June 2, 1908: Down by three runs in 9th, Red Sox rally to beat New York

It looked as though it was going to be a split doubleheader on Tuesday, June 2, 1908, at New York City’s Hilltop Park. The New York Highlanders were hosting the Boston Red Sox, in the first season that Boston’s American League team was named the Red Sox.

The doubleheader resulted from a rainout on April 30, during the first of three series the Red Sox played in New York that season. Some 6,000 fans made it to Hilltop, home for the Highlanders, who became the New York Yankees in 1913. Boston prevailed in the afternoon’s first game, shutting out New York, 7-0.

Both starters had gone the distance – Cy Morgan for Deacon McGuire’s Red Sox and Bill Hogg for manager Clark Griffith’s Highlanders. The two teams had started the day separated by 7½ games in tightly-bunched league standings – New York (20-15) was in first place, and the 15-25 Red Sox were last, eighth in the league. Morgan had allowed only three hits, two of them doubles by left fielder Jake Stahl.1 Morgan helped himself by driving in two runs, most on the Red Sox. Boston left fielder Gavy Cravath tripled in the four-run sixth inning, followed by a double and three singles.2

Morgan, who had joined Boston the year before after 3½ seasons with the St. Louis Browns, improved his 1908 record to 5-2.3 It was Hogg’s fourth season with New York. The right-hander was 33-34 from 1905 to 1907, but this was just his second start of 1908.4

Spectators apparently kept arriving, since the day’s second game was said to draw 12,000. The left-handed Doc Newton was New York’s starter. Working for the Red Sox was righty George Winter, who had been with Boston since the franchise started in 1901. He was 78-83 through 1907. In 1908 he had joined the team late, in part due to the birth of a child, and did not pitch well.5 At the end of May, he was 2-7. With 70⅔ innings under his belt, he had given up 28 runs.6

Neither pitcher yielded a run in the first two innings, but the Highlanders scored twice in the bottom of the third inning on back-to-back singles by 36-year-old right fielder Wee Willie Keeler and center fielder Charlie Hemphill, followed by a single to left by first baseman Hal Chase. They would have had another run, but catcher Walter Blair “did not run with enough speed to create a draught,” according to the New York Sun, and was thrown out at the plate by Cravath.7

They scored twice more in the fourth, taking a 4-0 lead. Third baseman Wid Conroy doubled and Blair sacrificed him to third. Newton helped his own cause with a Texas Leaguer down the left-field line that went for a double. Second baseman Harry Niles singled and Newton made it home, though it was close.

The Red Sox cut into the lead by scoring twice in the top of the fifth. With one out, Ed McFarland pinch-hit for Winter and singled to left. Pinch-runner Denny Sullivan ran to second when center fielder Jack Thoney singled. Third baseman Harry Lord grounded into a 6-4 force play and Thoney was out, as Sullivan took third. Second baseman Amby McConnell singled, scoring Sullivan. Cravath singled, scoring Lord.

In the bottom of the fifth, Boston left-hander Fred Burchell took over from Winter, who had given up nine hits and walked two. The Highlanders added a fifth run in the bottom of the seventh, the only one they got off Burchell, when Niles tripled and scored moments later on a passed ball.  

Neither team scored in the eighth, so the two teams entered the ninth with New York leading, 5-2. Burchell had given up four hits and just the one run in his four innings.

Leading off for the Red Sox was Frank LaPorte, pinch-hitting for Burchell. The “ex-Yankee … cuffed the first ball pitched for a clean single to center field,” observed the Boston Journal.8 Thoney grounded to Conroy, who threw to Niles at second to force LaPorte, but Niles dropped the ball and both runners were safe.

The next two batters made outs, though, Lord flying out to right field and McConnell popping up to short. Cravath’s fly ball to left looked to become the third and final out. By most accounts, Stahl could have caught it, but shortstop Neal Ball ranged out into left and muffed it.

The New York Evening Journal bemoaned that any outfielder would “stand stock still and see an infielder backpedal out in an awkward position in a tangle of feet and tied up legs to try for a fly ball that the guardian of the outer patch could gather in with his eyes shut.”9 The New York Times said the ball came down “directly over Ball’s position” and the crowd began to surge out onto the field until umpire Silk O’Loughlin waved them back.10 The shortstop had dropped the ball. LaPorte scored and the Red Sox wound up with Thoney on third and Cravath on second. It was a 5-3 game.

