieved McGee to try to hold back the Red Sox and send the game into extra innings. Victorino flied out, but Pedroia walked. On a 2-and-2 count, after a lengthy delay while catcher José Molina had to replace his face mask, Napoli doubled off high off the wall in left-center field, Joyce played the ball awkwardly, and Pedroia kept running—scoring all the way from first base with the winning run.

The Red Sox won, 3-2, their second walk-off in the three games against the Rays, with the shutout in between. The team had improved their record to 8-4, all against teams in the division, and it seemed a very different team from the one that finished last in the AL East just the year before.3

After the on-field celebration, the Red Sox went back to the clubhouse to change and make their way to Cleveland in advance of Tuesday night’s game against the Indians.4

The game ended at 2:08 P.M. and both teams planned to depart, the Rays for Baltimore and the Red Sox for Cleveland. At 2:49 P.M., the two bombs exploded near the finish line at the Boston Marathon.

The team was boarding the bus for the airport when Middlebrooks’ father called the ballplayer with the news. Pedroia, who lived nor far from the finish line, said, “I was there actually the day before. You can’t even describe how you feel. All of us. Man, that bus ride was silent. It’s still hard to put together.”5

A night later, a Red Sox jersey hung in the dugout in Cleveland, featuring the number “617,” a tribute to Boston’s area code, and the words “Boston Strong.” The idea had reportedly come from outfielder Jonny Gomes.6 Both teams wore black armbands.

The surviving bomber was arrested on April 19.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. A video of the full game can be seen on YouTube. Thanks to Jay Caldwell for supplying Tampa Bay Times newspaper coverage.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201304150.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B04150BOS2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-_KAHDDjSs

Notes

1 What is sometimes referred to as “Marathon Monday” is a state holiday known as Patriots Day, to honor the April 19, 1775, battles in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, which were the first battles of the Revolutionary War by which the 13 American Colonies earned their independence from Great Britain, later becoming the United States of America.

The Boston Marathon has been run on Patriots Day since 1897. The Red Sox have played at home on Patriots Day every year since 1960, except for the year the players were on strike, 1995, and the pandemic year of 2020. The Marathon route takes runners through Kenmore Square, two blocks from Fenway Park. The only morning game on the major-league schedule is typically scheduled to start at 11:05 A.M., thus timed to conclude as large numbers of runners pass by, prepared to finish the final mile. Many fans leave Fenway and go to cheer on the runners. More detail on Patriots Day and the Red Sox can be found in Bill Nowlin, Red Sox Threads (Burlington, Massachusetts: Rounder Books, 2008). Cy Young leads all franchise pitchers with four wins in Patriots Day games, back in the days the Boston Braves and Boston Red Sox alternated on the day. Through the year 2022, the Red Sox record in Patriots Day games is 71-54.

The 2013 race was the 117th annual running of the Marathon, an event which that year included some 26,000 runners and drew hundreds of thousands of spectators. Two brothers from Greater Boston who hailed from a former Soviet republic both became “self-radicalized” and—acting in what they considered to be in support of Islam and solidarity with Al-Qaeda—fashioned homemade bombs from pressure cookers and brought them near to the finish line on Boston’s Boylston Street, where they exploded them approximately 12 seconds apart, killing three and wounding more than 150. Killed were 29-year-old Krystle Campbell of Arlington Massachusetts, 8-year-old Martin Richard of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and Lu Lingzi, a 23-year-old graduate student from China. A few days later, the two brothers—on the run—shot and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, Sean Collier. The names of these victims are mentioned here but not the names of those who perpetrated the bombing or those of the many other victims.

2 The ball went over the head of center fielder Desmond Jennings, bounced away from him, and was thrown in by right fielder Ben Zobrist.

3 The 4-8 start for Tampa Bay was the worst in the franchise’s 16-season history. The Rays did, though, finish second in the AL East at 92-71, 5½ games behind the Red Sox. They won the AL wild-card game against the Cleveland Indians but lost the AL Division Series to the Red Sox in four games.

4 Though overshadowed by all that happened afterward, the Red Sox swept all three games in Cleveland. They returned home on April 20 for an emotional homecoming preceded by a notable speech from David Ortiz, and won that game, too.

5 Peter Abraham, “Situation Is in Their Thoughts,” Boston Globe, April 17, 2013: C6.

6 Peter Abraham, “Sox Remain Strong, Top Francona, Indians,” Boston Globe, April 17, 2013: C1.

David Ortiz addresses the crowd at Fenway Park on April 20, 2013. (MICHAEL IVINS / BOSTON RED SOX)

Monday, April 15, 2013, was Patriots Day in Massachusetts, a state holiday commemorating the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Patriots Day is famous for two sporting events — the Boston Marathon, and the morning Boston Red Sox game. The end point of the Marathon is just a few blocks from Fenway Park, and in past years, Red Sox players would often go watch the runners crossing the finish line after their game, which starts at 11 A.M. However, in 2013 the Red Sox had a three-game road trip to Cleveland starting the day after Patriots Day, so the players left for the airport and their charter flight after the game. Shortly before 3 P.M., a time when some of the players may have been near the finish line if not for the road trip, two explosions 12 seconds apart rocked the area, killing three people and injuring scores of others.1 Two brothers were fingered as the perpetrators of what was called a terrorist act.

