June 19, 1955: Ted Williams homers off both Herb Score and Bob Feller in the same game

On June 19, 1955, Ted Williams homered off both Herb Score and Bob Feller in the same game. It was a Sunday afternoon Father’s Day game at Fenway Park between Williams’s Boston Red Sox and Score and Feller’s Cleveland Indians.

Score, 22, was 7-4 with a 2.94 ERA before the game. By season’s end, he was the overwhelming choice of baseball writers for the American League Rookie of the Year. In 1956 the left-hander became a 20-game winner. He was an All-Star both years, and in those first two seasons had become “the first pitcher in modern baseball history to strike out more than 200 in his first two seasons.”1 Tragically, in early May of 1957 he was struck in the eye by a batted ball and never recovered anything approaching his undeniably brilliant beginnings.

Only a few weeks before the June 19 game, the 36-year-old Feller had thrown the 12th and last one-hitter of his storied career, beating the Red Sox, 2-0, in the first game of a May 1 doubleheader at Cleveland Stadium. It was the 44th and final shutout of his career. Score won the second game that day, 2-1, limiting the Red Sox to four hits. Feller was already recognized as a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame.

Score struck out Williams in the first inning of this game. Back on the bench, Williams told his teammates, “If he throws me that pitch I struck out on again, I’ll hit one today.”2

Boston’s second baseman, Billy Goodman, had led off the bottom of the first with a double and was on second base with one out when Williams struck out. Score walked the next two batters but then struck out catcher Sammy White.

Pitching for the Red Sox was another lefty, Mel Parnell. He’d enjoyed what might have become a Hall of Fame career, too, but early in 1954 he’d been struck by a ball, too, a Maury McDermott pitch that broke the ulna bone in Parnell’s forearm. He was never the same again, either.3

Parnell had given up a single and a walk in the top of the first, too, but likewise emerged without a run scoring.

Neither pitcher allowed a hit or a walk in the second inning. One Indian reached on an error.

Cleveland third baseman Al Smith led off the third inning with a home run, his 10th of the season, into the screen atop the left-field wall. Two other Indians singled, but a strikeout and a double play kept the score at 1-0. Goodman walked in the bottom of the third, the only baserunner for Boston.

Parnell set down the Indians in order in the fourth inning, and the Red Sox scored three times off Score. First baseman Norm Zauchin led off with a home run into the left-field net, giving him 11 homers for the season. White followed with a double and took third on a wild pitch.4 Third baseman Ted Lepcio struck out, but back-to-back doubles by center fielder Jimmy Piersall and Parnell himself produced the other two runs. Boston led, 3-1.

Cleveland regained the lead in the top of the fifth. Score walked. Smith doubled, and Bobby Ávila walked. Center fielder Larry Doby struck out. A sacrifice fly by left fielder Ralph Kiner allowed Score to tag and come home. First baseman Al Rosen then hit a three-run homer, his ninth of the season, to deep left field and it was 5-3, Indians.

Ted Williams was first up for the Red Sox in their half of the fifth. This game was the last of a four-game series, and to this point, he was 0-for-10 in the series. He broke out of it by hammering a 430-foot shot that “crashed against a bleacher plank in dead center about 15 rows up.”5 Williams had his seventh homer of the season.

Jackie Jensen doubled off the left-field wall, then scored on Zauchin’s single into the left-field corner. Manager Al López replaced Score at this point, bringing in Ted Gray. White flied out, but Lepcio singled and Piersall hit a three-run homer, his fourth, over everything in left field and onto Lansdowne Street behind the ballpark. With five runs, the Red Sox had taken an 8-5 lead.

The Indians wasted no time cutting the deficit by a couple of runs in the sixth. With two outs and a runner on first, Smith doubled for the first run, then scored himself on a single by Avila. 8-7. Smith – whose 123 runs scored topped the AL in 1955 – led the Cleveland offense with a homer, two doubles, and a single. Smith finished third in MVP voting that year.

