April 1, 1953: Red Sox pummel Jacksonville Braves but young Henry Aaron shines

Aaron and Ted Williams at Fenway Park on July 22, 1957, for an exhibition game to benefit the Jimmy Fund. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

On April 1, 1953, an exhibition game between the Boston Red Sox and the Jacksonville Braves offered those in attendance an interesting look at both the past and the future of the national pastime. The Red Sox, whose star outfielder Ted Williams was just about to undertake his sixth of 39 combat missions with the Marine Corps in Korea, were wrapping up their spring-training efforts with a series of exhibition games. With Opening Day just over two weeks away, they were making final decisions about the roster they would use to open the regular season on April 16 in Philadelphia against the Athletics before launching the home season in Boston’s hallowed Fenway Park with a doubleheader against the Washington Senators on April 20.

The game between the Red Sox and the Jacksonville Braves, the Milwaukee Braves’ minor-league affiliate in the Class-A South Atlantic League, commonly known as the Sally League, offered a look at one of that era’s most respected ballplayers, Red Sox center fielder Dom DiMaggio, Williams’s longtime outfield partner and the youngest of the three DiMaggio brothers after Vince and Joe. The trio combined to play 34 seasons in the major leagues.

It was first start of the spring season for Dom, who had been dealing with an eye ailment. The Braves, meanwhile, featured a 19-year-old second baseman, Henry Aaron, who would enjoy a glorious major-league career but on this day hoped to meet the challenges of big-league pitching.

The game was played before a reported crowd of 2,995 at Durkee Field in Jacksonville, on a day in which the temperatures climbed into the 80s.1 However unintentionally, the contest offered a clear picture of the different talent levels that existed between the major leagues and those on minor-league clubs, like the Sally League Braves, where the roster was composed of former big leaguers whose best days were behind them, young ballplayers who hoped to earn a major-league job, and life-long minor leaguers who loved the game but had neither the talent nor the luck to play at the highest level.

Indeed, that talent gap was evident from the start as the Red Sox jumped on Jacksonville starter Vince DiLorenzo for four runs in the top of the first. But that was only the beginning. While pounding out a total of 15 hits, the Red Sox scored an additional run in the fourth and two in the fifth off DiLorenzo, who gave way to Tom Horton in the sixth inning. Horton, though, could not stop the Red Sox barrage. The Red Sox scored three runs in the sixth. another three in the eighth and one in the ninth to bring their total to 14.2

The Red Sox offensive effort showcased the full range of the team’s talent. In addition to veteran catcher Gus Niarhos knocking out three hits, veteran third baseman George Kell drove in three runs and first baseman Dick Gernert doubled and singled while driving in two runs and scoring three. Young outfielder Jimmy Piersall had two hits, a walk, and a sacrifice bunt on the way to scoring four runs – two by stealing home.3

Dom DiMaggio, a seven-time All-Star, showed no ill effects of his late start and worked Braves pitching for an early walk before finishing his four-inning stint with a line-drive home run over the right-field fence. The four-bagger for a hitter known more for his consistency than his power seemed to indicate that his eye ailment was not a problem. Indeed, the Boston Globe headline accompanying the game report was headlined, “DiMag Homers, Looms as Starter,” while a subheadline proclaimed, “Boudreau Expects Veteran to Be Ready.”4

By contrast, with the exception of Aaron, the Braves were overmatched against Red Sox ace Mel Parnell. Coming off a 1952 campaign in which he had gone just 12-12 after having won 18 in 1950 and 1951 as well as 25 in 1949, Parnell cruised through the Braves lineup and shut out the young Jacksonville team over seven innings. He struck out five while giving up only five hits, all singles, in the longest spring outing of any Red Sox hurler.5 However, Aaron stroked two singles off the veteran southpaw.6 Even more impressively, Aaron, who had hit .336 with 9 home runs, 61 runs batted in, and 25 stolen bases in just 87 games for Class-C Eau Claire the previous season to earn a promotion to Jacksonville, saved the Braves from being shut out when he launched a 400-foot solo home run over the right-center-field fence off Red Sox right-hander Ike Delock in the eighth inning.7 But that blast, an enduring memory for the fans who witnessed it and would follow Aaron’s future career with interest, only left the score at 14-1.

