June 16, 1938: Boston’s Jimmie Foxx sets American League record with 6 walks in a 9-inning game

According to the way baseball statistics are recorded, Jimmie Foxx played this entire game between his Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Browns – and scored a couple of runs, including the winning run – but never had even one at-bat in the game.

Six-time American League walks leader Eddie Yost picked up the nickname “The Walking Man” – but it well could have applied to Foxx in this game. Foxx had six plate appearances and walked all six times, once intentionally. In so doing, he set AL and “modern baseball” (since 1900) records for a nine-inning game.1

The only other batter to draw six walks in one nine-inning game was left fielder Walt Wilmot of the National League’s Chicago Colts – who later became the Cubs – on August 22, 1891.2 Three of the six bases on balls were doled out by Cleveland Spiders starter Lee Viau and three more by reliever Cy Young.3

Foxx entered this Thursday afternoon game at St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park batting .349, having gone 2-for-5 with a home run and two RBIs in Boston’s 7-4 win the day before. Pitchers were understandably wary of the 30-year-old Foxx – “The Beast.” He was a fearsome hitter, voted the MVP of the American League at year’s end, with 50 home runs and a major-league-leading 175 RBIs. It was no wonder that pitchers worked cautiously when he came to bat.

The Browns were struggling badly – at 15-32, they’d not even won a third of their games, and were already 14 games out of first place. The Red Sox were in third place, just two games behind the Cleveland Indians, with the Yankees trailing the Indians by only a half-game.

Browns manager Gabby Street named right-hander Les Tietje as his starting pitcher. The 27-year-old Tietje had been in the league since 1933 but had pitched in a total of just 21 games in 1936 and 1937 due to health issues. This was his sixth appearance of the 1938 season. He was 1-0 (5.30 ERA) coming into the game; his one win had been a shutout in Detroit on May 30.

Joe Cronin, both manager and shortstop for the Red Sox, selected 25-year-old rookie righty Charlie Wagner. This was the ninth appearance of Wagner’s major-league career. He was 1-2 (7.77), the one win being in Boston against the Browns, 6-3 on June 1.

The Red Sox got to Tietje right away, but just for one run. With two outs in the first, right fielder Ben Chapman singled. While Foxx was batting, Chapman stole second. Foxx walked, in a move described by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat as “semi-intentionally.”4 Cronin singled to right field, and Boston led, 1-0.

Boston scored two more runs in the second, again after two outs. Wagner singled and scored on center fielder Doc Cramer’s double. Cramer then scored on Joe Vosmik’s single to center.

Wagner had retired the Browns on two foul popups and a groundout in the first. A walk to Harlond Clift and a single gave St. Louis runners on first and third in the second. Clift scored when Billy Sullivan hit into a force at second, cutting the deficit to 3-1.

Foxx was up first in the third and he walked. He went to second on a fly by Cronin, but there he remained.

After two outs in the top of the fourth, Vosmik singled. Chapman sent him home with a double to right field, then rounded the bases and scored himself on an error by shortstop Red Kress. It was a 5-1 game. Foxx was up next, and walked for the third time, but got no farther than first.

Clift himself got another leadoff walk in the bottom of the fourth, took third on Mel Mazzera’s single, then scored on a fly ball to center. A couple of batters later, Mazzera scored on Don Heffner’s single. It was Boston 5, St. Louis 3.

With reliever Emerson Dickman on the mound for the Red Sox, the Browns tied the game in the sixth on four consecutive one-out singles, George McQuinn picking up two RBIs on the fourth one. Kress then walked and Clift drew his fourth base on balls of the game, forcing in the run that provided St. Louis a 6-5 lead.

Ed Linke was the new St. Louis pitcher in the top of the seventh. The first batter he faced was Jimmie Foxx, who drew his fourth walk of the game. Cronin doubled and Foxx went to third base, scoring on a game-tying fly ball from Pinky Higgins. After one out, catcher Johnny Peacock singled and drove in Cronin. 7-6, Red Sox.

Boston’s fourth pitcher, Johnny Marcum, set down St. Louis in order in the seventh.

