June 21, 1955: ‘Never take a chance on Ted Williams, regardless of the count’

The Cleveland Indians had left Boston, and the Detroit Tigers arrived for a Tuesday night game with the Red Sox on June 21, 1955. Until the seventh-inning stretch, the game was a pitchers’ duel between right-handers Willard Nixon of the Red Sox and Ned Garver of the Tigers. Despite threatening weather, the game drew more than 25,000 paying customers.

In the top of the first, Nixon struck out the first batter, walked the second, and turned Al Kaline’s at-bat into a strike-’em-out, throw-’em-out double play when center fielder Bill Tuttle was cut down trying to steal second base. Garver retired all three batters he faced in the bottom of the frame.

The Tigers scored one run in the top of the second. First baseman Earl Torgeson drew a base on balls. Left fielder Jim Delsing hit a long double to right field, and Torgeson scored from first base. Delsing moved to third base on a groundout, but a strikeout and another grounder ended the inning. Garver once again set down the side in order in Boston’s half.

Garver singled to lead off the third but never got as far as second base. With one out in the bottom of the inning, Boston center fielder Jimmy Piersall doubled but was likewise unable to advance.

Third baseman Ray Boone singled in the top of the fourth, the only Tiger to reach base in the inning. Shortstop Billy Klaus singled for the Red Sox in their half of the inning, but Ted Williams – who two days earlier had homered against Cleveland’s Herb Score and Bob Feller – fouled out to third base and right fielder Jackie Jensen hit into a 5-4-3 double play.

The fifth inning saw Nixon walk two with two outs, but Kaline grounded out. Boston first baseman Norm Zauchin led off with a double, but two fly balls were sandwiched around a groundout and he was left stranded on third base.

Both pitchers breezed through the sixth inning. Neither team got a man on base.

In the seventh, Jensen dropped Detroit shortstop Reno Bertoia‘s one-out fly to right for an error,  but Garver was up next and he hit the ball back to Nixon, who flipped to first and then got second baseman Fred Hatfield to lift a popup to shortstop Klaus.

The Red Sox finally broke through in the bottom of the seventh and took the lead, but it was a narrow lead at that. They scored two runs. Williams was up first. He walked. Jensen singled to left field, Williams stopping at second. Zauchin singled to short left field and the bases were loaded with nobody out.

Catcher Sammy White hit the ball hard, a liner to left, but it was caught by Delsing. Grady Hatton, the team’s third baseman, singled to right field and both Williams and Jensen scored, the Red Sox taking a 2-1 lead. With runners on first and third, Garver got Piersall to hit into a 5-4-3 double play that ended the inning. 

The excitement among Fenway’s faithful didn’t last long. The first four Tigers batters against Nixon in the eighth reached base safely, bringing manager Pinky Higgins to the mound to relieve him from further duty. Center fielder Tuttle was the first to get on, with an infield single to shortstop. Kaline walked. Torgeson singled to center, scoring Tuttle and tying the game, 2-2. On the throw to the plate, Kaline took third base and Torgeson took second. Delsing then hit an infield single, and Kaline scored.

That’s when Higgins made the call to the pen. Tom Hurd relieved Nixon. Boone bunted, advancing both runners. Catcher Frank House was walked intentionally. Harvey Kuenn pinch-hit for Bertoia and flied out to right field; Torgeson tagged and scored. Now with a 4-2 Tigers lead, manager Bucky Harris let Garver hit for himself. He popped out to Zauchin at first base.

Garver thus took the mound again to pitch the bottom of the eighth. The weather was of some concern. Thunder had been heard in the Boston area during the eighth inning and some lightning had been seen in the distance, though it wasn’t raining. 

The Red Sox pitcher was due up first, but Gene Stephens batted for Hurd and blooped a single to center field. Billy Goodman lined a single over second base.1 Tom Brewer came in as a pinch-runner for Goodman; he was the potential tying run. Klaus flied out to Kaline in very deep right field. Stephens tagged up and took third. Brewer stayed put.

Ted Williams was up. Garver was being cautious; Williams already had three home runs off him.      

The count ran to 3-and-0. Williams swung and connected. He hit an arcing three-run home run into the right-field grandstand and, just like that, the Red Sox were back in the lead, 5-4. The home run was hit into “the extreme edge of the right-field grandstand,” according to the Boston Globe.2 It wasn’t hit deep. Right fielder Kaline leapt for it but couldn’t corral it. It landed in the second or third row of seats in Section 1, just to the right of the Tigers bullpen.

Some of the Boston sportswriters called on the weather to create more of a sense of melodrama. Henry McKenna of the Boston Herald began his story: “Lightning flashed across the skies, thunder roared and Ted Williams, like the mighty Zeus, tossed one of his famous thunderbolts into the firmament in another bristling, battling, rallying thriller last night at Fenway Park.”3

Detroit didn’t score against Ellis Kinder in the ninth, and Williams’s home run stood up as the game-winner.4 

“The moral of this story is,” wrote Bob Holbrook of the Boston Globe, “never take a chance on Ted Williams, regardless of the count.”5

Williams, who had begun the season only on May 28 because of divorce proceedings, had now hit nine home runs and seven in his last 10 games. Ever the perfectionist, Williams mostly complained after the game that he hadn’t hit the pitch well, not like the two homers he’d hit against Cleveland. Hitting a ball well was important to Ted Williams. “I didn’t get a good pitch to hit all night,” he grumbled. “I think it was supposed to be some kind of a breaking pitch. But it didn’t do much.”6

Williams had other opportunities against Garver. He later hit three more homers off the pitcher, including a fourth-inning grand slam that won the game on July 31.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Andrew Harner 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/BOS195506210.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1955/B06210BOS1955.htm

Notes

1 Primary sources indicate a single through the box, though both Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet show it as a single to the pitcher.

2 Hy Hurwitz, “Williams Clouts 3-Run Homer for 5-4 Red Sox Win,” Boston Globe, June 22, 1955: 1, 8.

3 Henry McKenna, “Red Sox Win, 5-4, on Ted’s Homer,” Boston Herald, June 22, 1955: 1.

4 A “game-winning home run” is defined here as a home run that provides a game’s final margin of victory, giving the winning team at least one more run than the opposing team scored. For example, if a two-run homer increased a team’s lead from 2-1 to 4-1, and it went on to win 4-3, it qualifies as a game-winning home run. (This is different from the definition of “game-winning RBI” in baseball’s official statistics from 1980 through 1988, which counted as “game-winning” the RBI that provided a winning team the lead that it never relinquished.)

5 Bob Holbrook, “Garver Takes Chance on Ted, Finds It Costly,” Boston Globe, June 22, 1955: 8.

6 Holbrook.