July 5, 1961: 700 nuns but only 2 runs equal loss for Red Sox

On January 20, 1961, nearly a million people in Washington, D.C.,1 and countless more in front of television sets across the United States watched Cardinal Richard Cushing2 of Boston deliver a stentorian invocation at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Catholic president.

About 5½ months later, those Americans who read sports pages found out that there was more to the Archbishop of Boston than pomp and ceremony. Newspapers from St. Albans, Vermont, to Salinas, California, carried a colorful and unusual story: Cushing had accompanied 700 nuns on a day trip to Fenway Park on July 5 to watch the Boston Red Sox take on the Detroit Tigers in the first game of a doubleheader.3

According to news reports, the nuns enjoyed hot dogs, peanuts, soft drinks, and autograph hunting4 – almost everything about their holiday except the results of the ballgame. Behind a Jim Bunning complete game and five RBIs from Rocky Colavito, the Tigers defeated the Red Sox, 6-2.

A brief item in the June 30 Boston Globe indicated that the Red Sox had made the first approach, with owner Tom Yawkey sending a letter to the mothers superior of 80 religious groups in greater Boston.5 It was not the first time nuns had visited Fenway – the Red Sox had hosted nurses from Sancta Maria Hospital in Cambridge, where injured ballplayers went for treatment – but it was the largest gathering of them anyone could recall.6

The invitation benefited the Red Sox as well as the nuns. The game in question was originally scheduled for May 19, but canceled due to cold and foreboding weather7 and rebooked as the day half of a separate-admission doubleheader on July 5. The nuns’ presence put a few extra wimples in the seats for a game that was otherwise lightly attended, with an official crowd of just 7,785.8 The sisters sat in the grandstand on the third-base side of home plate.9

Yawkey likely knew that Cushing would be a receptive partner. His Eminence had been the keynote speaker at the Boston baseball writers’ annual dinner in 1959, displaying knowledge of the sport and even suggesting interleague regular-season play decades before it became a reality.10 That same year, Cushing sat at the head table of a testimonial dinner for ailing Boston Herald sportswriter Bill Cunningham, along with American League President Joe Cronin and other sports noteworthies.11

Cushing told reporters he fully supported the nuns’ baseball holiday: “Too many people think of nuns as living in isolation and devoting all their time to prayer. I want the community to look at them as American girls who grew up with a knowledge and love of sports, including baseball. … I’ve let them know they’re to go to Fenway Park and enjoy themselves like any American girls. They’re not to worry about dignity. … They can cheer if they like, and I’ll even lead the cheering.”12

There was, unfortunately, not much for Boston fans of any stripe to cheer for in 1961. The Red Sox had settled into the noncompetitive “country club” rut that characterized them in the years leading up to the “Impossible Dream” AL championship season of 1967.13 Mike Higgins’ team had lost five in a row and eight of its last 10, and entered the day essentially tied for fifth place with the Chicago White Sox, 12 games back.14

In the absence of Ted Williams, who retired after the 1960 season, Boston fans had three promising rookies to follow. Don Schwall, who didn’t pitch on July 5, had won his first five big-league starts and boasted a 6-2 record; he finished 15-7 and won the AL Rookie of the Year Award. Second baseman Chuck Schilling hit .259 in 158 games, fielded solidly, and tied for third in Rookie of the Year voting. And Williams’s replacement in left field, Carl Yastrzemski, was touted as a top prospect, though he entered July 5 hitting only .241.15

Where the Red Sox were mediocre, Bob Scheffing’s surprising Tigers were exciting. Sixth-place finishers in 1960, the Tigers led the AL on July 5, their 50-28 record with one tie the best in baseball. They needed every win to stay a step ahead of the defending AL champion New York Yankees, who lurked one game behind at 48-28 with one tie. (Detroit and New York had split a doubleheader the previous day.) The Tigers’ big guns included Colavito, Al Kaline, and Norm Cash, who was hitting at a .364 clip.16

The first three innings passed quietly, save for a pair of key defensive plays. In the top of the second, Boston center fielder Gary Geiger threw out Cash trying to take third on a single by Steve Boros. In the bottom of the third, the first two Red Sox hitters reached on a single and an error,17 only to have starting pitcher Billy Muffett bunt into a double play. Tigers catcher Dick Brown quickly scooped up the ball, tagged Muffett, and fired to third to retire lead runner Pete Runnels in a rundown.18

Bunts continued to cause trouble for the Red Sox in the top of the fourth. The Tigers center fielder, Bill Bruton, led off with a single on a drag bunt to shortstop. Kaline sought to advance him with another bunt, and when Boston third baseman Frank Malzone mishandled the ball, both runners were safe. Colavito drilled a home run to left field,19 his 21st homer of the season, to give Detroit a 3-0 lead. Muffett also surrendered a single to Cash before retiring the next three Tigers on grounders.

