August 3, 1909: Ladies’ day doubleheader draws record crowd in Boston

To Boston Red Sox management, it must have seemed like an ordinary Tuesday in August 1909. The Detroit Tigers were in town to play five games over three days, including two makeup games from earlier in the season. It was ladies day, so perhaps a few additional fans might cross the turnstiles at the Huntington Avenue Grounds.

By all accounts, the Red Sox were ill-prepared for what transpired.1

Perhaps they should have read the morning papers. A headline in the Boston Post queried: “Maybe Today’s Double Header Will Not Draw Large Crowd,” but the article below it, penned by baseball editor Paul H. Shannon, listed all the reasons why the game should and likely would draw a large crowd.

This was the second series between the two teams in just over two weeks; the Red Sox played a five-game set in Detroit between July 22 and July 25, and the Tigers, gunning for their third consecutive pennant, won four out of five. Detroit now led the American League by four games over the Philadelphia Athletics and 7½ games over the Red Sox with 62 games left to play.

As Shannon noted, “Upon this series virtually depends Detroit’s retention of first place in the American League standing, for after their disastrous slump in New York, the Tigers have allowed the Athletics to draw dangerously near the topmost position. … Upon this series, too, rests the Red Sox’ last chance for survival in the fight with the Tigers and the Athletics. … The first game begins at 2 o’clock this afternoon. Go up and see the fur fly.”2

The gates opened at 12:30 P.M.

By 1:00, the grandstand was sold out.

By 1:30 P.M., every bleacher seat was taken. The gates remained open, and the crowd continued to pour in.

By 2:00 P.M., “The runway from Huntington Avenue to the ticket offices was packed.”3

When the club finally closed the gates at 2:30 P.M., thousands of fans still waiting to purchase a ticket were turned away.4

The official paid attendance – 29,781 – on that Tuesday afternoon was almost triple the capacity of the ballpark.5 In a sign of the times, that number did not include the more than 1,000 women in the crowd and the many hundreds of children who managed to sneak in.6 It was the largest baseball crowd Boston – and by extension New England – had ever seen.7

The fans were everywhere. In the grandstand, in front of the grandstand, on the roof of the grandstand, and in the bleachers. They were perched on the high fence all around the field and on nearby chimneys and rooftops. An estimated 10,000 fans were standing 10 deep in a fringe around the outfield, along the first- and third-base lines, and behind home plate.8

The players couldn’t even sit in their own dugouts, as they were a full “30 feet behind the fringe of the crowd.” Instead, the players “huddled in bunches close to the plate … constantly in danger of being trampled upon.”9

In fact, the dugouts were “usurped by women,” reported the Boston Globe the next day. Hundreds of women – with and without escorts – stood in knots on the field, and at least a dozen stood among the crowd behind home plate.

“It surely was ‘Ladies’ Day’ with a vengeance,” noted columnist Melville Webb Jr., “but it showed that all fans are not those who take afternoons away from their business – many was the unrocked cradle [this] afternoon.”10

At game time, the crowd broke through the rope that had been set up in center field and swarmed toward the diamond. The first pitch was delayed 15 minutes while Detroit players and police cleared fans from the first-base line.11

The fans limited the playing field to such an extent: “[I]n some cases where the crowd pressed in toward the diamond, the infielders were just a few yards distant from the outfield men.”12 A fly ball that would be an easy out on any other day fell into the crowd for a ground-rule double.

With 19-year-old Smoky Joe Wood on the mound – a late substitute for Eddie Cicotte, whose arm was “under the weather once more”13 – the Red Sox cruised to a 2-1 victory in which the Tigers rarely threatened.

The Tigers did their scoring in the first inning. With two outs, center fielder Sam Crawford, who entered the game third in the AL in batting average, hit a fly ball into the crowd in center field, just over Tris Speaker’s head, for his league-leading 22nd double of the season. As 22-year-old Tigers superstar right fielder Ty Cobb approached the plate for his first appearance of the game, “the crowd pushed onto the field again and caused another delay.”14 He dropped a fly ball into the crowd in left field that was also ruled a double, scoring Crawford.15 The Tigers led, 1-0.

