April 11, 2004: David Ortiz hits game-winning home run for second game in succession

On Saturday night, April 10, 2004, the Boston Red Sox evened their record at 3-3 with a 4-1 win over the visiting Toronto Blue Jays. The win went to Pedro Martínez, his first of the year. The hit that drove in Boston’s first two runs, making it the game-winner, was a two-run homer by David Ortiz off reigning American League Cy Young Award winner Roy Halladay in the bottom of the sixth inning.

The next day, on Easter Sunday at Fenway Park, Ortiz hit a game-winning home run for the second day in a row. This one was more dramatic – a walk-off two-run homer in the 12th inning, giving the Red Sox a 6-4 win.

Curt Schilling, who had joined the Red Sox in a November 2003 trade with the Arizona Diamondbacks, was the starting pitcher for Boston manager Terry Francona. This was Schilling’s second start for the Red Sox and his first at Fenway Park.1 He had won, 4-1, in Baltimore on April 6, Boston’s first win of the season.

Carlos Tosca was the Blue Jays manager; he had Miguel Batista start. The 33-year-old right-hander, signed as a free agent in December 2003, had been Schilling’s teammate with the Diamondbacks for the past three seasons. They had earned World Series rings with Arizona in 2001.2

Schilling surrendered a pair of singles in the top of the first, but the first runs scored were by the Red Sox in the bottom of the inning. A leadoff walk to second baseman Mark Bellhorn and a walk to Ortiz, the DH, were sandwiched around a lineout. Left fielder Manny Ramírez then hit an opposite-field double to right field and drove in Bellhorn. Ortiz scored from third on a sacrifice fly to right by the next batter, first baseman Kevin Millar.

There wasn’t another base hit in the game until the top of the fourth, when the Blue Jays tied it. Center fielder Vernon Wells swung at Schilling’s first pitch and led off with a double. The second pitch of the inning hit first baseman Carlos Delgado. With one strike, DH Josh Phelps doubled to center, driving in Wells. Third baseman Eric Hinske grounded out to first base, unassisted, Delgado scoring on the play. Schilling struck out the next two batters, his fifth and six strikeouts of the game.

Batista, who had set down the Red Sox in order in the second and third, pitched another one-two-three inning in the fourth, and ran his perfect streak to 12 in a row before walking Bellhorn with two outs in the fifth.

In the top of the sixth, after Phelps had skittered a single up the middle, Hinske hit a two-out, two-run homer into the Red Sox bullpen in right field. It was 4-2, Blue Jays.

Batista set the Red Sox down in order again in the sixth.

Neither side scored in the seventh; the only runner to reach base was Boston right fielder Gabe Kapler with a single to left. It was only the second hit of the game off Batista. After Francona made a few defensive changes, including moving center fielder Cesar Crespo to shortstop, Schilling pitched the top of the eighth and retired the Jays in order. He had struck out 10 and walked none.

Blue Jays manager Tosca had Terry Adams relieve Batista in the bottom of the eighth. Adams, a 31-year-old veteran of nine seasons with three National League clubs, had signed with Toronto as a free agent during the offseason. He walked the first batter he faced, Bellhorn, on his eighth pitch. It was Bellhorn’s third walk of the game. Third baseman Bill Mueller – the 2003 AL batting champion – popped up to second baseman Orlando Hudson in shallow right field.

Tosca called in left-hander Valerio de los Santos for the left-handed-hitting Ortiz. Ortiz singled, and Tosca went back to the bullpen for Justin Speier. Manny Ramírez singled to left, loading the bases. Millar also grounded a single into left, and Bellhorn scored. Speier struck out catcher Jason Varitek and Kapler, preserving the Jays’ 4-3 lead. (Adams was charged with one run but still credited with a hold.3)

Alan Embree relieved Schilling in the ninth. With two outs, after walking a batter and giving up a single, he was replaced by Keith Foulke, who secured the third out.

Kerry Ligtenberg – yet another free-agent signing for the Blue Jays’ staff – was asked to close out the game. On an 0-and-2 count, Crespo led off slapping a double over third base and down the left-field line. Dave McCarty, who had pinch-hit in the seventh and remained in the game at first base, struck out. Bellhorn lined a single to right field, and Crespo scored the tying run.

After Ligtenberg stuck out Mueller while Bellhorn stole second, Tosca called in his sixth pitcher of the game, Jason Kershner. Ortiz hit a fly ball to the deepest part of the ballpark in center field, but Vernon Wells leapt and made a catch right in front of the 379-foot sign. It was the third out and the game went into extra innings.

Toronto loaded the bases in the top of the 10th against Foulke. Left fielder Frank Catalanotto led off with a single. After getting Wells to fly out, Foulke struck out Delgado on three pitches but walked both Phelps and Hinske. He then got Kevin Cash to hit to the ball back to him, and he threw to first for the third out.

Aquilino Lopez relieved Kershner for the 10th and promptly gave up back-to-back singles to Manny Ramírez and Kevin Millar, but then got Varitek to ground into a 4-6-3 double play and Kapler to pop up foul to third base.