Bunning and Dick McAuliffe started the top of the fifth with a single and a double. Muffett handed over the two-on, none-out jam to reliever Tracy Stallard, pitching his first full major-league season after four appearances in 1960.20 The runners held as Bruton grounded out, but Kaline doubled on a ball that hopped over Don Buddin’s head at shortstop,21 scoring Bunning and moving McAuliffe to third. Colavito singled to left field; Yastrzemski threw him out trying for second, but two more runs scored, running the Tigers’ lead to 6-0.

The Red Sox did their only scoring in the seventh inning. After a leadoff strikeout by Yastrzemski, catcher Russ Nixon doubled to right field and moved to third on an uncharacteristic fielding error by Kaline, who won the fourth of his 10 career Gold Gloves that season. Malzone’s grounder scored Nixon. A walk by Jackie Jensen, a single into right by Runnels, and a double by Buddin accounted for Boston’s other run. Pumpsie Green, hitting for Stallard, ended the frame with a fly to center.

For the final two innings, Higgins handed the ball to a 19-year-old Boston-area native pitching in just his third big-league game. Young Wilbur Wood still relied on fastballs and curves at that point; not until he joined the Chicago White Sox in 1967 did he commit fully to the knuckleball that made him the AL Pitcher of the Year in 1972.22 Wood pitched two perfect innings, striking out the unrelated Jake Wood in the ninth for his fifth big-league strikeout.23

Boston picked up singles by Geiger and Yastrzemski in the eighth but couldn’t do anything with them. In the ninth, Bunning issued a two-out walk to Buddin, then whiffed Jim Pagliaroni, batting for Wilbur Wood, to wrap up the game in 2 hours and 24 minutes.

Bunning’s eighth win of the season snapped a personal three-game losing streak against Boston, while loser Muffett fell to 2-9. A small group of nuns met after the game with Colavito, Tigers coach Tom Ferrick, and Bunning, who told them, “I had a heck of a time out there, with only me to pray for myself and all of you praying against me.”24 The Red Sox beat the Tigers, 8-3, in the nightcap.

The Tigers clung to first place as late as July 24 before giving way to the Yankees, who went 64-26 from the start of July to the end of the regular season. Detroit ended the year in second place, eight games back, with a 101-61 record and one tie. As of the end of the 2023 season, the 1961 Tigers were one of only five Detroit teams since 1901 to win at least 100 games in a season – and one of only two to miss the World Series while doing so.25

Losing pitcher Muffett compiled a 3-11 record that season – his last full year in the majors – but later had more success at Fenway in a different role. He served as pitching coach with the 1967 St. Louis Cardinals, who beat the Red Sox in a close-fought World Series. Years later, from 1985 through 1994, Muffett served in the same role with the Tigers.

The 1960s would bring tremendous change to baseball, Boston, and America – including the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and the sudden ascension of the Red Sox from pretenders to contenders in 1967. “Nun’s Day,” however, became a fixture: Throughout the decade, Fenway continued to welcome large, supportive groups of religious sisters and their equally enthusiastic archbishop.26

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Tom Brown and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks SABR member Bill Nowlin for research assistance.

Photo credit: Rocky Colavito, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the 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/BOS196107051.shtml

www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1961/B07051BOS1961.htm

Photos of Nun’s Day 1961 can be found in the 1962 Boston Red Sox yearbook.

Notes

1 “The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, accessed December 12, 2022, https://www.jfklibrary.org/visit-museum/exhibits/permanent-exhibits/the-inauguration-of-john-f-kennedy.

2 During Cushing’s lifetime, news stories commonly presented his name and title as Richard Cardinal Cushing, using the traditional format of the Roman Catholic Church. Style for news and general-interest writing in the twenty-first century now places religious titles before given names.

