August 14, 1963: Red Sox honor lost USS Thresher, thrash Yankees

On April 10, 1963, the US nuclear submarine USS Thresher sank in the Atlantic Ocean during a test dive about 220 miles east of Boston, with a loss of 112 sailors and 17 civilian technicians, scientists, and observers. Eighty-six of those lost were reportedly New England residents.1

The men aboard the Thresher left behind 187 children, and public sympathy for them took a charitable turn. In Boston, a scheduled Rhode Island Day promotion at Fenway Park on August 14 was repurposed to include a Thresher memorial. Several community groups selling tickets to the game added a $1 surcharge to each ticket, to support an educational fund for the children of those lost.2 Rhode Island Day turned into the first game of a split-admission day-night doubleheader when rain forced the Red Sox to reschedule the previous night’s game.3

Before the game, the head of the task force searching for the lost sub accepted an $800 check for the educational fund. Irene Harvey of Waterford, Connecticut, widow of Thresher’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander John Wesley Harvey, received a silver bowl, a dozen roses, a piece of commemorative artwork, and baseballs autographed by Red Sox manager Johnny Pesky for her young sons, John Wesley Jr. and Bruce.4 Pregame ceremonies also included a first pitch by Rhode Island Lieutenant Governor Edward Gallogly.5

Rookie manager Pesky’s team had last faced the Yankees in New York from June 28 to July 1, entering the series just 2½ games behind the first-place Yankees. Boston lost four of five games but remained just 5½ games back with a 40-34 record and with much of the season still ahead of them. But Pesky’s team slumped badly from there. The Red Sox went 13-18 in July, then began August with a nine-game losing streak sandwiched between two wins. At the start of play on August 14, Boston had fallen 19½ games behind, and sat in sixth place with a 55-60 record.

Ralph Houk’s defending World Series champions, in contrast, spent July and August putting distance between themselves and their early-season competitors, who also included the Chicago White Sox and Baltimore Orioles. The Yankees went 22-9 in July, then began August by winning eight of their first 11. Coming into Rhode Island Day, New York had won six straight games against the Washington Senators and Los Angeles Angels. They boasted a 74-40 record and an 8½-game lead over second-place Chicago.

New York’s starting pitcher was Ralph Terry, who led the AL with 23 wins the season before and added two more in the World Series, including a clinching 1-0 shutout of the San Francisco Giants in Game Seven. The right-handed workhorse – Terry led the league in starts and complete games in 1963 – entered the game against Boston with a 13-11 record and a 3.18 ERA. He had faced Boston three times in 1963, winning two games and losing one.

Pesky countered with staff ace Bill Monbouquette, a Boston-area native. Right-handed “Monbo” entered the game with a 14-7 record and a 3.31 ERA. He’d reached his third and final All-Star Game that summer and was on his way to his only 20-win season – closing the campaign 20-10 with a 3.81 ERA. Like Terry, Monbouquette had faced his August 14 opponents three times, winning twice and losing once.6

Both teams’ starting lineups featured that season’s regulars, with no real wild cards or surprises. Indeed, the only bench player getting a start was a most familiar face. Thirty-eight-year-old Yogi Berra, in his last full season as a player, started at catcher in place of incumbent Elston Howard. (Berra retired at the end of the 1963 season to become the Yankees’ manager, though his former skipper Casey Stengel talked him back into uniform to play four more games as a player-coach with the 1965 New York Mets.) Mickey Mantle didn’t play, which wasn’t uncommon; the injury-plagued star appeared in only 65 games that season.7

In front of a crowd of 20,680 Rhode Islanders and others, the visitors jumped on Monbouquette for two runs in the top of the first. Tony Kubek doubled to left field and Bobby Richardson reached when Dick Stuart, Boston’s first baseman, misplayed his grounder. Stuart was playing his first season with the Red Sox after coming from the Pittsburgh Pirates in a November 1962 trade.8 He committed a career-high 29 errors in 1963,9 the sixth of seven straight seasons in which he led his league in errors by a first-sacker.10 Tom Tresh capitalized with a run-scoring single to right. Monbouquette retired Roger Maris and Berra, but Joe Pepitone’s single to center field scored Richardson with the second run.

The Red Sox tied it in the bottom half with a two-out rally, beginning with Carl Yastrzemski’s double. Stuart singled him in, Lou Clinton singled Stuart to third, and Frank Malzone’s double scored Stuart. Ed Bressoud stranded two runners in scoring position with an inning-ending fly ball to Tresh in center field.

The Yankees took a 3-2 lead in an eventful second inning. In the top half, Clete Boyer walked, Terry sacrificed him to second, and Kubek scored Boyer with a single to right.

Boston loaded the bases with none out in the bottom half on an infield single by Bob Tillman, an interference call against Berra on a bunt by Monbouquette, and an error by Terry on a misplayed bunt.11 (Monbouquette bunted to the left side of the infield, and Berra made contact with him as he pursued the ball.12) Terry reasserted control by getting Gary Geiger to ground back to the mound and getting the force at home. Yastrzemski watched a called third strike and Stuart grounded to shortstop, wasting the rally.

The Yankees added single runs in the fourth and fifth to run their lead to 5-2. In the fourth, Kubek doubled on a ball that bounced off the first-base bag and over Stuart,13 and Richardson singled him home. In the fifth, Berra doubled and Hector Lopez brought him home with a single to left field.