The Red Sox returned to Boston from Cleveland in the early-morning hours of Friday, April 19 after sweeping all three games with the Tribe.  At the same time, a manhunt was underway for one of the brothers. (Earlier on Thursday night, the two suspects had been involved in a shootout with police, leaving one of them dead and the other on the run.)

With the main focus being the apprehension of the remaining suspect, on Friday Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick asked residents of the Boston area to shelter in place and allow law enforcement to search for the suspect. This meant that that night’s Red Sox game against the Kansas City Royals had to be canceled. As darkness fell, the city and all of the region breathed a sigh of relief when the suspect was apprehended early Friday evening, hiding in a boat in a backyard in Watertown, a suburb of Boston.2

It was against this backdrop that 35,152 fans filled Fenway Park on Saturday, April 20, for the first home game since the bombings. In pregame ceremonies, a large American flag was unfurled from the top of the Green Monster in left field, spanning the width of the wall. Law-enforcement officers who had participated in the search for the bombers, including some who had been present at the capture of the suspect the night before, streamed onto the field from a doorway in center field, ringing the infield. A video montage was played on the center-field scoreboard of images from the bombing and subsequent manhunt, set to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.3 First pitches were thrown by Steven Byrne, who was injured in the bombing, and Matt Patterson, an off-duty firefighter who had aided an injured boy. Usually, there is an invited singer to sing the National Anthem before each game. But on this day, the Red Sox left it up to the fans to provide the vocals, as the Boston Bruins had done at their game on Wednesday night. The Fenway organist, Josh Kantor, provided the music. “The louder they sang, the softer I played,” said Kantor.4 Understandably, emotions were running high. Across the ballpark, fans were waving “Boston Strong” signs that had been given out outside the park. And then, in an unscripted move, David Ortiz, activated for the first time that season after suffering a heel injury, and long a leader on the team, grabbed the microphone to address the crowd, “This is our [expletive] city, and nobody is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong,” he declared. The crowd roared in approval.

The game started at 1:35 P.M., under sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-50s. Clay Buchholz, 3-0 with a 0.41 ERA so far in the young season, started for the Red Sox, and James Shields, 1-2 with a 3.43 ERA, started for the Royals.

The game was scoreless through the first four innings. In the fifth Lorenzo Cain led off with a double, took third base on a fly ball to center field by Mike Moustakas, and scored on a fly to left field by Jeff Francoeur, giving the Royals a 1-0 lead. It stayed that way into the bottom of the sixth inning, when Jacoby Ellsbury led off with a single, was sacrificed to second by Shane Victorino, advanced to third base on a groundout by Dustin Pedroia, and scored on a single by Ortiz.

In the seventh inning the Royals took the lead again as Cain doubled for the second straight at-bat and scored on a triple to right field by Salvador Perez with 2 outs. In the bottom of the inning, Shields was replaced by Aaron Crow, who hit the first batter, Daniel Nava, then allowed a single to Will Middlebrooks. With Stephen Drew at the plate, Royals catcher Salvador Perez picked Nava off second base. After an error by Moustakas that allowed Drew to reach base, Crow was replaced by Tim Collins, who got the final two outs without allowing any runs.

Despite allowing a hit and a walk, Buchholz escaped the eighth inning without allowing any runs as he got Eric Hosmer to ground into a double play, so the score remained Royals 2, Red Sox 1 going into the bottom of the eighth inning.

A tradition at Red Sox games between the top and bottom of the eighth inning is the playing of Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, with the crowd joining in, especially on the chorus. At this game, the fans were in for a surprise, as Neil Diamond performed his song live. Like many in the country, he had been following the events of the previous day, and after the manhunt had ended, decided to fly to Boston to perform his song live for the Fenway crowd, if the Red Sox would allow it. “Who’s going to turn him down?” said Red Sox manager John Farrell.5 As much as the crowd gets into it when the recording is played, the combination of having Diamond sing it live, along with the successful law-enforcement action of the day before, really pumped up the fans.

And so the Red Sox came to bat in the bottom of the eighth inning down by a run, but with the spirit of the crowd running high. Jonny Gomes pinch hit for Victorino to lead off the inning, and doubled. Pedroia drew a walk, but then David Ortiz hit into a double play, with Gomes advancing to third base. At this point, Kelvin Herrera was brought in to relieve Tim Collins. Herrera walked Mike Napoli, putting runners on the corners, and bringing up Nava, who had been picked off second base in the previous inning.

(Before his major-league debut on June 12, 2010, Red Sox radio broadcaster Joe Castiglione interviewed Nava for the pregame show, and told him, “Swing at the first pitch, because you’ll never get it back.”6 In that game, Nava did just that, hitting a grand slam into the Red Sox bullpen. He became only the second player to hit a grand slam on the first major-league pitch he saw, after Kevin Kouzmanoff in 2006.7 It seemed that Nava, whose path to the major leagues was far from normal, had a flair for the dramatic.)

As Nava stepped to the plate with two on and two out in the eighth inning, Fenway Park was buzzing with anticipation of the Red Sox tying the game, or taking the lead. With the count 1-and-1, Nava hit a fly ball to deep right-center field. “When I hit that ball I was yelling ‘Stretch, c’mon, get going!’” Nava said.8 As the ball sailed into the Red Sox bullpen, the Fenway faithful erupted as the Red Sox took a 4-2 lead.

