August 9, 1953: Back from flying fighter planes in Korea, Ted Williams hits his first home run in return to Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox lost to the Cleveland Indians on August 9, 1953, but for Red Sox fans there was something to savor – after being away for more than 15 months, Ted Williams was back in a Red Sox uniform and he’d hit his first home run. It was home run number 325 of his major-league career. He’d last homered on April 30, 1952.

Williams had been in Korea, flying 39 combat missions with Marine squadron VMF-311. On his second mission, his F-9F Panther jet was hit by North Korean groundfire. The plane burned beyond repair after he shepherded it back south to a crash landing on an Air Force airstrip. Among his squadron mates was future astronaut and US Senator John Glenn.1

In his 1969 autobiography, My Turn at Bat, Williams remembered his return to the Red Sox: “My first day back I took some batting practice. [Red Sox manager Lou Boudreau] threw to me. Gee, it felt so good to be swinging a bat again. About the eighth or ninth pitch I hit one into the center-field bleachers. General manager Joe Cronin was watching. He said, “Ted, nobody’s hit one out there all year.’ After I’d finished, we were standing at home plate and I told Cronin I thought the plate was off line.”2

This was a little more than halfway through the season and no player – Red Sox or visitors –  had noticed it all year.  

“I don’t think he believed me. But he figured he’d humor Theodore Samuel Williams. Sure enough, it was off.

“I took about a week to get into shape, get my legs limber, take BP – hit some shots off Lou Boudreau, our new manager, I’ll tell you. I got into a game on August 6. Made an out. But three days later I pinch-hit a homer off Mike Garcia into the right-field seats – 420 feet.”3

Ted hit this home run in his second plate appearance, starting back as a pinch-hitter as he tried to work his way to game shape without benefit of play at a lower level. (He had pinch-hit and popped up to first base on August 6.) “It felt like old times,” said Red Sox clubhouse manager Johnny Orlando, showing off a black and blue mark on his left arm. Ted had reportedly been hitting Orlando on the arm after each home run – now 325 of them. “I knew he was happy. He took the same shot at me and said like he always had, ‘Just like Joe Louis.’”

The homer came on a 3-and-1 fastball and landed several rows into the bleachers over the center-field end of the Red Sox bullpen. The game itself ended with the Indians on top, 9-3.

It was the fourth of six home runs Williams had hit off Mike Garcia in his career. The other home runs were numbers 257, 284, 314, 331, and 380.

It was a Sunday afternoon at Fenway Park. The New York Yankees were comfortably in first place, with an eight-game lead over the second-place Chicago White Sox. There was some jockeying for third place, with the visiting Indians 12 games behind the Yankees and the Red Sox only a game and a half behind the Indians. Attendance for the game was 26,966.

Al Lopez was Cleveland’s manager. Boudreau was Boston’s. Boudreau started Maury McDermott, 11-7 on the season. He didn’t last long.

McDermott got the first visitor to fly out, but the second batter he faced was second baseman Bobby Ávila, who homered to left field. After a second out, a single and a walk set the stage for shortstop George Strickland, who singled to right field, scoring Al Rosen, the third baseman who had singled.  Rosen scored a league-leading 105 runs in 1953 and drove in 145 runs; he was voted league MVP. It was 2-0, Cleveland, before the Red Sox started to bat.

The Red Sox faced the 29-year-old Garcia, who was coming off back-to-back 20-win seasons and was 13-6 so far in 1953. The right-hander walked leadoff batter Billy Goodman, the Red Sox second baseman, but then got outs from the next three.

Cleveland first baseman Bill Glynn singled to lead off the second. Garcia was safe on an error by second baseman Goodman. Right fielder Al Smith grounded out to first unassisted and both baserunners moved up. After a popup to short, left fielder Dale Mitchell singled and it was 3-0. Ike Delock came in to relieve McDermott and got the third out.

Garcia set the Red Sox down in order in the bottom of the second.

The Indians added two more runs in the third. Center fielder Wally Westlake started with a single to center. Strickland sacrificed him to second. Catcher Joe Tipton singled to left and Westlake scored. Glynn doubled to left, Tipton stopping at third base. Garcia hit a fly ball deep enough to right to pick up an RBI when Tipton tagged and scored, giving Cleveland a 5-0 advantage.

Larry Doby pinch-hit for Smith and walked. Bob Kennedy ran for Doby. Kennedy was, like Williams, a player who had served in both World War II and the Korean War. (Jerry Coleman and Lloyd Merriman were the other two such players, all four of them aviators. Kennedy had come back in time to open the 1953 season with the Indians.)

