April 11, 1962: Carroll Hardy breaks scoreless tie with 12th-inning grand slam

For the Boston Red Sox team, it was a nice way to even up a new season. For Carroll Hardy, it was a great way to start a new season.

By virtue of being shut out, 4-0, at Fenway Park on Opening Day 1962, the Red Sox were tied for last place in the American League, and the victorious Cleveland Indians were tied for first. Boston native Dick Donovan had gone the distance for Cleveland, allowing just five hits and walking only two. Two of the Red Sox hits were singles by right fielder Hardy, one in the second and one in the eighth.

Starting the year’s second game for manager Pinky Higgins’ Red Sox was 25-year-old right-hander Bill Monbouquette. It was Monbouquette’s fifth season with Boston. He’d won 14 games in each of the two previous seasons, for teams that had finished in seventh place and then sixth. Cleveland manager Mel McGaha named 24-year-old righty Ron Taylor as his starting pitcher. It was the first major-league game for the Canadian-born Taylor, a 1961 graduate of the University of Toronto with a degree in electrical engineering.

Both starters dominated the Wednesday afternoon game, trading scoreless innings. Taylor, who had been added to the Opening Day roster just five days earlier, retired the side in the first and second, gave up a single in the third, another single in the fifth, and then another in the sixth. Monbouquette hit the first batter he faced and issued walks in the second and the fifth. He took a no-hitter into the sixth, but Taylor himself broke it up with a single to right field.

Nobody made it into scoring position for either team until the bottom of the seventh, when Carl Yastrzemski doubled to center field with one out. Taylor set down Frank Malzone and Russ Nixon to strand Yastrzemski.

Monbouquette got three groundouts in the top of the eighth. Hardy, who had been retired in his first two at-bats, doubled to lead off the Boston eighth, but two strikeouts followed and soon the inning was over without him getting to third.

Neither side had a batter reach base in the ninth. The game went into extra innings, with the score 0-0. Both pitchers were doing fine work. Monbouquette had allowed just one hit through the first nine innings, Taylor’s single.

Each pitcher allowed a single – and nothing else – in the 10th. The hit off Taylor was by Hardy, his second hit of the game. 

With one out in the top of the 11th, Taylor singled again – his second hit of the game. The next two batters flied out.

Pete Runnels singled to lead off the bottom of the 11th for the Red Sox, but Chuck Schilling hit into a 5-4-3 double play. Then Gary Geiger singled, making it the first time in the game that either team had two hits in an inning. With Yastrzemski at the plate, Geiger tried to get into scoring position but was thrown out stealing.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer called Taylor’s work “one of the most remarkable rookie pitching performances in all baseball history.”1 In 11 innings of work, only two Red Sox batters had got as far as second base.

Cleveland’s Chuck Essegian was first up in the top of the 12th – with both starters still pitching. He singled. Willie Kirkland grounded into a force play and Essegian was out at second base. John Romano walked. Woodie Held hit a grounder to third, and Romano was thrown out at second, but Kirkland scooted to third – the first time anyone had got that far. But Bubba Phillips flied out to center.

Back in the dugout, Monbouquette reportedly asked catcher Nixon, “Aren’t we ever going to score a run? I don’t think I’ve got more than two innings left in my arm.”2

In the bottom of the 12th, the Red Sox finally reached third base – on a first-pitch leadoff triple off the center-field fence (and off center fielder Ty Cline’s glove) by Carl Yastrzemski.

Malzone was walked intentionally. So was Nixon. Now Taylor faced a bases-loaded situation with nobody out and the only player to have two hits off him coming to bat. It was Carroll Hardy.

Cleveland was the club Hardy had debuted with, back in 1958.3 He’d played with them in 88 games with a batting average of .182. He had been sent to the Red Sox on June 13, 1960, as part of a four-player trade. Through the 1961 season, Hardy had a total of eight home runs. Each year his batting average had improved – from .204 to .208 to .221 to .234 in 1960 and .263 in 1961.

