August 8, 2004: Boston’s Tim Wakefield gives up six home runs to Tigers but wins game

On August 8, 2004, Boston Red Sox starter Tim Wakefield gave up six home runs in five innings at Detroit’s Comerica Park. The Tigers later added a seventh homer off reliever Mike Timlin. In fact, all nine of Detroit’s runs scored via home runs: five solo shots and two two-run homers.

Yet when the game was done, Wakefield wound up the winning pitcher. The Red Sox slugged four homers of their own and racked up 11 runs, coming from behind three times for an 11-9 win.

The Sunday afternoon game was the finale of a three-game series. A night earlier, Pedro Martínez had picked up his 12th win of the season in Boston’s 7-4 victory, but the second-place Red Sox were still a season-high 10½ games behind the first-place New York Yankees in the American League East Division.

The Tigers—whose 51 wins so far in 2004 had already surpassed their disastrous 43-119 campaign of 2003—scored first on Sunday when catcher Iván Rodríguez hit a Wakefield knuckler for a two-out first-inning homer several rows deep into the left-field seats, not far inside the foul pole. It was the 14th homer of Rodríguez’s 14th big-league season and 245th of his career.

Left-hander Nate Robertson was the starter for Tigers manager Alan Trammell. Coming into the game, Robertson was 9-6 with a 4.31 ERA. With one out in the top of the second, shortstop Orlando Cabrera, appearing in his seventh game with the Red Sox after a four-team deal brought him from the Montreal Expos at the July 31 trading deadline, doubled down the left-field line. One out later, first baseman Dave McCarty walked. Bill Mueller, second baseman in this game, then singled to straightaway center, driving in Cabrera, and right fielder Gabe Kapler followed with a double into the left-field corner driving in McCarty. 

Detroit reestablished its lead with back-to-back solo home runs with one out in the bottom of the second, the first golfed to left field by right fielder Craig Monroe and the second into the bullpen in right field by third baseman Eric Munson. It was 3-2, Tigers. 

Red Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis led off the third inning with a home run to left field off Robertson, tying the score. Boston got a single, a walk, and a wild pitch after that but did not score further. 

The Tigers upped the ante by scoring three times in the home half of the third. Second baseman Omar Infante led off with a single. Rodríguez hit another homer to left, for two runs. DH Dmitri Young grounded out, but Wakefield surrendered another home run, to first baseman Carlos Peña, hit into the seats in right field inside the foul pole and to the right of the bullpen. It was 6-3, Tigers. Three times in as many innings the Tigers had taken the lead, setting back the Red Sox with what the Boston Globe dubbed “homer-induced deficits.”1

But Boston had an even bigger rally up its sleeve in the fourth. Mueller reached on an error on what looked to be a routine fly ball to center fielder Álex Sánchez. Kapler singled into right field. Center fielder Johnny Damon tripled to the wall in right-center field, and Mueller and Kapler scored, cutting the deficit to 6-5.

Youkilis singled past the shortstop and into center, driving in Damon with the tying run. Robertson walked left fielder Kevin Millar, and Trammell changed pitchers with runners on first and second and none out.

Rookie Roberto Novoa, making his fifth big-league appearance, took over. He was greeted with a three-run homer by David Ortiz to right field, into the same spot where Peña had hit his. Ortiz had his 28th home run of the season, and Boston had scored six times for a 9-6 lead.

Wakefield responded with what turned out to be his only scoreless inning of the game, retiring the Tigers in order in the fourth, and Boston added another run in the fifth. Mueller walked. Kapler’s ground-rule double gave the Red Sox men on second and third with nobody out. After a fielder’s choice resulted in an out at the plate, Youkilis picked up his third RBI of the game with a sacrifice fly to left field.

Detroit made it six home runs off Wakefield when Dmitri Young homered to left in the fifth, snapping a string of seven straight outs by the 37-year-old knuckleballer. Through five innings, the clubs had combined for 17 runs on 19 hits, including eight home runs. It was Red Sox 10, Tigers 7.

The bullpens slowed down the pace after that, as neither team scored in the sixth or seventh. John Ennis pitched the sixth for Detroit, and Al Levine the seventh. Ramiro Mendoza set down the Tigers one-two-three in the sixth and recorded the first two outs of the seventh. Timlin came in and retired Rodríguez—who had homered twice in three at-bats against Wakefield—with a runner on first to end the seventh.

Damon singled off Levine to start off the eighth but was caught stealing. Youkilis hit another home run, his second of the game, and the fourth consecutive at-bat in which he had driven in a run. “I don’t ever remember hitting two homers in pro ball,” the 25-year-old rookie said afterward. “I’ll remember this one, though.”2

The home-run barrage was almost done. With one out in the bottom of the eighth, Timlin gave up a double to Peña. After the next batter grounded out, Munson became the afternoon’s third member of the two-homer club. His two-run liner into the seats in right-center closed the gap to two: 11-9, Boston.

