June 27, 2003: 14 first-inning runs set the stage for a lopsided Red Sox win over Marlins

Those arriving fashionably late for the Friday evening game at Fenway Park on June 27, 2003, may have found themselves disappointed, regardless of whether they were rooting for the Boston Red Sox or the Florida Marlins. For the Marlins, the game was essentially lost before their fifth batter stepped into the box. Tardy Boston fans missed out on seeing the Red Sox tying an American League record by scoring 14 runs in the first inning on their way to a 25-8 romp.

Byung-Hyun Kim made his fifth start of the season for manager Grady Little’s Red Sox.1 Boston was second in the American League East Division, two games behind the New York Yankees. On Kim’s first pitch, Marlins center fielder Juan Pierre – whose 33 stolen bases led the majors – bunted for a base hit. He took second when second baseman Luis Castillo grounded out, third to first, and scored when catcher Iván Rodríguez singled to center. Third baseman Mike Lowell hit into a double play, ending the inning, but the Marlins had a 1-0 lead.2

The Red Sox half of the first lasted considerably longer – 50 minutes.3

Jack McKeon had right-hander Carl Pavano start.4 Since the 72-year-old McKeon had replaced Jeff Torborg in the Marlins’ dugout on May 11, Florida had won 24 of 42 games to square its record at 40-40. The first batter up was center fielder Johnny Damon, who skipped a ball just fair and over first base for a double. Second baseman Todd Walker singled to center, driving in Damon and tying the game. Nomar Garciaparra, the Red Sox shortstop, doubled halfway up the wall in left-center. Walker stopped at third.

Manny Ramírez swung at Pavano’s first pitch and launched a home run clear over the brand-new Green Monster seats atop the left-field wall. Ramírez’s 17th home run of the season and 327th of his career made it 4-1, Red Sox. The Red Sox season was still three games short of the halfway mark, but Garciaparra now had 52 RBIs and Ramírez had 60.

DH David Ortiz doubled into the right-field corner. First baseman Kevin Millar – purchased from the Marlins during spring training – dropped a single into right-center and drove in Ortiz with Boston’s fifth run.5 Pavano had faced six batters and given up hits to each one of them. McKeon beckoned in left-handed reliever Michael Tejera.

Tejera couldn’t get anyone out, either. Trot Nixon singled on his first pitch. Switch-hitter Bill Mueller batted right-handed; he worked a walk on nine pitches, loading the bases. Jason Varitek made it 7-1 with a two-run single that skipped over the mound and up the middle. The Red Sox had batted around and still not made an out.  

Damon came up to bat again, and this time tripled into the right-field corner, driving in two more runs. Walker singled, making it 10-1. The Red Sox had been batting for 30 minutes and still had not made an out. Scoring 10 runs before making the first out of the first inning set a new American or National League record, breaking the old mark of nine no-out runs set by the Philadelphia Phillies against the New York Giants on August 13, 1948.6

The Marlins brought in their third pitcher of the inning, hoping Allen Levrault could become the first one to get an out. He threw three consecutive balls to Garciaparra, but on the 59th pitch of the inning recorded an out when Nomar popped up foul to Rodríguez.

The inning wasn’t over yet. Manny Ramírez again swung at the first pitch – albeit a checked swing – and dropped a single just over the first baseman and into right. Ortiz walked. Millar made the second out, but it was a productive one, as Walker, somewhat surprisingly, tagged and scored on a fly to shallow right-center. Nixon worked a seven-pitch walk. Mueller – batting left-handed this time – doubled to the warning track in left-center. That drove in both Ramírez and Ortiz. The Red Sox broadcasters noted that there was at this point no one even bothering to throw in the Marlins bullpen.

Varitek walked. Damon came up for the third time and collected his third hit of the inning, poking a single into left that drove in Nixon. Perhaps getting a little greedy, Mueller tried to score on the play, too, but 20-year-old left fielder Miguel Cabrera, appearing in his seventh big-league game after getting promoted from Double A, threw him out at the plate and the inning was over.7 With 14 runs, the Red Sox equaled the Cleveland Indians’ June 18, 1950, barrage of the Philadelphia Athletics for the highest-scoring first inning in AL history.8

Kim walked two in the top of the second, but the Marlins did not score. Ortiz hit a two-run homer over the Red Sox bullpen in the second inning, his fourth of the season, to give Boston a 16-1 lead. Mueller led off the third inning with a solo home run into the home bullpen, his fifth, to make it 17-1.

Levrault had himself thrown 84 pitches by the end of the third so the Marlins turned to Kevin Olsen for the fourth.9 He got two outs, but then gave up four consecutive hits, including RBI singles by Mueller and Varitek. After four full innings, it was 19-1.