Andrew Bailey relieved Buchholz in the ninth, giving up a lead off home run to Cain, and allowing two other baserunners, but eventually he earned the save.

“Looking back at it now,” Gomes said, “if you were going to make a movie, that’s probably how it was going to end up. It just sums the whole deal up. The city of Boston was kind of on the ropes a little bit, we were on the ropes a little bit. Boston fights back and wins. We fight back and win.”9

The Red Sox would go on to win the World Series that fall, their third World Series win of the twenty-first century.  No doubt this game, and the events leading up to it, inspired the team throughout the season.

Sources

baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201304200.shtml

retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B04200BOS2013.htm

Notes

1 Mark Arsenault, “3 Killed, 130 Hurt by Bombs at Finish Line; Area Locked Down,” Boston Globe, April 16, 2013: A-1.

2 Eric Moskowitz and Maria Cramer, “A Long Violent Night Before Dragnet Closed In,” Boston Globe, April 20, 2013: A-15.

3 Peter Schworm, “Joy and Lingering Grief Mix at Fenway,” Boston Globe, April 21, 2013: A-21.

4 Gordon Edes, “Catharsis in Our Sports Cathedral,” ESPN Boston, April 21, 2013.

5 Edes.

6 Nate Taylor, “Nava Enjoys a Debut Loaded with Excitement,” Boston Globe, June 13, 2010: C-6.

7 Taylor.

8 Nick Carfado, “Sox Win Caps Moving Pregame Marathon Ceremony,” Boston Globe, April 21, 2013: C-9.

9 Edes.

On Monday, April 22, Red Sox pitchers combined for 11 strikeouts of the visiting Oakland Athletics in a 9-6 win. Seven A’s struck out in the next evening’s rain-shortened seven-inning, 13-0 Boston loss, then 12 more in the Red Sox’ 6-5 win over the A’s on April 24.

The Houston Astros came to town for a four-game series, and in the opener Clay Buchholz ran his season record to 5-0, winning 7-2; the Astros struck out 11 times. On Friday, April 26, it was 7-3, Red Sox. Starter Ryan Dempster struck out 10—his second 10-strikeout game in three starts—and each of four relievers added one more K for a total of 14. That was 75 strikeouts in a stretch of seven games.1

The Red Sox, who were in first place in the American League East Division and tied with the Texas Rangers for the majors’ best record at 16-7, played the Astros again on Saturday evening, April 27. A left-hander from Venezuela, Felix Doubront, had been one of only two starters with a winning record (11-10, 4.86) on the last-place 2012 Red Sox.2 He took the mound at Fenway Park for new manager John Farrell. In his first three starts of 2013, Doubront was 2-0 with a 4.32 ERA.

The Astros had finished sixth—last place—in the National League Central Division in 2012, 42 games behind the Cincinnati Reds. In 2013, as part of a realignment of the two leagues, they became an AL team, and they were last in the five-team AL West at 7-16. Bo Porter was Houston’s first-year manager. He started righty Brad Peacock. It was Peacock’s first full year in the majors; he was 1-2 with a 7.50 ERA coming into the game.

The Astros struck first, with two runs in the first off Doubront in a mess of an inning. Second baseman Jose Altuve lined a single to left to kick things off. Two Brandons followed. Right fielder Brandon Barnes was hit by a pitch, and first baseman Brandon Laird stepped into the box. A wild pitch let both baserunners advance. Laird walked. on five pitches. The bases were loaded with nobody out.

Doubront then walked the next batter, left fielder Chris Carter, forcing in Altuve. Swinging at the first pitch, DH Ronny Cedeño hit a sacrifice fly to straightaway center. It was 2-0. The next batter walked, loading the bases again, but Doubront buckled down and got a soft popup to shortstop and struck out the Astros’ eighth-place hitter, shortstop Marwin Gonzalez.

Doubront had thrown 37 pitches in the first inning, but threw only 66 more over the next 5⅔. He admitted to frustration after the game, recovering after he “flipped the switch. … I don’t know what happened in the first inning. I was using more of my arm than my body … and thinking too much.”3  

Peacock gave up two singles in the bottom of the first, and there was an Astros error as well, but no runs scored.

Barnes walked in the Astros’ second but was the only batter to reach base. The Red Sox tipped the scales the other way in their half-inning, taking a 4-2 lead. After the first out, catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia walked. Third baseman Will Middlebrooks doubled, hitting high off the left-field wall just about a foot below the top. Saltalamacchia held at third. Shortstop Stephen Drew walked.

The bases were loaded for center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury, who looped a single into left-center, driving in the first two Boston runs. After an out and a walk, the bases were loaded again and designated hitter David Ortiz sliced a double to the opposite field, down the left-field line, driving in two more. Another walk loaded the bases yet again, but a strikeout forestalled any further scoring.

On 12 pitches, Doubront struck out all three batters he faced in the top of the third.

The next run scored in the game was by Boston in the bottom of the fourth. After right fielder Daniel Nava hit an opposite-field double into the left-field corner and took third on second baseman Dustin Pedroia’s groundout, Travis Blackley relieved Peacock.