The Red Sox broke the game open in the eighth. Vosmik singled and took second on a wild pitch. Linke pitched to Chapman and struck him out, but did not pitch to Foxx, walking him intentionally. Cronin doubled and drove both runners in, Foxx all the way from first. The run Foxx scored was the ninth Red Sox run of the game. Higgins then singled off a new Browns reliever, Ed Cole, and drove in Cronin, pushing the lead to 10-6. Vosmik’s single gave him a 4-for-5 day.

Boston added two more runs in the ninth. Russ Van Atta was the new pitcher. With two outs, Vosmik walked. Chapman doubled and drove him in.

First base was open, and the first three pitches to Foxx were balls. On the next pitch, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, “he swung viciously … apparently not realizing that he had a chance to write his name in the record book.”5 Nevertheless, Foxx went on to draw his sixth walk of the game. Cronin singled, driving in Chapman, but Higgins then made the final out. Cronin was 4-for-6 in the game with four runs batted in.

Behind 12-6, the Browns made the final score closer with two more runs in the bottom of the ninth, on a one-out double, two singles, a second out, and then a double by pinch-hitter Glenn McQuillen – in his first major-league at-bat.

Marcum got the win. Linke got the loss. Red Sox pitchers had given up 15 hits in the game and walked six, with Clift drawing four of the walks. Browns pitchers had surrendered 17 hits and walked eight – six of the walks to Jimmie Foxx.

Not that many had seen the game. The attendance was reported as 1,028 – but that was more than the 962 of Wednesday’s game. Just 1,259 paid were at the series opener on June 14, a 5-3 Red Sox win.

At year’s end, Foxx led the American and National Leagues in walks, with 119. In 1934 his 111 walks had also led both leagues. His .462 on-base percentage led the AL in 1938, as did the .349 batting average he held at season’s end.

As of 2024, three players have received six walks in extra-inning games since 1901: Andre Thornton of the Indians in a 16-inning game on May 2, 1984; Jeff Bagwell of the Houston Astros in a 16-inning game on August 20, 1999; and Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals in a 13-inning game on May 8, 2016.

“Double X,” however, remains the only one with six walks in a nine-inning game.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Harrison Golden and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted baseballalmanac.com, Baseball-Reference.com, and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Carl Riechers for helping locate all the Mel Ott information.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLA/SLA193806160.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1938/B06160SLA1938.htm

Notes

1 The record of five had previously been held by Max Bishop, who had done it twice with the Philadelphia Athletics – both times against the New York Yankees, and both times at Shibe Park – on April 29, 1929, and again on May 21, 1930. Mel Ott of the New York Giants also had five walks in the October 5, 1929, and September 1, 1933, games. Ott later did that twice more – on June 6, 1943, and April 30, 1944 – but never got to six. Foxx’s record also tied the major-league record of six plate appearances in a game without an at-bat. Both the Cardinals’ Miller Huggins and the Boston Bees’ Bill Urbanski had four-walk games with two sacrifices. James C. O’Leary, “Sox Amass 17 Hits, Beat Browns, 12-8,” Boston Globe, June 17, 1938: 23. All three (Bishop, Urbanski, and Foxx) involved St. Louis teams. Urbanski’s was also at Sportsman’s Park, against the Cardinals, on June 13, 1934. Huggins’s had been against the Phillies in Philadelphia on June 1, 1910.

2 In his SABR biography of Wilmot, Terry Bohn notes that Wilmot holds two other unusual records: “On September 20, 1890, he was hit twice in the same game by batted balls while running the bases … [and] in August 1894, Wilmot stole eight bases in two consecutive games. Rickey Henderson stole seven bases in two games, but no one has ever tied or broken Wilmot’s mark.”

3 “Took the Third Game,” Chicago Sunday Herald, August 23, 1891: 7. The Chicago Tribune noted of Wilmot, “It is not often that one attains distinction by doing nothing … but Walter secured his record by no greater exertion than statuesque posing at the plate.”  “Colts Continue to Win,” Chicago Tribune, August 23, 1891: 5.  

4 Martin J. Haley, “Six Walks for Foxx as Sox Beat Browns, 12-8,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 17, 1938: 8A.

5 J. Roy Stockton, “Brownies Play Bad Baseball and Lose Final to Red Sox,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 17, 1938: 2C.