Frank Sullivan relieved Delock and got Avila to fly out to left. In fact, rookie pitcher Sullivan faced 13 batters this game and got every one of them out.

Sullivan was second up in the Boston third. He singled but Goodman hit into a double play.

There were scattered hits here and there, but no more scoring until the bottom of the seventh inning when the Red Sox finally got on the scoreboard. With one out, catcher Sammy White singled to left field. Center fielder Tom Umphlett tripled past Kennedy’s glove in right-center. Right fielder Jimmy Piersall hit a sacrifice fly to right and Umphlett scored.

Boudreau had Ted Williams pinch-hit for the shortstop, Johnny Lipon. There was a “deafening” roar as he had emerged from the dugout.4

Things quieted as Garcia threw a ball, then another ball. When the count reached 3-and-0, fans began to boo. They didn’t want Garcia walking Williams. He took a called strike, and then – on the fifth pitch – he struck.

Williams’s homer landed three rows into the center-field seats behind the Red Sox bullpen.5 It was 5-3.

“I grooved it – but not on purpose,” said Garcia. “I just didn’t want to walk him. He hits a home run; we win the game. Okay with me.”6

Boston’s fourth pitcher of the game, left-hander Bill Henry, took over in the eighth, hoping to keep the game close. Strickland grounded out, but Tipton hit a home run to deep left field. Glynn singled to center and Garcia singled to shallow right field. With runners on first and second, the other Korean War returnee homered: Bob Kennedy hit a homer into the left-field screen. It was 9-3, Cleveland.

With two outs, Mitchell and Rosen singled, and Westlake walked, but Ellis Kinder came in from the bullpen and struck out Strickland.

Willard Nixon became the sixth Red Sox pitcher of the day in the ninth. He retired all three Cleveland batters he faced. He hit a two-out single in the bottom of the ninth but remained there when a final fly out ended the game. Garcia closed out Boston for his 14th win of the season.

In the remainder of the 1953 season, Ted Williams appeared in 35 more games. He hit a total of 13 home runs and drove in 34 runs. He hit for a .407 batting average, with a .509 on-base percentage.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer gave the Williams home run on August 9 an eight-column headline: “TED BLASTS HOMER FOR HISTORY BOOK” and introduced it melodramatically. “The Splendid Splinter, flying jets in Korea six weeks ago, hit a jet-propelled missile more than 400 feet in his second pinch-hitting assignment since his return and the roar that followed was of atomic proportions.”7

Joe Cashman of the Boston Daily Record wrote that the “mighty ovation” Williams had been accorded when he’d hit a home run in his last game before leaving to rejoin the Marines (on April 30, 1952) were “but a whisper compared to the tumultuous tribute” paid him this day.8

“To me it was just another home run,” Williams said aboard the train to Washington. He’d showered and left the clubhouse before the game was over. Though not one to wallow in praise, he had as usual declined to tip his cap to the crowd after the home run, but there is no way he regarded the home run as just another one. He went on to discuss the plan he was prepared to pursue to prevent his hands getting blistered, so as to better contribute to the team’s hope to finish in third place.9

Indeed, the Boston Globe’s Clif Keane quoted the Indians’ Rosen as saying Williams’s demeanor was “dead grim. It was a though a tragedy had struck him.”10

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Troy Olszewski 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/BOS195308090.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1953/B08090BOS1953.htm

Notes

1 The full story of Williams’s two stints in military service – World War II and Korea – is told in Bill Nowlin, Ted Williams at War (Burlington, Massachusetts: Rounder Books, 207). The book draws on interviews with more than 40 pilots who flew with Captain T.S. Williams.

2 Ted Williams with John Underwood, My Turn at Bat (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), 185.

3 Ted Williams with David Pietrusza, My Life in Pictures (Kingston, New York: Total Sports Illustrated, 2001), 98.

4 Harry Jones, “Ted Blasts Homer for History Book,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 10, 1953: 23.

5 Harold Kaese, “Ted’s Homer Ranks Third Best,” Boston Globe, August 10, 1953: 8. The two Kaese rated higher were his All-Star Game home run in 1941 and the April 30, 1952, homer he’d hit the day he left for Korea.

6 Kaese.

7 Jones, “Ted Blasts Homer for History Book.”

8 Joe Cashman, “Garcia Victim of Ted’s Homer,” Boston Daily Record, August 10, 1953: 12.

9 Henry McKenna, “Ted Would Like to Help Sox Finish Third,” Boston Globe, August 10, 1953: 11.

10 Clif Keane, “Ted Grimly Serious Rounding Bases on Big Blow,” Boston Globe, August 10, 1953: 8.