In the bottom half, momentum turned decisively in Boston’s favor. A double, a single, a walk, and an infield single by Tillman made it 5-3. Félix Mantilla, pinch-hitting for Monbouquette, grounded into a force at home. It was only a momentary pause in the rally, as Chuck Schilling’s single scored another run. Steve Hamilton relieved Terry on the mound, struck out Geiger, then threw a run-scoring wild pitch to tie the game, 5-5.

Hamilton walked Yastrzemski and gave way to the third pitcher of the inning, Bill Stafford. Stafford “proved a total failure,” in the words of the New York Times.14 Stuart greeted him with a single to score two more runs. After a walk to Clinton, Malzone capped a seven-run rally with another two-run single. Boston held a 9-5 lead.

The score stayed there until the seventh, when the Red Sox tacked on another five runs for a 14-5 advantage. With Stafford still on the mound, Yastrzemski drew a walk, Stuart singled, and Clinton hit a run-scoring single. Malzone’s fly out moved Stuart to third, and he scored on an intended brushback pitch to Tillman that went awry.15 Stafford intentionally walked Tillman to get to relief pitcher Jack Lamabe, who was making his 96th major-league appearance and was hitless in 28 previous at-bats. Lamabe foiled Houk’s strategy by hitting a three-run homer to left field to cap Boston’s scoring.

The pitcher, who had also come to Boston from Pittsburgh in the Stuart trade, told reporters that his last previous homer had come “in 1960, in the Sally League.”16 In a seven-year big-league career spanning 285 games and 156 at-bats, Lamabe never homered again, and his three RBIs on one swing represented half his career total.

The Yankees’ frustration boiled over in the eighth. After Boyer struck out looking, home-plate umpire Joe Paparella ejected Houk and pitcher Whitey Ford – a nonparticipant – for their vigorous criticism.

Righty Tom Metcalf, in his second big-league game, worked a perfect eighth inning for New York. He appeared in only six more games, all in 1963. New York regained two runs in the ninth when Tresh walked and Berra homered off Lamabe, but the game ended shortly afterward at 14-7 after 3 hours and 21 minutes. Berra’s round-tripper was the 356th of his career; he hit only two more. Monbouquette earned the win, Terry took the loss, and Lamabe was later awarded his fourth save.17 Boston held off a late Yankee rally to win the second game, 5-4.

One other event of August 14, 1963, is worth noting – though it escaped the notice of the Boston Globe, and it seems doubtful that anyone at Rhode Island Day was aware of it. According to Retrosheet, the Red Sox that day signed an undrafted free agent pitcher from Stanford University who was playing in a South Dakota amateur league. The pitcher, Jim Lonborg, reached the majors two years later and won 22 games and the AL Cy Young Award with the “Impossible Dream” 1967 AL champion Red Sox.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game.

 https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS196308141.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1963/B08141BOS1963.htm

Photo of 1963 Fleer card #7 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Seymour R. Linscott, “A-Sub Lost 200 Miles Off Boston, Hope All But Gone for 129 Men,” Boston Globe, April 11, 1963: 1.

2 Gloria Negri, “Skipper’s Widow Carries On,” Boston Globe, August 15, 1963: 7. The community groups participating in the fundraiser included the Cranston, Rhode Island-based Palestine Temple Shrine and the Providence Lodge of Elks.

3 Baseball-Reference lists the August 14 day game as a makeup for the previous night’s rainout, with the August 14 night game being played as scheduled. That appears to be incorrect. The 1963 Red Sox yearbook and game program, made available on Archive.org and accessed October 29, 2021, list August 14 as a scheduled day game. Boston and Rhode Island news reports from 1963 make clear that the Rhode Island Day ceremonies were celebrated as part of the day game. Negri also specified that Irene Harvey and her children attended the day game.

4 Negri.

5 Associated Press, “R.I. Marks Victory Day,” Newport (Rhode Island) Daily News, August 15, 1963: 6.

6 As a side note, the Red Sox pitching staff included Chet Nichols, a sparsely used veteran lefty who was a native and resident of Rhode Island. However, Nichols did not play on Rhode Island Day.

7 Mantle pinch-hit unsuccessfully in the nightcap.

8 The terms of the trade: Stuart and Jack Lamabe to Boston; Jim Pagliaroni and Don Schwall to Pittsburgh.

9 According to Stuart’s SABR Biography Project biography, written by Jan Finkel, Stuart’s error total was the highest by a first baseman since Harry Heilmann committed 31 errors in 1919.

10 In the New York Daily News, Dick Young reported that Stuart received mock cheers from fans late in the game for catching a blowing piece of newspaper on the fly. This anecdote is reminiscent of an oft-retold story about Stuart – that he once received a standing ovation for catching a hot-dog wrapper blowing across the infield.

11 Houk protested the game based on this play, then reportedly waived his protest given the game’s lopsided outcome. See Young, “Scorned Stuart Leads Bosox’ Ambush of Yankees, 14-7, 5-4,” New York Daily News, August 15, 1963: 59. Baseball-Reference describes the protest as “disallowed.”

12 Roger Birtwell, “Sox Best Yanks Twice,” Boston Globe, August 15, 1963: 20.

13 Young.

14 Leonard Koppett, “Red Sox Defeat Yanks, 14-7, 5-4, as Stuart Stars,” New York Times, August 15, 1963: 35. News coverage of the game played up a feud between Houk – who left the Boston first baseman off the All-Star Team – and Stuart, who responded by labeling Houk “a third-string catcher” in reference to his playing career.

15 Young.

16 Birtwell. The “Sally League” was a nickname for the South Atlantic League (SAL), then a Class A circuit. Lamabe pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates’ farm team in Savannah, Georgia, that season.

17 Major League Baseball did not formally recognize saves as a statistic until 1969.