Southpaw Ed Killian was on the mound for Detroit, and he kept the Boston batters off balance for much of the game. The Red Sox were scoreless in the first and were retired in order in the second and third.

The crowd continued to be an issue, “[pressing] so closely behind [home-plate] umpire Tom] Connolly that several times he had to stop the game to have the people put back. It was a miracle that someone was not seriously hurt by the savage foul tips that every moment, it seemed, caromed off the bats into the crowd behind the plate.”16

Wood pitched well, striking out five in the first three innings, until he ran into trouble in the fourth. Cobb led off with another ground-rule double. Wood retired the next two batters but hit second baseman Red Killefer in the back with a pitch. Catcher Boss Schmidt drew a walk to load the bases, but Wood threw Killian out at first on a comebacker.

The Red Sox did not score until the sixth inning. Third baseman Harry Lord led off with a double to right field and took third base on a wild pitch. Speaker flied out to short and right fielder Doc Gessler grounded to second, scoring Lord and tying the score, 1-1.

Catcher Bill Carrigan led off the bottom of the seventh inning with a double to the third-base side. Wood was hit by a pitch, putting runners on first and second. Left fielder Harry Niles flied out weakly to right fielder Cobb, but Lord “hit a fast grounder that took a bad jump in front of pitcher Killian and the bases were full.”17 Speaker hit a slow grounder to Killefer and was thrown out at first, but that was enough to plate Carrigan. Boston had its first lead of the game, 2-1.

The Tigers threatened again in the top of the ninth. Wood retired third baseman George Moriarty but hit Killefer with a pitch for the second time. Schmidt “was called out on strikes and kicked vigorously at that decision.”18 With two outs and one man on, Killian hit a routine groundball to rookie second baseman Charlie French, who was unable to throw it cleanly to first, despite “having oceans of time.”19 With Matty McIntyre due up, a hit would tie the game.

When McIntyre grounded out to first baseman Jake Stahl, the fans – almost all of whom had remained on their feet for the full 1 hour and 48 minutes – roared with appreciation. The Red Sox were now 6½ games behind the Tigers, and the fans were anxious for a sweep.20

As Boston Globe columnist Webb noted, “Not since the last time the Boston Americans won the championship [in 1904] has there been so much interest shown in the outcome of games as there is in the present Detroit and Boston series.”21

The record crowd at Huntington Avenue Grounds was the lead story in the Boston Post on Wednesday, August 4, 1909.

Acknowledgments

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

Photo credit

Robert Edward Love illustration of a female baseball fan in a red dress and hat navigating a crowded public square. She is waving off an aggressive newspaper street vendor who approaches her as she attempts to watch an electric scoreboard recreation of a game on the wall of a large building. This illustration was used on the cover of the November 1930 issue of Baseball Magazine. (SABR-Rucker Archive.) 

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author consulted Mark S. Halfon’s Tales from the Deadball Era: Ty Cobb, Home Run Baker, Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Wildest Times in Baseball History (Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books, 2014), and the Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org websites.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS190908031.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1909/B08031BOS1909.htm

Notes

1 Red Sox officials were seemingly caught off guard by the crush of people who showed up for the doubleheader. The first game “could have been played under much better conditions had it been possible to guess what a horde of fans intended coming to the game. There was adequate police assistance only when the second game began,” argued Melville E. Webb Jr. in the next day’s Boston Globe Evening Edition. Al E. Watts of the Boston Traveler agreed, noting that “the games would have been over at least three-quarters of an hour earlier had there been ample police protection at the outset.” Melville E. Webb Jr., “Boston’s Biggest Baseball Crowd,” Boston Evening Globe, August 4, 1909: 5; Al E. Watts, “Hub Fans Crazy Over Red Sox, Boston Traveler, August 4, 1909: 5.

2 Paul H. Shannon, “Greatest Series of the Year,” Boston Post, August 3, 1909: 8.

3 Webb, “Boston’s Biggest Baseball Crowd.”

4 “Red Sox Tied Two Knots in Tiger’s Tail,” Lowell Courier Citizen Evening, August 4, 1909: 5.

