July 31, 2013: Jonny Gomes’ unassisted double play helps Drake Britton earn first major-league win

Coming off a last-place finish in 2012, the 2013 Boston Red Sox held first place for the first three dozen games of the 2013 season. They lost a few games and dropped in the standings but reclaimed the top spot on May 26 and held it for the next two months before falling a half-game back on July 26.

Winning a 15-inning home game on the last day of July put the Red Sox back on top, and they stayed in first place for the rest of the season. The July 31 game meant a lot to three Red Sox players in particular – left fielder Jonny Gomes, shortstop Stephen Drew, and left-handed relief pitcher Drake Britton.

It was a Wednesday night game at Boston’s Fenway Park. Visiting were the Seattle Mariners, with a record of 50-56 and in third place in the AL West. They were 12½ games behind division-leading Oakland. They’d lost to the Red Sox the night before, 8-2.

Boston manager John Farrell named 11-year veteran John Lackey as his starter. Seattle’s interim manager, Robby Thompson, selected Hisashi Iwakuma.1 Lackey came into the game with a 7-8 record, despite a good 3.19 earned-run average. He’d suffered a lack of run support in July, losing three games, two of them shutouts. Iwakuma was in his sophomore season. He was 10-4 to this point, with a 2.87 ERA.

Neither team scored for the first three innings, Iwakuma escaping damage after seeing each of the first three Boston batters single. David Ortiz, though, hit the ball back to the pitcher, who fielded the ball, in one motion scooping it up with his glove and underhanding it to the catcher for the force out, kicking off a 1-2-3 double play that took the steam out of a building Boston rally. Iwakuma reloaded the bases, walking first baseman Mike Napoli, but catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia lined out to the first baseman.2

The first run scored was by Seattle in the top of the fourth. Shortstop Brad Miller singled to left, then stole second base as Nick Franklin struck out. Kyle Seager doubled to left field, scoring Miller. 

In the bottom of the fifth, the Red Sox went ahead, scoring twice. Third baseman Brock Holt, just up from Triple-A Pawtucket, doubled down the right-field line, his first extra-base hit for Boston. Jacoby Ellsbury reached when his counterpart in center field simply dropped the ball Ellsbury had hit, Holt taking third. Holt scored on a single by Shane Victorino off Nick Franklin’s glove at second base. It could have been scored an error, but Ellsbury had basically run in front of him and blocked his view. An argument that it was interference on Ellsbury’s part did not prevail. Ellsbury took third base on the play, scoring when Dustin Pedroia grounded into a 5-4 force out.

In the Seattle sixth, a single, walk, and another single loaded the bases with one out. Kendrys Morales hit a fly ball to left field and Humberto Quintero tagged and scored the tying run.3 Raul Ibanez singled between second and first, giving the Mariners a 3-2 lead.

With two on and two out in the bottom of the sixth, Thompson had Oliver Perez relieve Iwakuma.4 Perez struck out Ellsbury.

Leading off the bottom of the seventh, Victorino singled to center. Pedroia homered high over the Green Monster in left field and the balance tipped the other way, Boston taking a 4-3 lead.

Junichi Tazawa replaced the Red Sox’ Lackey to pitch the eighth. The second batter he faced was Seager, who tied the game, 4-4, with a solo homer over the Red Sox bullpen in deep right-center.

For the next six innings, the ninth through the 14th, neither team scored.

In the top of the 11th, with Matt Thornton on the mound – Boston’s fourth pitcher – the Mariners singled twice, but did not score.

The Red Sox went down in order against Yoervis Medina in the eighth, drew a walk off Charlie Furbush in the ninth, and then went down in order in the 10th, 11th, and 12th, Danny Farquhar working all three innings.

Craig Breslow replaced Thornton, walking two and throwing a wild pitch in the 11th, and giving up a two-out double to Michael Saunders in the 12th, but no runs scored.

Lucas Luetge replaced Farquhar in the bottom of the 13th. After two fly-ball outs, he walked pinch-hitter Jonny Gomes, batting for left fielder Daniel Nava. Shortstop Stephen Drew stepped into the box. Gomes took second on a wild pitch, but Drew popped up to second base to end any threat.

Drake Britton replaced Breslow to work the 14th. His first appearance in the big leagues had been just 11 days earlier, on July 20. He’d worked five games in relief, for a total of six innings, and had yet to give up a run.