Ortiz greeted Blackley by hitting another ball to left, which went for a sacrifice fly as Nava tagged up and scored.4 It was 5-2, Red Sox. Ortiz had missed the first 15 games of the season, coming off the disabled list on April 20. This was his seventh game back, and he was 14-of-27 with six extra-base hits and nine RBIs.

Neither team scored again until the top of the seventh. Houston’s Gonzalez led off with a single. He took second on a passed ball, stole third an out later, and scored on Altuve’s groundout. After Barnes singled, Junichi Tazawa relieved Doubront. Tazawa balked Barnes to second and walked pinch-hitter Fernando Martínez, putting the tying run on base, but Carter fanned to prevent any further damage. The score was 5-3, Red Sox.

The Red Sox broke the game open with three more runs in the bottom of the seventh. Houston’s new pitcher was Hector Ambriz. After one out, Saltalamacchia doubled halfway up and off the left-field wall—yet another opposite-field base hit, this one striking the ladder on the wall. Middlebrooks walked. Drew singled over shortstop and into center and drove in  Saltalamacchia.

Ellsbury struck out, but Nava singled off the scoreboard in left, driving in Middlebrooks. Drew took third base. Pedroia shot a single to right field—another opposite-field hit—driving in Drew. Ortiz flied out, but Boston’s lead was 8-3.

Daniel Bard came on in relief in the eighth, but lasted only nine pitches, walking the first two batters in a continuation of the control problems that had plagued him in 2012. Alex Wilson took over from Bard. Third baseman Matt Dominguez singled, driving in what proved to be the final run of the game. Wilson got three outs, the last one a swinging strikeout of pinch-hitter Rick Ankiel.

After the Red Sox went down in order in the bottom of the eighth, pitcher Andrew Miller relieved and induced a groundout and then struck out the final two batters. When Carlos Peña fanned to end the game, it was Boston’s 12th strikeout, and the Red Sox had an 8-4 victory. It was the fourth consecutive game in which Boston pitchers had struck out 11 or more of the opposition.5 Astros manager Porter was not pleased with his staff’s pitching: “If it’s not corrected, adjustments, decisions will be made, and we’re going to have to find people that’s going to throw strikes.”6

The Red Sox struck out only four Astros in Sunday’s series finale, but Boston’s 6-1 win completed the four-game sweep and left the Red Sox in sole possession of the best record in baseball at 18-7. By season’s end, the Red Sox had gone from last place in 2012 to become World Series champions. The Astros finished at 51-111, last in the AL West, a full 45 games behind Oakland in the standings.7

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to John Fredland for supplying Houston newspaper coverage. A video of the game is available on YouTube.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201304270.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B04270BOS2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwUVvHXLNfA

Notes

1 After the April 26 game, Dempster said, “Strikeouts are overrated. I’m just trying to get outs. But I’ll take them however I can get them.” The quotation can be seen during the opening to the NESN broadcast on YouTube.

2 The other was Clay Buchholz (11-8, 4.56). The team as a whole had finished 69-93.

3 Peter Abraham, “Doubront Finishes Off Astros,” Boston Globe, April 28, 2013: C1.

4 Nava was playing in right field because Shane Victorino was out for a few days with a lower-back strain.

5 At year’s end, the Red Sox leader in strikeouts was Jon Lester with 177. The other four with 100 or more were starters John Lackey (161), Ryan Dempster (157), and Felix Doubront (139), and reliever Koji Uehara (101).   

6 Brian T. Smith, “Problems Continue to Spin Out of Control,” Houston Chronicle, April 28, 2013: C6.

7 On Boston writer opined, “The Astros are not a major league team, and those teams that lose to them should be embarrassed. But the Astros don’t pretend to be [a] major league team. We know what they’re doing—building for a better day like the Washington Nationals and Tampa Bay Rays have done.” Nick Cafardo, “Gift That Keeps On Giving,” Boston Globe, April 28, 2013: C8. The 2013 season was the Astros’ third in a row with 106 or more losses and the worst record in baseball. Four years later, in 2017, they won the first World Series in franchise history.

You win some; you lose some. So the saying goes. In part because there simply weren’t enough games on the schedule, the first time the Red Sox won as many as 18 games in April was the 98th season of franchise history – 1998, when they went 18-8 for the month. That year’s team finished second in the American League East Division at 92-70. In 2003 the Sox also went 18-8 in April,1 on their way to a 95-67 record and a second-place finish in the division.

The 2013 season began on April 1 in New York. The Red Sox took two of three from the Yankees, then two of three in Toronto. A 4-2 homestand, which included a sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays, was followed by three wins on the road in Cleveland. That put the Red Sox at 11-4, a good start by any measure, particularly for a team that had finished in last place in 2012 with a 69-93 record.2

The Red Sox then came home to Fenway Park for 10 games against the Kansas City Royals, Oakland Athletics, and Houston Astros. By the morning of Sunday, April 28 (as it happens, it was State of Maine Day), they had a record of 17-7 after winning the first three of four games against the Astros. With the best record in baseball, the Red Sox had been in first place in the division all year, the longest continuous stretch since 1918 that they had held first place to start a season.3

Several individual Red Sox held impressive season-starting stats. Pitcher Clay Buchholz was already 5-0, first baseman Mike Napoli had accumulated 27 RBIs and 18 extra-base hits, and center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury already had 11 stolen bases.