Hardy’s claim to fame was being the only player to ever pinch-hit for Ted Williams, when the Red Sox legend, winding down his career in September 1960, fouled a pitch off his right ankle and had to leave the game.4  

Against Taylor, Hardy wasn’t aiming for anything other than to help Yastrzemski score from third base. He swung at the first pitch and brought home not only Yastrzemski, but also Malzone, Nixon, and himself.

Hardy’s hit “carried high and deep to left field, fighting the wind all the way. To the screams of the crowd of 2,466, the ball just reached the nets for a home run.”5 Hardy had hit a game-ending grand slam to give the Red Sox a 4-0 victory.

After being shut out for the first 20 innings of the season – a team record – the Red Sox had finally scored. The final score was the same as on Opening Day, but this time with the home team the winner.

“I was trying for a fly ball,” Hardy said after the game. I knew they were hoping for a groundball and that was one thing I didn’t want to hit.”6 “I knew he’d pitch low, hoping to get a double-play, but he got the ball a little higher than he wanted to.”7

The Boston Globe said the ball had cleared the wall by about one foot.8 In the Red Sox’ next game, on April 14, they were shut out by the Baltimore Orioles, making Hardy’s grand slam the only Red Sox scoring in the first 30 innings of the 1962 season.

Monbouquette’s statistics on April 11 more or less matched Donovan’s from the day before: He shut out the Indians on four hits and three walks. He was an All-Star for the third time in his career in 1962, with a 15-10 record.9

Hardy won a couple more games with his bat in early June, but as the season wore on, his average declined from one month to the next. He played in 115 games, 30 more than in any other season, and set a career high with 465 plate appearances, but he only matched his 36 RBIs of the year before and his batting average dropped from .263 to .215. After the season, the Red Sox, who came in eighth in the AL, dealt him away.

The 1962 season was Ron Taylor’s only year in Cleveland. He was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in December 1962. Taylor had an 11-season major-league playing career, appearing in 491 regular-season games, all but 17 in relief. He pitched for St. Louis’s World Series champions in 1964 and the New York Mets’ titlists in 1969, contributing 10⅓ scoreless innings in the postseason and getting credited with a win and three saves.

After retiring from baseball, Taylor attended medical school, became a doctor, and served as the Toronto Blue Jays’ team physician for three decades, earning two more World Series rings in 1992 and 1993.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas Merrick 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.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS196204110.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/B04110BOS1962.htm

Notes

1 Gordon Cobbledick, “Plain Dealing,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 12, 1962: 57.

2 Bud Collins, “Monbouquette’s Day Long One,” Boston Herald, April 12, 1962: 41.

3 Hardy had played in 10 NFL games for the San Francisco 49ers in 1955. After his career in baseball, he worked for more than 20 years for the Denver Broncos as director of player personnel.

4 As told in Hardy’s SABR biography, his most remembered at-bat came on September 20, 1960, in Baltimore. “The Red Sox were in seventh place, 23½ games out of first place. In the top of the first inning, the Red Sox had a runner on first base and nobody out. Hal Brown was pitching, and Ted Williams was at the plate. Williams fouled a ball hard off his right ankle and, in the words of trainer Jack Fadden, ‘his foot was swollen as big as a baseball.’ In too much pain to continue, he had to leave the game. Carroll Hardy took his place in the batter’s box – thereby becoming the first (and only) person to ever pinch-hit for Ted Williams. On the first pitch, he tried to lay down a bunt but popped it up to Brown, who threw to first base to double Willie Tasby off the bag.”

5 Larry Claflin, Red Sox Win in 12th, 4-0,” Boston Record American, April 12, 1962: 52.

6 Henry McKenna, “Sox Win on Hardy Slam, 4-0,” Boston Herald, April 12, 1962: 41.

7 Harold Kaese, “Hardy’s First Hub Homer Worth Wait,” Boston Globe, April 12, 1962: 1, 45.

8 Roger Birtwell, “Hardy Grand Slam Downs Indians, 4-0,” Boston Globe, April 12, 1962: 45.

9 A career-high 20 wins and another All-Star selection followed for Monbouquette in 1963.