Newton was perhaps a bit shaken. He hit right fielder Doc Gessler in the ribs with a pitch, loading the bases. Bob Unglaub, Boston’s first baseman, hit a long fly ball just inside the line in right field to Keeler, who was in the 17th season of his Hall of Fame career. Once again, it looked as if the game was over.

As some fans began to run on the field in celebration, however, Keeler, as the Boston Globe observed, “did something he has never done before with three on the bases. … He muffed the ball.”11 The Times called it “an easy fly.”12 He got his glove on it – and simply dropped it. “Nobody scores except Thoney and Cravath and Gessler, and the batter himself only makes three bases.”13 All three runners had scored. Boston had taken a 6-5 lead.  It was the Highlanders’ third error of the inning, and the Red Sox had the one-run edge.

Tex Pruiett pitched the bottom of the ninth for Boston. He closed out the win – with help from some Highlander baserunning miscues. With one out, Keeler reached on an infield single to Heinie Wagner at shortstop, getting to second on Wagner’s bad throw, but he overran the bag and was thrown out, 9-1-6. Hemphill then drew a base on balls – but was picked off first for the final out.

The Boston Journal offered an observation: “The ninth inning of the second game came and went so rapidly that it left the spectators stunned. The thousands who were about to put on their hats and journey home, satisfied with half of a double-header, sank back into their seats with the smiling, happy faces of so many undertakers, and ere they rose again the game had gone to Boston.”14

New York had 14 base hits, while Boston had only eight, but the five errors the hosts had committed were costly.

The Cleveland Naps climbed into first place, sweeping a doubleheader in Detroit. The Highlanders fell out of first, never to return in 1908. They collapsed – going 7-21 in June, and by the end of the month they were 11 games out of first place. Before the game on June 24, Clark Griffith resigned as manager and was replaced by Kid Elberfeld.15

New York finished the season in last place, going 31-88 after June 1, while Boston finished fifth at 60-54. The Detroit Tigers won the pennant. Their 90-63-1 record placed them 15½ games ahead of Boston (75-79) and 39½ games ahead of New York (51-103).

It was more than 100 years before the Red Sox rallied against New York under similar circumstances, trailing by multiple runs in a road game with two outs in the ninth inning. At Yankee Stadium on July 5, 2024, they were down 3-1 with one on and two outs in the ninth inning, when Masataka Yoshida hit a game-tying home run off the Yankees’ Clay Holmes. Boston’s Ceddanne Rafaela then put the Red Sox ahead to stay with a two-run homer in the 10th.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Larry DeFillipo 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/NYA/NYA190806022.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1908/B06022NYA1908.htm

Photo credit: Fred Burchell, Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Stahl later joined the Red Sox and managed the team to a World Series championship in 1912.

2 “Hard Blow to Yankees,” New York Tribune, June 3, 1908: 10.

3 Morgan ended the year 14-13 (2.46 ERA). Hogg ended 4-16 (3.01)

4 On May 26 he’d thrown nine innings against the visiting St. Louis Browns, allowing three runs – but after Doc Newton had taken over in the top of the 10th, the Browns scored twice and won, 5-3. Hogg died in 1909 of Bright’s disease at age 28.

5 Winter was “not anxious to play ball this year” and was allowed to report later, when the weather in Boston would be warmer. “Unglaub Captain of Team Once More,” Boston Globe, March 7, 1908: 4.

6 Earned runs were not yet a statistic at the time.

7  “Hard Blow for New Yorks,” New York Sun, June 3, 1908: 5.

8 “Red Sox Score a Double Victory in Their Second Shindy with Yankees,” Boston Journal, June 3, 1908: 9. The Boston Journal was not the only newspaper that already dubbed the Highlanders the “Yankees.” Both the New York Times and New York Tribune did as well.

9 Sam Crane, “Yankees Tumble from First Place in Race,” New York Evening Journal, June 3, 1908: 12.

10 “Yankees Lose Lead in Pennant Race,” New York Times, June 3, 1908: 8.

11 “Red Sox Pull Back the Leaders,” Boston Globe, June 3, 1908: 4. Keeler had played for all three New York teams, in a career that dated to 1892.

12 “Yankees Lose Lead in Pennant Race.”

13 “Yankees Lose Lead in Pennant Race.”

14 “Red Sox Score a Double Victory in Their Second Shindy with Yankees.”

15 Red Sox manager McGuire also resigned before the season was out, in late August.