Sunday’s starting pitcher for first-year manager John Farrell was 34-year-old John Lackey, who had lost his only start of 2013 after missing the entire 2012 season for Tommy John surgery on his right elbow. He was just coming off the 21-day disabled list.4 Houston manager Bo Porter had right-hander Bud Norris (3-2) start.

After striking out the first batter and getting the second to ground out, Lackey walked two and then saw the Astros take a 1-0 lead on DH Ronny Cedeño’s hard-hit RBI single, which skittered over the mound and into center field.

The Red Sox tied it in the bottom of the inning. With one out, right fielder Daniel Nava hit a ball down the left-field line that one-hopped the wall for a two-base hit. Second baseman Dustin Pedroia walked. Designated hitter David Ortiz – who had missed the season’s first 15 games – singled to left, to the right of shortstop Marwin Gonzalez, driving in Nava. It gave Ortiz RBIs in eight of his first nine games of 2013.5

Neither team scored in the second or third. In fact, after giving up a leadoff single in the top of the second, Lackey retired the next 13 batters in order, extending into the sixth.

In the bottom of the fourth, the Red Sox took a 3-1 lead. Napoli led off with a single to right but was easily thrown out when unwisely trying to go for a double. Left fielder Mike Carp poked a single into left. Catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia singled to right, just inside the first-base bag. Norris struck out third baseman Will Middlebrooks, but shortstop Stephen Drew tripled into the right-field corner for two runs.

After Lackey induced three groundouts in the top of the fifth, the Red Sox added two more runs in their half. Nava reached first base – and then took second – when Gonzalez “bobbled a hard grounder … and then threw the ball on a straight line into the stands.”6 The throw went over the Red Sox dugout and into the seats behind, and Gonzalez was charged with two errors on the play.

Pedroia pulled a double inside third and down the left-field line and drove home Nava, who reached second on a headfirst slide. After a couple of outs, Carp doubled to left-center, off the wall about two-thirds of the way up, and Pedroia scored.

With one out in the top of the sixth, Lackey allowed three successive singles but recovered with a strikeout and a force play at second. He’d thrown 27 pitches in the first inning, then just 54 more over the next five innings. The Boston starter left with a 5-1 lead. “It was fun,” Lackey said postgame. “It was definitely a first big challenge in a long time. To be able to get the strikeout and the ground ball to get out of there was a lot of fun, exciting.”7

Clayton Mortensen relieved Lackey to pitch the seventh. He was charged with a fielding error, but otherwise got three outs. Norris came out of the game too, replaced by Jose Cisnero in the bottom of the seventh. Nava led off with a single to the right of second base; he went to second on a balk. Pedroia lined out, but Ortiz doubled into the right-field corner and the Red Sox’ lead increased to 6-1.

There was no further scoring in the game. Koji Uehara pitched the eighth for the Red Sox and gave up a single to first baseman Carlos Peña. A wild pitch let Peña move up 90 feet, but he got no further. Cisnero set down the Red Sox in order.

Andrew Bailey threw the top of the ninth for Farrell. Right fielder Rick Ankiel hit a one-out ground-rule double into the right-field stands. Gonzalez flied out to deep center, Ankiel tagging and advancing to third base. Center fielder Robbie Grossman also hit a deep fly ball, to right, but Nava leapt and made a diving catch for the final out. Boston had a 6-1 win.

The Red Sox had swept four from the Astros, who were 5-for-38 with runners in scoring position. In 17 innings, Houston starters had allowed 33 hits, 10 walks, and 22 runs. Ankiel was impressed with Boston batters: “When you watched them hit [Sunday], it seemed like every time they got a guy on, they drove him in.”8

The Red Sox had their 18th win in April – with two days to spare. They had scored 40 more runs than they had allowed.

After an offday, the Red Sox played in Toronto on April 30, and lost 9-7. Boston’s 18-8 April record was still the best in baseball. The last two times they had held that distinction were 2004 (15-6) and 2007 (16-8), and both times they went on to win the World Series. There was a lot of baseball yet – another 136 regular-season games – but for a team that had finished last the year before, this was a heady beginning.

The 2013 Red Sox played .500 ball in May (15-15), but never had a losing month.9 They did indeed win the World Series, successively beating Tampa Bay, the Detroit Tigers, and the St. Louis Cardinals in the postseason.

Lackey finished the season 10-13, with a 3.52 ERA. He won a game in each round of the postseason – winning Game Two of the Division Series, Game Three of the ALCS, and the clinching Game Six of the World Series.  

After the season, Lackey was honored with the Tony Conigliaro Award, given each year to the major-league player “who has overcome adversity through the attributes of spirit, determination, and courage that were trademarks of Tony C.” (Jon Lester, whose 15 wins led the Red Sox staff in 2013, had received the Conigliaro Award in 2007, a year after being treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.)10

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to John Fredland for supplying Houston newspaper coverage. A video of the game is available on YouTube.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201304280.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B04280BOS2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npL6hMHs4ws

Notes

1 The Red Sox had opened the 2003 season on March 31 with a loss to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

2 The only American League team with a worse record in 2012 was the 66-96 Minnesota Twins.

3 The team’s win in this April 28 game set a new franchise record for “the longest ever continuous stretch that a Red Sox team has ever held 1st place to begin a campaign.” Though they recorded only four strikeouts in this game, that gave the team a total of 248 – setting a team record for the most in any month. See Red Sox Notes, April 29, 2013.