Bobby Jones replaced Foulke on the mound for the Red Sox. He threw eight pitches, not one of them for a strike, and Toronto had Hudson on second and shortstop Chris Gomez on first with nobody out. Francona quickly summoned Mark Malaska from the bullpen.4 Right fielder Reed Johnson hit the ball back to Malaska, who threw to second base for a force out. Malaska completed his escape from the jam by striking out Catalanotto and getting Wells to ground into a force play at second.

Lopez retired the three Red Sox batters he faced in the bottom of the 11th.

Malaska continued for Boston in the 12th. With two outs, Hinske worked a 3-and-2 count and then hit a ball deep to the edge of the warning track in center field for the third out.

First up in the bottom of the 12th was Bill Mueller, who worked a five-pitch walk from Lopez. David Ortiz stepped into the batter’s box. The count went to 2-and-2 before he unloaded a game-winning walk-off home run into the second row of the Monster Seats in left-center field.5

It was, NESN broadcaster Don Orsillo informed viewers, “the second straight Easter Sunday [in which] the Red Sox have ended it with a walk-off home run at Fenway Park.”6

The Red Sox won, 6-4. Malaska got the win – the only one he would get in 2004, as it happened.7 Schilling praised former teammate Batista after the game, and said he was disappointed with his own performance.8

Tosca summed up: “Lopie gave us a chance to win the game. He’s not used to pitching three innings.” The Toronto Star’s Richard Griffin wrote, “That’s the point” in suggesting that Tosca might be better advised to trust his bullpen. He had cycled through three relievers in the eighth inning alone.9

Kevin Millar said, “He’s one of the best lefthanded power guys in the league. David Ortiz is not a guy to be messed with.”10

For Ortiz, it was the second game in a row that his home run provided the winning run. It wasn’t the last time in 2004 that an Ortiz home run won a game for the ultimate World Series champion Red Sox. Two of them won games in the postseason: one that clinched the American League Division Series sweep of the Anaheim Angels and one that beat the New York Yankees in Game Four of the ALCS, beginning Boston’s history-making rally from a three-games-to-none series deficit.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Carl Riechers 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, and YouTube.com. Thanks to Adrian Fung for supplying Toronto newspaper accounts.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS200404110.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2004/B04110BOS2004.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovZyuJ-ZTHc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTjfCkBjt0k

Notes

1 Schilling had started his career with the Red Sox but had been traded to Baltimore at the end of July 1988 and made his major-league debut with the Orioles that September.

2 With a 10-9 record, Batista had tied for the most wins on the 2003 team, along with Brandon Webb and Oscar Villareal. The team finished third in the NL West. Schilling had an offyear in wins and losses, with a record of 8-9 despite a 2.95 ERA.

3 On July 24 Adams was traded to the Red Sox for switch-hitting minor-league third baseman John Hattig. Hattig made the majors briefly in 2006, hitting .333 in 24 at-bats for Toronto. Adams found himself working in 19 games as a Red Sox reliever, with a record of 2-0. He did not pitch in the postseason.

4 It was the final appearance of Jones’s six-season major-league career.

5 Bob Ryan wrote that, unlike the catch Toronto’s center fielder made in the ninth, “Wells would have had to be 50 feet tall to catch the Ortiz blast.” Bob Ryan, “Payoff Is a Day Layoff after Stirring Victory,” Boston Globe, April 12, 2004: C3.

6 Boston Red Sox television broadcast (NESN), “04/11/2004 Toronto at Boston (Part 2),” YouTube video (BrunoSox23), 2:00:35, accessed May 22, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTjfCkBjt0k. It had been Nomar Garciaparra who had won the April 20, 2003, game against the visiting Blue Jays, 6-5, with a walk-off ninth-inning home run also hit into the Green Monster seats. Footage of it was shown at the very end of the April 11, 2004, NESN broadcast.

7 Malaska was the youngest pitcher in the Boston bullpen. After the game he said that though it was an early-season game, “This was definitely the biggest game situation of my career. When you get an opportunity to pitch in a game like this and win it, the feeling is unbelievable. I’m finally taking some breaths.” Bob Hohler, “Ortiz Powers Red Sox,” Boston Globe, April 12, 2004: C1, C5. Malaska relieved in 19 games, finishing 1-1 with a 4.50 ERA. Like Adams, he did not pitch in the postseason, either.

8 Larry Millson, “Ortiz’s Blast Caps Late Boston Rally,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 12, 2004: S3. See also Paul Harber, “Schilling Shakes It Off,” Boston Globe, April 12, 2004: C3.

9 Richard Griffin, “Tosca Overmanaging an Experienced Bullpen,” Toronto Star, April 12, 2004: C6. Griffin acknowledged that the team did not have a clear closer, but after Batista had left with a two-run lead, “five outs and five pitchers later, the game was tied” and there were only two relievers left in the pen. The Star’s Geoff Baker quoted Tosca: “We’re going to try different things until we can find a guy who can step up and get us there.” Geoff Baker, “Blue Jays Lose Boston Marathon,” Toronto Star, April 12,2004: C6.

10 Hohler.