Indeed, in ways that few observers of the April Fool’s Day rout could have imagined, the game marked an intersection of the careers of two of baseball’s most respected figures. Aaron’s home run, an effort that certainly caught the attention of those in attendance, could later be seen as a harbinger of what was to come for one of the game’s greatest power hitters, one whose consistency over more than two decades – as an outfielder and first baseman, not a second baseman in the majors – eventually put him at the top of the all-time home-run list when he retired. By contrast, although Dom DiMaggio’s home run was somewhat unusual – he hit only 87 in his 11-year big-league career while batting .298 – it did seem to indicate that the eye ailments that had delayed his spring-training debut were behind him and he was ready for another season.8

In fact, however, it proved to be a more of a last hurrah, for as the team headed farther north, Lou Boudreau, in his second year as manager but having retired as a player, determined that DiMaggio would no longer be the team’s starting center fielder. The proud DiMaggio, an All-Star in each of the previous three seasons, opted to retire rather than serve as a backup. Consequently, on May 12, 1953, after appearing in only three games and getting one hit in three at-bats, with his final appearance coming on May 9, the 36-year-old DiMaggio, the bespectacled Little Professor, announced his retirement, making clear that his eyes were not an issue, but that he “prefer[red] to turn [his] interests elsewhere rather than be a hanger-on.”9

Meanwhile, Aaron went on to have a spectacular 1953 season, leading Jacksonville to the Sally League pennant and earning the circuit’s MVP Award. He earned a spot on Milwaukee’s Opening Day roster in 1954.

In the end it was a game like many, one that reflected a number of the different strands that run through baseball. At the same time, there was no small irony in the Red Sox’ choice of the Braves as an opponent given that the 1953 Jacksonville club was integrating the Deep South-based Sally League. Indeed, six years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Henry Aaron, Felix Mantilla, and Horace Garner were pioneering the effort in the league that many observers “considered to be the most hostile league for blacks in the minor-league system.”10 The Red Sox themselves remained all White, only adding a Black player, Pumpsie Green, to their roster in 1959, the last major-league team to do so.11

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Baseball-Reference.com.

NOTES

1  “Jacksonville, FL Weather History,” April 1, 1953, Weather Underground; https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/fl/jacksonville/KJAX/date/1953-4-1.

2  F.C. Matzek, “Red Sox Display Their Wares on Jacksonville, Win 14-1,” Providence Journal, April 2, 1953: 9.

3  Matzek.

4  Hy Hurwitz, “DiMag Homers, Looms as Starter,” Boston Globe, April 2, 1953: 9.

5  Matzek.

6  Matzek.

7  Arthur Sampson, “Red Sox Romp with Jacksonville, 14-1,” Boston Herald, April 2, 1953: 16.

8  “Red Sox Romp, 14-1; DiMag Homers,” Boston Daily Record, April 2, 1953: 19.

9  “Dom DiMaggio of Red Sox Retires Rather Than Become ‘Hanger-On’; Last of Three Brothers to See Action in Majors Ends Play – White Sox Get Consuegra,” New York Times, May 13, 1953: 36.

10  Howard Bryant, The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron (New York: Anchor Books, 2011), 50.

11  Bill Nowlin, “Pumpsie Green,” SABR BioProject. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/pumpsie-green/. For further information, see Glenn Stout, “Tryout and Fallout: Race, Jackie Robinson and the Red Sox,” glennstout.com; https://glennstout.com/tryout-and-fallout-race-jackie-robinson-and-the-red-sox/. The article appears in Bill Nowlin, ed., Pumpsie and Progress – The Red Sox, Race, and Redemption (Burlington, Massachusetts: Rounder Books, 2010).