4 Lackey had lost, 5-0, on April 6 in Toronto. Farrell was using him sparingly while he worked his way back from elbow surgery. He’d hurt his arm in the April 6 game, though it was a biceps strain and not his elbow. Farrell was hoping Lackey could go five innings against the Astros.

5 He did not drive in a run in this game, but his base hit extended his consecutive-game hitting streak to 20 games, dating back to July 2, 2012. The streak came to an end at 27 games, on May 8.

6 “Game Recap,” Houston Chronicle, April 29, 2013: C4.

7 Peter Abraham, “Red Sox Don’t Let Up, Claim Fifth Straight Win,” Boston Globe, April 29, 2013: C1.

8 Brian T. Smith, “Change of Scenery Welcome after Fenway,” Houston Chronicle, April 29, 2013: C4.

9 The team was 17-11 in June, 15-10 in July, 16-12 in August, and 16-9 in September.

10 In 2017 SABR published a book honoring Tony Conigliaro Award winners through the 2016 season. Bill Nowlin and Clayton Trutor, eds., Overcoming Adversity: Baseball’s Tony Conigliaro Award (Phoenix: SABR, 2017).

The visiting Minnesota Twins were fourth in the AL Central Division. Manager Ron Gardenhire was pleased to see his team score two runs in the top of the first off Red Sox righty Clay Buchholz, particularly since Buchholz was off to a spectacular start, winning every one of his first six outings. He had a 1.01 ERA after those six starts.

The second batter Buchholz faced, catcher Joe Mauer, doubled to left. Next up was left fielder Josh Willingham, who drove in Mauer with another double to left. First baseman Justin Morneau then singled up the middle and drove in Willingham for a 2-0 Minnesota lead. The next two batters drew walks, loading the bases, but Buchholz buckled down and struck out two to get out of the inning.

Vance Worley was the Twins pitcher, a right-hander in his first season in the AL after three years with the Philadelphia Phillies. In contrast to Buchholz’s fast start, he had lost all four of his decisions in the young season. Red Sox right fielder Shane Victorino singled with one out in the bottom of the first, but second baseman Dustin Pedroia followed with an inning-ending 4-6-3 double play.

Neither team got a man on base in the second, nor did the Twins in the top of the third. Boston catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia doubled down the left-field line to lead off the bottom of the third but did not score.

Back-to-back doubles by the two batters Buchholz had struck out to close the first inning— Oswaldo Arcia and Aaron Hicks—gave Minnesota another run in the top of the fourth and a 3-0 advantage. The Red Sox got one run back, though, when Victorino homered down the line in right to lead off the bottom of the fourth.

The Twins took a 4-1 lead in the fifth on a ground-rule double by Mauer, a single by Willingham, and a sacrifice fly by Morneau.

Boston got its second run in the bottom of the inning. Left fielder Daniel Nava doubled and Worley struck out the next two, bringing up shortstop Stephen Drew, a 30-year-old veteran who had signed with the Red Sox as a free agent in December 2012.1

Sidelined by a concussion for the first seven games of the 2013 season, Drew was in his 21st game for the Red Sox. He entered batting only .182, with a .589 OPS. But here Drew singled, driving in Nava and cutting the deficit to 4-2.

Drew tried to bring Boston even closer when Jacoby Ellsbury doubled, but he was thrown out at the plate on center fielder Hicks’ throw and shortstop Pedro Florimon’s relay.

Buchholz retired the Twins in order in the sixth. The first two Red Sox singled in the bottom of the inning, but after Brian Duensing relieved Worley, David Ortiz hit into a 3-6-1 double play. The lead runner, Victorino, took third and scored when first baseman Mike Napoli singled to right, making it a 4-3 game.

Alex Wilson relieved Buchholz, and then Andrew Miller relieved Wilson and struck out a pair of Twins to close a scoreless seventh. Casey Fien took over from Duensing and the second batter he faced was Drew, who homered to deep right, tying the score at 4-4.

Fien only pitched to one batter in the eighth—Pedroia, who wrapped up a 10-pitch at-bat with a home run to left field, his first of the season—giving the Red Sox a lead for the first time in the game, 5-4. Anthony Swarzak took over pitching and allowed a double but no more runs.

The Red Sox had scored one run in each inning from the fourth through the eighth. That gave them five, one more than they needed heading into the ninth. But the Twins tied it up. Joel Hanrahan, meant to be the closer for manager John Farrell and the Red Sox after coming from the Pittsburgh Pirates in an offseason trade, was tagged for a long solo home run to left-center by second baseman Brian Dozier. The score was 5-5.

It was Hanrahan’s second blown save—and, with a 9.82 ERA, his last appearance of the season. He left suffering tightness in his right forearm and just a few days later had Tommy John surgery. Stepping in to fill the void was Koji Uehara, who appeared in 70 games for the 2013 team, with 21 saves and an impressive 1.09 ERA. He struck out 101 opposing batters and walked only nine. 

Clay Mortensen finished up the inning for Boston. Swarzak surrendered a one-out single to Drew but got Ellsbury to hit into a double play and the game went to the 10th.

Mortenson walked two but then got out of the inning with no harm done. Swarzak shut down the Red Sox in the bottom of the 10th. Mortensen allowed a harmless single in the top of the 11th.