3 United Press International, “Bunning Overcomes Sox’s Prayers,” St. Albans (Vermont) Messenger, July 6, 1961: 6; UPI, “700 Nuns Watch as Boston Loses Game,” Salinas (California) Californian, July 6, 1961: 20.

4 United Press International, “700 Nuns Watch as Boston Loses Game.”

5 “Cardinal, “500 Nuns at Game Wednesday,” Boston Globe, June 30, 1961: 2.

6 Arthur Siegel, “Cheering Yes … Booing No for 700 Nuns at Fenway,” Boston Globe, July 4, 1961: 49. Red Sox first baseman Harry Agganis spent the final weeks of his life receiving treatment at Sancta Maria Hospital, where he died suddenly on June 27, 1955. Mark Brown and Mark Armour, “Harry Agganis,” SABR Biography Project, accessed December 13, 2022.

7 Roger Birtwell, “Muffett to Hurl in Red Sox Shift,” Boston Globe, May 20, 1961: 13.

8 News stories including “Cardinal, 500 Nuns At Game Wednesday” make clear that the nuns were Yawkey’s guests, so the Red Sox did not benefit financially from their presence. Still, the nuns filled seats and provided enthusiastic support on a day when it was otherwise in limited supply. For what it’s worth, Boston Globe coverage of the canceled May 19 game makes no mention of Cushing or the nuns, which suggests that Yawkey extended his invitation after the game was rescheduled.

9 A photo of the nuns watching the game can be seen in the Windsor (Ontario) Star, July 6, 1961: 40.

10 Bob Holbrook, “Boston Cardinal Praises Cronin, Writers of Hub,” The Sporting News, February 11, 1959: 21.

11 “Scribe Cunningham Honored by 1,000 Notables at Dinner,” The Sporting News, April 29, 1959: 9.

12 Siegel.

13 The “country club” epithet has been widely applied to the Red Sox of the early 1960s. In Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson’s Red Sox Century (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), a history of the team’s first 100 years, the chapter covering 1961 to 1966 is titled “The Country Club.”

14 The White Sox were one-one-hundredth of a percentage point ahead of the Red Sox. Chicago’s record of 39-41 gave them a .488 winning percentage; Boston’s record of 38-40 with one tie equaled a .487 winning percentage.

15 He ended the season hitting .266 with 11 home runs and 80 RBIs.

16 He finished the season at .361 with 41 homers and 132 RBIs.

17 Boston’s Don Buddin grounded to Tigers shortstop Dick McAuliffe. McAuliffe threw to second for the force, only to have second baseman Jake Wood drop the relay. A photo of Wood dropping the ball appeared in the Detroit Free Press, July 6, 1961: 37.

18 Roger Birtwell, “3 HRs Give Sox Split with Tigers,” Boston Globe, July 6, 1961: 33.

19 Birtwell, “3 HRs Give Sox Split with Tigers.”

20 Stallard achieved his greatest claim to posterity on the last day of the 1961 season, when he served up Roger Maris’s record-breaking 61st home run.

21 United Press International, “Tigers Split with Bosox, Lead Cut to Half Game,” Traverse City (Michigan) Record-Eagle, July 6, 1961: 16.

22 Gregory H. Wolf, “Wilbur Wood,” SABR Biography Project, accessed December 13, 2022. Upon arriving in Chicago, Wood had the great good fortune to have Hall of Fame knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm as a teammate and mentor.

23 Wilbur Wood struck out 1,411 batters in 17 big-league seasons. His first victim, on June 30, 1961, was Tito Francona of the Cleveland Indians; his last, on August 10, 1978, was Rick Bosetti of the Toronto Blue Jays.

24 United Press International, “700 Nuns Watch as Boston Loses Game.”

25 The five Tigers teams to win at least 100 games were those of 1915 (100-54 with two ties, second place); 1934 (101-53, AL champions, lost World Series); 1961; 1968 (103-59 with two ties, AL champions, won World Series); and 1984 (104-58, AL East division champions, won World Series).

26 Nun’s Day is mentioned and pictured in the Red Sox yearbooks of 1962 through 1966 and 1970, available on the Internet Archive as of December 2022. The Boston Globe of August 25, 1967, also reported that the previous day was Nun’s Day. The author was unable to find any specific references to a Nun’s Day in 1968.