Williams grounded out leading off the sixth. Bill Wight was pitching and he had little trouble with the Red Sox in either the sixth or the seventh.

Tom Hurd had taken over from Parnell and he similarly got through the seventh and the top of the eighth with only a single against him. That’s not to say the time passed without controversy. A fracas broke out over a call by first-base umpire Bill Summers, who called pinch-hitter Gene Woodling out on a close play. Both Woodling and Vic Wertz on the Cleveland bench were ejected after what the Boston Globe called “one of the wildest brawls involving umpires in local history.”6

At one point, plate umpire Ed Runge even took off his chest protector and mask “to have his hands clear” in case he needed to fight.7 A very agitated Summers even fought off fellow umpire Eddie Hurley, who was trying to rein him in, almost knocking Hurley to the ground. “López  and Summers both had to be restrained,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.8

Wanting to keep it a one-run game, Cleveland brought in Feller to pitch the bottom of the eighth.9 Goodman grounded out. Shortstop Billy Klaus singled to center. Ted Williams came up to bat. He and Feller had faced each other many times over the previous 15 years, and Williams had homered eight times, the first one in 1946. He made it nine – and 374 for his career overall – with a 400-foot drive “into the bend” of the right-field grandstand.10 The Red Sox took a 10-7 lead. The two home runs together were reckoned to have traveled about 830 feet. 

Jensen followed with a single to center. He was forced on Zauchin’s grounder, but the Red Sox put one more run on the board when White doubled to left field.

Hurd wrapped up the game with only Kiner’s single (his third hit of the game) to mar an otherwise perfect inning. 

Parnell got the win, the 116th of this career, second-most in team history at the time, ranking him behind only Cy Young (who had 192 wins for Boston). Score – at the time described as “the new Bob Feller” – got the loss.11 Feller was still getting his feet under him in 1955. The three runs he gave up ballooned his ERA to 6.03. By the end of the season, he had brought it down to a good 3.47.

The Indians had won the World Series in 1954. They finished second to the Yankees in 1955. The Red Sox finished fourth.

Jimmy Piersall once told the author a story about Ted Williams: “Hitting was the name of his game. He went 5-for-5 against Feller one day and he was unhappy because they were all groundballs. He took in extra batting practice after the game. He was such a perfectionist.”12 There is a problem with Piersall’s memory. Williams never had a 5-for-5 day against Feller, though he did have a 4-for-4 day once. One of the four was a home run. Regardless of the details, the story does give us an insight into the character and determination of Ted Williams.

Williams’s comment after his homers against Score and Feller, acknowledging that he hadn’t had a hit for three games, was to say, “Those two smashes today proved that there’s always hope for anybody. I was wondering if I was ever going to hit another.”13

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Ted Williams, Trading Card Database.

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/BOS195506190.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1955/B06190BOS1955.htm

Notes

1 Joseph Wancho, “Herb Score,” SABR BioProject. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/herb-score/. Accessed February 2025.

2 Ed Linn, Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1993), 195.

3 McDermott was also sometimes called Mickey McDermott.

4 Score led the AL with 12 wild pitches that season and was second with 154 walks. (Bob Turley led with 177.)

5 Arthur Sampson, “Sox Take Thriller, 11-7,” Boston Herald, June 20, 1955: 13.

6 Hy Hurwitz, “Four Sox Homers Down Indians in Wild Game, 11 to 7,” Boston Globe, June 20, 1955: 8.

7 Hurwitz.

8 Harry Jones, “Red Sox’s 16 Hits Wallop Indians, 11-7,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 20, 1955: 29.

9 SABR member Kurt Blumenau noted that Feller had started six of his previous seven appearances, but after July 4 he spent most of his time in the bullpen. For the full year he made 25 appearances, including 11 starts.

10 John Gillooly, “4 Sox Homers Crush Indians,” Boston Herald, June 20, 1955: 10.

11 Sampson.

12 Author interview with Jimmy Piersall, April 20, 1997.

13 Sampson.