5 In August 1909 the Huntington Avenue Grounds had a total capacity of 11,500. As a result of the ladies day doubleheader and other well-attended games in August, Red Sox owner John Taylor added 4,000 extra seats and several private boxes in front of the grandstand. He also moved the press box from the front of the grandstand to the roof. This was a welcome change for the baseball press, including The Sporting News, which noted in its September 16, 1909, issue that “a nice little pavilion has been constructed and the writers can work at their ease without fear of molestation of any sort except high fouls.”

6 In his book A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations that Shaped Baseball, Peter Morris noted that “[t]he practice of admitting female spectators without charge began almost as soon as admissions were charged at baseball games. … The practice remained common for many years to come.” This was not simply an act of generosity by team ownership, he explained. “It was generally accepted that the presence of women increased male attendance and ensured better behavior from the men.” Peter Morris, A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations that Shaped Baseball (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 121.

7 Another large crowd of nearly 30,000 fans witnessed a doubleheader between the Boston Americans and the New York Highlanders on October 8, 1904, at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. As of November 2025, Baseball Reference and Retrosheet erroneously listed 35,000 as the total paid attendance for this doubleheader. An update in 2026 was planned to amend this figure to the correct number of 28,040. “The Great, Orderly, Delighted Multitude,” Boston Sunday Post, October 9, 1904: 12.

8 The day after the ladies day doubleheader, every major Boston newspaper ran a separate story about the size and scope of the record-breaking crowd, including the Boston Post: “There were people everywhere; the bleachers were packed; every seat in the stand was taken; there were several scores on the roof of the grandstand, and the peanut boys reaped a harvest selling empty tonic (soda) cases from 10 to 15 cents each in the back of the stand. Standing on the railing at the rear of the grandstand, and balancing themselves by clinging to the wall were about 100, while many more risked life and limb in different parts of the field, all because the Tigers, leaders in the American League, had come to town.” “All Attendance Records Broken,” Boston Post, August 4, 1909: 9.

9 “Detroit Drops Two Games to Boston,” Boston Herald, August 4, 1909: 4.

10 Webb, “Boston’s Biggest Baseball Crowd.”

11 “All Attendance Records Broken.”

12 Paul H. Shannon, “Enormous Crowd Frantic Over Great Ninth-Inning Rally Which Won Second Game – Thronged Field Up to the Baselines in Excitement,” Boston Post, August 4, 1909: 1.

13 “Detroit Drops Two Games to Boston.”

14 “28,000 Fans Saw Red Sox and Tigers Do Battle,” Boston Evening Globe, August 3, 1909: 1.

15 The Boston sportswriters in attendance were quick to note that the crowd played a large role in the Tigers’ early-inning success against Wood. Paul Shannon called Cobb’s hit “a cheap double, adding, “Under ordinary conditions, the side would have been retired without a run.” The Boston Globe’s T.H. Murnane agreed, arguing that Boston left fielder Harry Niles “could have taken [Cobb’s] ball with ease, with a clear field.” T.H. Murnane, “Tigers Given Double Dose,” Boston Globe, August 4, 1909: 1.

16 Webb, “Boston’s Biggest Baseball Crowd.”

17 “Detroit Drops Two Games to Boston.”

18 “Tiges [sic] Set a Record but Lose Two Games,” Detroit Free Press, August 4, 1909: 1.

19 “Detroit Drops Two Games to Boston.”

20 The Red Sox fans’ faith was rewarded, as the hometown team swept the doubleheader in dramatic fashion, winning the second game on Pat Donahue’s pinch hit in the bottom of the ninth. In fact, the Tigers managed only one victory in the series; they took the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader, 10-3. The Red Sox won the second game, 2 -1. The fifth and final game of the series was rained out, but by then the damage was done: The Tigers left town with a slim two-game lead over the Athletics and a 5½-game lead over the Red Sox, with 58 games left to play. Detroit ultimately prevailed, besting both the Red Sox and the Athletics to win their third consecutive AL pennant, though they lost the World Series in seven games to the Pirates.

21 According to Webb, it was a great day for the American League as a whole. An estimated 60,000 fans attended the eight games played across the league: 30,000 in Boston; 16,000 in Philadelphia; 12,000 in New York; and 3,000 in Washington. “Of course, the crowd of the day was right here in Boston,” he wrote. Webb, “Boston’s Biggest Baseball Crowd.”