Brad Miller reached on a one-out single up the middle, but Britton got Nick Franklin to line out and struck out Kyle Seager.5

Brandon Snyder pinch-hit for Holt and led off the bottom of the 14th with a double, the first hit for the Red Sox since the seventh inning. Ellsbury laid down a sacrifice bunt, moving Snyder to third. Victorino flied out to center field. It could have ended the game, but Saunders caught the ball and threw a clean strike to Quintero at the plate in time for an inning-ending double play.

Britton got one out in the top of the 15th, but then Ibanez singled to right field. Endy Chavez, who had come into the game as a pinch-runner back in the 11th, singled between third and short. Saunders was up again. He’d already had two hits in the game. He dropped what looked like a sinking base hit in front of Gomes in left field. Gomes made a diving catch, then jogged to second base to double up Ibanez, who had already rounded third base and had no opportunity to get back to the second-base bag. The Seattle Times wrote that “he could only watch” and “Ibanez merely shook his head and tipped his cap to Gomes later.”6 Gomes said, “It was a do or die situation. I was pretty sure the ball was going to come my way.”

Of the unassisted double play, Gomes added, “To tell you the truth I’ve been waiting years to do that. Never had one and never seen one. That’s one I’m glad I’ve got on my resume.”7

The inning was over. The Red Sox came to bat again.

The first man up was Pedroia; he walked. David Ortiz, far from a stranger to late-inning heroics, grounded out to first baseman Dustin Ackley unassisted. Pedroia took second base. Napoli was walked intentionally. Saltalamacchia took a called third strike for the second out. Drew was up. He’d come into the game batting .226, with 37 RBIs. Just a few days earlier, he’d homered twice in a game in Baltimore, driving in five runs.

Boston had been 2-for-12 with runners in scoring position to this point in the game. Both teams had left numerous runners on base – Seattle left 12 and Boston left 13.

On a 2-and-1 count, Drew laced Luetge’s pitch down the right-field line. It seemed to catch chalk and hop into the seats, then bounce back onto the field. Pedroia scored with ease. Drew’s hit was scored a single. It won the game. After 5 hours and 3 minutes, the game was over, a 5-4 Red Sox win. “The guys in front of me all had great at-bats,” Drew said after the game. “It’s an exciting win and hopefully we can keep this thing going.”8

Attendance was 35,059 – though not all remained when the game ended around 12:14 A.M. on August 1.

Britton was the winning pitcher; his ERA remained 0.00. As it happened, it was his only win the major leagues.

A few days later, Britton pitched another scoreless inning against the Diamondbacks. He did lose a game on August 9, giving him a 1-1 major-league career record. He was called up again the following year – 2014 – and appeared in seven games, bookending his career the way he had begun it, with seven appearances and zero earned runs.

At Tropicana Field, the Tampa Bay Rays were shut out by the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Wade Miley, who threw a three-hitter. The Red Sox took a half-game lead over Tampa Bay and remained in the first place for the rest of the year.9 Boston beat Seattle again on August 1, overcoming a 7-1 deficit with one run in the eighth and six runs in the ninth. It was their 11th walk-off win of the season, and the second in a row, both games ending on the same calendar date.

The Red Sox finished 5½ games ahead of the Rays, and then beat them three games to one in the Division Series. Boston beat the Tigers, winning the ALCS in six games, and then did the same against the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, winning it all for the third time in 10 years.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and YouTube.com.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201307310.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B07310BOS2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CQqLgPEQL4

Notes

1 Seattle’s manager, Eric Wedge, had suffered a “mild stroke” and missed 27 games. For more information on the stroke, see Larry Stone, “Kate Wedge Discusses Eric Wedge’s Recovery from Stroke,” Seattle Times, September 7, 2013, updated September 8. https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/kate-wedge-discusses-eric-wedgersquos-recovery-from-stroke/.  Accessed May 30, 2021.

2 On July 9 the Red Sox had hammered Iwakuma for eight hits and six runs at Seattle’s Safeco Field.

3 Morales also had three base hits in the game.

4 Iwakuma finished the 2013 season with a record of 14-6 and a 2.55 ERA.

5 Seager had a very good game, with a single, double, and home run. Seager, Morales, and Victorino all had three base hits.

6 Geoff Baker (Seattle Times), “M’s Fall in 15 Innings to Red Sox,” Walla Walla (Washington) Union Bulletin, August 1, 2013: 12.

7 Peter Abraham, “Theme Park,” Boston Globe, August 1, 2013: C2.

8 Abraham: C1.

9 Seattle finished fourth in the AL West, 25 games behind the Oakland A’s.