Jared Burton was Gardenhire’s next reliever, to work the 11th. He got two outs but then Saltalamacchia reached on an infield squibber hit to Burton’s right. By the time Burton fielded the ball, with Saltalamacchia running hard, the pitcher’s throw to first was a little off-target and a little late, even with the slow runner.2 Will Middlebrooks lined a single into left-center with Saltalamacchia taking second base.

Up came Drew, already 3-for-4 in the game. He doubled off the wall in left-center. Playing the ball was backup catcher Ryan Doumit, who had pinch-hit in the top of the ninth and stayed in to play left field in lieu of Willingham, who had himself been replaced by a pinch-runner. Gardenhire said that Doumit “had to run quite a ways going into a metal wall out there. And I don’t expect my backup catcher to do that. That’s not an easy play for an everyday guy.”3

Saltalamacchia scored easily and the game was over, the third walk-off win for the Red Sox.4 For Drew, it was his third run batted in of the game.

Drew was the regular shortstop for Boston in 2013, playing in 124 games. His big night against the Twins turned his season around; from May 6 onward, he batted .266 with an .810 OPS.

Mortenson got the win, having allowed just one hit in 2⅓ innings of relief. He noted that the team had just returned home from being swept in Texas by the Rangers. It was “huge for our team, coming off a tough series from Texas and come home and win a late one like this, it’s huge. So we’re all feeling pretty good in here right now. So just try and swing that momentum back and get back on a roll.” Having kept pitching, the very next day after the Rangers had dealt him a loss with their own walk-off 4-3 win on the road. “You find it somewhere, man. I felt great, actually, surprisingly. You get in the moment and you just find it somewhere.”5

This win, though, was followed by the Twins taking each of the next three games, 6-1, 15-8, and 5-3. The Red Sox never lost more than three games in a row at any point in 2013, but there were three stretches of three-game losses between May 3 and May 14. Over those 12 days, the Red Sox were 2-9, dropping them out of first place for most of the month, but they soon righted themselves and finished May as they began it, leading the AL East, on their way to a World Series title.6

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Ray Danner and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. A video of the game-winning hit can be seen on YouTube. Thanks to Stew Thornley for supplying Twin Cities newspaper coverage.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201305060.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B05060BOS2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlOLuSascew

Notes

1 Drew’s older brother, right fielder J.D. Drew, had played the last five of his 14 years in the majors with the Red Sox, from 2007 through 2011, hitting .313 in the 2007 postseason and earning a World Series championship ring that year. There was a need for a shortstop after the Red Sox traded Mike Aviles in November.

2 Of Burton, LaVelle Neal wrote, “[H]is throw pulled Justin Morneau” off the bag. LaVelle E. Neal III, “Burton’s Bad Toss Is Costly in the End,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, May 7, 2013: C1.

3 Neal.

4 The video on YouTube shows that Drew did indeed run all the way to second base.

5 Nick Cafardo, “Drew Takes Sox for Quite a Ride,” Boston Globe, May 7, 2013: C1.

6 In one sense, Stephen Drew joined his brother by earning a World Series ring of his own with the 2013 Red Sox.

First named the Red Sox in 1908, they hit regular-season win number 1,000 on July 29, 1913, at Fenway Park when Rube Foster shut out the Chicago White Sox, 2-0. This chart—counting only regular-season wins—shows the other thousand-win milestones:

On May 10, 2013, as the team was on its way from a last-place finish in 2012 to a World Series win in October, the Red Sox won for the 9,000th time, behind a brilliant performance from one of the top starting pitchers in franchise history.1This Friday night win, so far as we have been able to find, received no media attention at all at the time as the 9,000th in team history.

There had been focus in the preceding month on the streak of 794 regular-season games for which Fenway Park was sold out, running from May 15, 2003, through April 8, 2013. Including postseason games, the streak was 820 games.2 On April 10, attendance was 30,862—several thousand below capacity. This May 10 game drew only 33,606.

Four years removed from their most recent postseason appearance, the Red Sox hadn’t come into the 2013 season as a particularly inspiring team. The 2012 team had finished in last place, with a record of 69-93 under one-year manager Bobby Valentine. They were 26 games behind the New York Yankees in the AL East.

They’d won their first two games of 2013, in New York, and had never dropped out of first place as they opened a weekend series with the Toronto Blue Jays. They came into the game tied for first (a three-way tie with the Yankees and Baltimore Orioles), having lost three games in succession and six of their last seven.

Red Sox manager John Farrell named Jon Lester as his starting pitcher. Lester, in his eighth season in Boston, was 4-0 in 2013. For the Blue Jays, managed by John Gibbons, veteran right-hander Ramón Ortiz served as an “emergency starter,” in what National Post columnist John Lott called, “a showdown made in mismatch heaven.”3 The last time Ortiz—who was 13 days from his 40th birthday—had started in the majors was in 2011.

Lester set down the Blue Jays in order in each of the first five innings, with only two of the outs via strikeout, one in the second and one in the third. The Red Sox got a one-out single and a walk in the bottom of the first, but DH David Ortiz hit into a double play.

With one out in the second, Boston built on a four-pitch walk to left fielder Daniel Nava and a single into center by catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia that advanced Nava to third. Third baseman Will Middlebrooks grounded to Jays shortstop Maicer Izturis, whose throw to second for an attempted force play was in the dirt, and Nava scored.