“When the team loses, the home runs aren’t that big a deal,” Munson said afterward.3

But the Tigers came no closer. Marcus Thames flied out to end the Detroit eighth. Keith Foulke closed the game for the Red Sox, getting a groundout and then facing two pinch-hitters and getting a groundout and a fly ball out. It was Foulke’s 18th save of the season.

The Tigers had hit seven home runs for the crowd of 40,098 but still lost the game. It wasn’t the first time they had done that. On May 28, 1995, the Tigers homered seven times against the Chicago White Sox, with two homers apiece by Chad Curtis, Cecil Fielder, and Kirk Gibson, and one by Lou Whitaker, but lost 14-12, also in front of the home crowd, at Tiger Stadium.4

During the 2004 season, Tim Wakefield gave up 29 homers—more than 20 percent of them in this one game. He won the game, improving to 8-6. It was his first career win in Detroit. Wakefield and the Red Sox bullpen contained the damage by issuing only one walk all game.

Wakefield, the Boston Globe wrote, “was grateful … both to [Red Sox manager Terry] Francona for sticking with him after he surrendered five homers in the first three innings and to the offense for rallying behind him.”5 It was, Wakefield said, “just one of those days you’re thankful that we won. But it was one of those days you’d like to forget.”6

Wakefield’s outing gave him in a dubious spot in the record books. The only pitcher in major-league history to allow more than six homers in a game was Charlie Sweeney of the National League’s St. Louis Maroons in a June 12, 1886, loss to the Detroit Wolverines.7 Five other NL pitchers have given up six homers in one game, as have four AL pitchers in addition to Wakefield.8 The only other pitchers who won their games were Larry Benton and Hollis Thurston.

The previous Red Sox record had been five homers in a game, a record shared by Wakefield himself on September 15, 1996, and Dennis Eckersley in 1979.9

Still, Boston’s second win in a row gave the Red Sox a 6-5 record for their 11-game road trip.

Trammell concluded, “The Red Sox might not catch the Yankees, but they’re a good hitting club and are certainly in the hunt for the wild card. We just couldn’t hold them down today.”10

As it happened, the Red Sox were on their way to a surge of 26 wins in 31 games, drawing them within two games of the Yankees by September 8. The Red Sox ultimately finished second in the division, but their hot play in August and September sewed up the AL’s wild-card spot and led to a historic October in Boston.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Carl Riechers and copy-edited by Len Levin. Carl Riechers notes that there have only been five other games from 1901 through 2022 in which a team hit seven home runs but lost. All were American League teams. The first was also by the Tigers, on May 28, 1995. The others were of more recent vintage: the White Sox on June 25, 2016; the Blue Jays on August 12, 2020; the Twins on July 20, 2021; and the Angels on August 4, 2022. In only one of them (the Blue Jays loss) did any one pitcher give up as many as five home runs.  

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted baseballalmanac.com, Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and YouTube.com. Thanks to Nathan Bierma for supplying Detroit newspaper coverage of this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET200408080.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2004/B08080DET2004.htm

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

Notes

1 Bob Hohler, “Red Sox Feeling the Power,” Boston Globe, August 9, 2004: 37, 42.

2 Associated Press, “Wake: Forget Whole Thing,” Quincy (Massachusetts) Patriot Ledger, August 9, 2004: 21.

3 Gene Guidi, “Tigers Hit 7 Homers, Lose 11-9,” Detroit Free Press, August 9, 2004: 1D, 5D.

4 The White Sox hit five home runs of their own in the game, including two by Ron Karkovice.

5 Hohler, “Red Sox Feeling the Power.”

6 Bob Hohler, “Pitcher Gives at the Office,” Boston Globe, August 9, 2004: 42.

7 “Detroits, 14; St. Louis Maroons, 7,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 13, 1886: 11.

8 The National League pitchers were Larry Benton (New York Giants at Chicago Cubs, on May 12, 1930); Hollis “Sloppy” Thurston (Brooklyn Dodgers at New York Giants, on August 13, 1932); Bill Kerksieck (Philadelphia Phillies at New York Giants, on August 13, 1939); Michael Blazek (Milwaukee Brewers at Washington Nationals, on July 27, 2017); and Matt Swarmer (Chicago Cubs at New York Yankees, on June 11, 2022). The other American League pitchers were Tommy Thomas (St. Louis Browns vs. New York Yankees on June 27, 1936); George Caster (Philadelphia Athletics vs. Boston Red Sox on September 24, 1940); R.A. Dickey (Texas Rangers vs. Detroit Tigers on April 6, 2006); and James Shields (Tampa Bay Rays at Toronto Blue Jays, on August 7, 2010). Thanks to baseballalmanac.com.

9 The Red Sox won the 1996 game at Fenway Park, beating the White Sox, 9-8, the win in relief going to Heathcliff Slocumb. Chicago’s Frank Thomas hit three solo home runs in that game. Eckersley bore the 6-5 loss in a Yankee Stadium game on July 1, 1979.

10 Guidi.