It was the only run for the Red Sox in the five innings Ortiz pitched for the Jays, despite getting a runner into scoring position in every inning. As Richard Griffin pointed out in the Toronto Star, Boston was 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position.4

Lester, by contrast, continued to keep the Blue Jays off the bases into the sixth. Many Red Sox fans were well aware that Lester already had a no-hitter to his credit, thrown on May 19, 2008, against Kansas City, the most recent one in team history. He retired the first two batters in the sixth inning, but Izturis, batting with two outs, hit Lester’s first pitch into the left-field corner for a double. Any thought of a perfect game or no-hitter was thus erased. It was “a clean double several feet over the outstretched arm of third baseman Middlebrooks that landed just inside the foul line.”5

Lester received an ovation from the fans at Fenway. He struck out the next batter to end the inning.

Brett Cecil took over pitching for Toronto in the seventh. A double by Middlebrooks was all Boston managed, and it remained a one-run game.

After Lester retired the side in order in the seventh, the Red Sox provided some insurance by pushing across four more runs. Center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury singled right over second base, and right fielder Shane Victorino singled between shortstop and third.

With second baseman Dustin Pedroia at the plate, Cecil threw a wild pitch into the dirt on an 0-and-2 count and both runners moved up 90 feet. Pedroia poked a single into right-center, driving in Ellsbury, with Victorino going to third. Cecil struck out Ortiz for the first out.

A new pitcher was called in—Mickey Storey, who struck out first baseman Mike Napoli. Nava, though, doubled high off the wall in left-center, knocking in two more runs, and Saltalamacchia doubled onto the warning track in right field, one-hopping the front of the Toronto bullpen. That drove in Nava. It was 5-0, Red Sox.

Lester continued his “near perfect” night by retiring the Blue Jays in the eighth. He got catcher J.P. Arencibia to fly out to left-center. Second baseman Mark DeRosa grounded out third to first. And third baseman Brett Lawrie lined out to Pedroia.

The Red Sox went one-two-three in the eighth, and Lester returned in the ninth, bidding for Boston’s first complete game of the season.

Down to their final three outs, the Blue Jays saw center fielder Colby Rasmus strike out, Lester’s fourth K of the game. Izturis grounded out short to first. And Lester struck out the last batter of the game, Adam Lind—who had come in to pinch-hit in the sixth as the DH.6 It took him seven pitches to strike out Lind, but that he did.

It was a game in which Lester was “a pitch away from perfection.”7 He had a one-hit shutout, with only one clean double marring what was an otherwise perfect game. Lester faced 28 batters and threw 118 pitches. His record improved to 5-0.

Afterward, Lester reportedly laughed when asked about being disappointed by not getting a no-hitter or perfect game. “All that stuff, the stars got to be perfectly aligned for you. It’s got to happen. … You can’t pitch to that. You’ve got to pitch your game.”8

In Lester’s career, it was the third game in which he had allowed no more than one hit to Toronto while working at least seven innings; he’d thrown eight innings of one-hit ball on April 29, 2008, and seven innings on April 28, 2010.    

Lester finished the season at 15-8 with a 3.75 ERA. The Red Sox were 97-65, first in the AL East and 23 games ahead of last-place Toronto.

The Red Sox kept rolling, beating Tampa Bay in the Division Series three games to one, the Detroit Tigers in the ALCS, four games to two, and then winning the World Series in six games from the St. Louis Cardinals. Lester was 1-0 against the Rays and 1-1 against the Tigers, and won both Game One (8-1) and Game Five (3-1) of the World Series.9

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura H. Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Adrian Fung for providing access to Toronto newspaper coverage of this game. Video of the full game is available on YouTube.com.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201305100.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B05100BOS2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS5qgKUWp00

Notes

1 This milestone appears to have received no media attention at the time.

2 https://www.mlb.com/news/red-sox-sellout-streak-at-fenway-park-ends/c-44437740. Accessed January10, 2023.

3 John Lott, “Lester’s One-Hitter Enough to Sink Jays,” National Post (Toronto), May 11, 2013: FP20. The Blue Jays were having a difficult time settling their pitching staff.  Ortiz had appeared in only one previous game in 2013, throwing 3⅓ innings of relief on April 17, giving up two runs. Though he played three more seasons in Dominican and Mexican League baseball, his final major-league appearance was on June 2, 2013.

4 Richard Griffin, “Jays Muster One Hit off Lester,” Toronto Star, May 11, 2013: S6.

5 Howard Ulman (Associated Press), “Blue Jays batters Baffled as Lester Pitches One-Hitter,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), May 11, 2013: S11.

6 Rajai Davis had had to leave the game due to a strained left oblique. Griffin.

7 Peter Abraham, “Lester, Nearly Perfect, Dazzles Toronto,” Boston Globe, May 11, 2013: C1.

8 Abraham.

9 At the end of the 2022 season, the Red Sox had 9,796 regular-season wins, leaving them 204 from 10,000. They had also won 108 postseason games. By no means did it help that the Red Sox have been swept six times in postseason series—1988, 1990, 1995, 2005, 2009, and 2016. But 2013 was a very good year—the Red Sox win in Game Six of the World Series was at home, at Fenway Park. It was the first time they had won a World Series at home since 1918.