With two outs in the top of the fifth, Kim faltered. An error behind him, a single, hit-by-pitch, double, and single gave the Marlins four runs. It was 19-5, but Ortiz drove in Boston’s 20th run in the bottom of the fifth.

Kim, now eligible for the win, was given the rest of the night off. Boston used four more pitchers – more or less one per inning – to close out the game – Ryan Rupe, Rudy Seanez, Héctor Almonte, and (after Almonte walked the first batter in the ninth) Jason Shiell.

In the seventh, a ball hit by Walker struck pitcher Olsen in the head, a ball hit so hard that Lowell said, “The ball went all the way into the dugout on the fly.” Olsen dropped to the ground and, after nine minutes, was taken to the hospital.10

Leading off the eighth, Ortiz was hit by a Blaine Neal pitch. Warnings were issued to both teams. Florida scored one in the eighth, and two on a Derrek Lee homer in the top of the ninth. The Red Sox kept adding runs, too, one in the seventh, and four more in the eighth.

Almonte was ejected for throwing behind Andy Fox in the top of the ninth.11 Given the ejections, some bitterness, and the injury to Olsen, Mike Fine of the Quincy (Massachusetts) Patriot Ledger wrote, “What should have been an incredible laugher ended in somberness and discord.”12

McKeon had not been happy and felt the Red Sox had tried to show up his team by running up the score. “I didn’t realize your pitching was that bad over here at Boston that you would try to add on a 16-run lead in the seventh inning.”13

Todd Walker had tried to tag and score in the seventh, which had set off McKeon; Walker’s response: “Every chance you get to score a run, you’re going to score a run. If he’s mad about that, so be it. I lose a lot of respect for him if he’s hitting our guys because we were tagging up on sacrifice flies. If it’s because David Ortiz [showboated] on a home run, then I can accept that.”14

Mueller’s six RBIs led the team this night.15 Varitek had four. Four players had three apiece – Damon (who had five hits in the game), Walker, Ramírez, and Ortiz. It was Boston’s most runs since a 29-4 win over the St. Louis Browns on June 8, 1950, and the 28 Red Sox hits tied a franchise record, set in that 1950 game.

The Marlins “walked out of Fenway Park angry and embarrassed … one of their worst defeats.”16

There were a lot of other runs scored in the three-game weekend series. The Marlins won 10-9 on Saturday, overcoming a 9-2 deficit with four runs in the eighth and four in the ninth. The Red Sox won the Sunday afternoon game, 11-7. For the weekend, it was thus 45 Red Sox to 25 Marlins.

The Marlins fought off the sting of this loss. Led by young talent like Cabrera and NL Rookie of the Year Dontrelle Willis, they went 75-49 under McKeon and earned the NL’s wild-card berth. Postseason series wins over the San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs put the Marlins in the World Series, where they beat the Yankees – who had bested the Red Sox in a seven-game AL Championship Series – in six games to become world champions.17

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Victoria Monte and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Bill Mueller, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and YouTube.com.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS200306270.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2003/B06270BOS2003.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwKgtEh_S_o

Thanks to Louis Schiff for supplying Florida newspaper coverage of the game.

Notes

1 Kim had begun his major-league career in 1999 with the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he had worked almost exclusively as a reliever, his best year being 2002, when he appeared in 72 games (8-3, 2.04). On May 29, 2003, he was traded to the Red Sox for Shea Hillenbrand. He was 1-5 (3.56) to that point.  

2 The Marlins’ half of the inning took just over eight minutes. A good part of it was devoted to throws trying to keep the speedy Pierre close to the bag, at first base and then at second.

3 Associated Press, “14 Runs, 50 Minutes, and 91 Pitches All in an Inning’s Work for the Red Sox,” New York Times, June 28, 2003: D1. The 50-minute length of the bottom half of the first was affirmed by several other newspapers. In just one night, “the Marlins had seen their team ERA climb from 3.97 to 4.24.” Mike Berardino, “Sudden knockout,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), June 28, 2003: 3C.  

4 Pavano was a Red Sox farmhand for his first three seasons of minor-league ball, then was traded to the Montreal Expos in the November 1997 deal that brought Pedro Martínez to Boston. He’d broken into the majors with the Expos and joined the Marlins during the 2002 season. He had not had much luck at Fenway Park. Before this game, his ERA at Fenway was 11.25; after this game, it had shot up to 24.75. His best season came in 2004, when he was 18-8 with an ERA of 3.00. Mike Fine, “Sox Smash Marlins, Records,” Quincy (Massachusetts) Patriot Ledger, June 28, 2003: 29.

5 Millar, a Marlin from 1998 through 2002, had blasted Florida management prior to the game, saying, “Their god is the dollar bill. That’s all that matters to them. They can high-five each other, jumping up and down, about a dollar bill, behind the scenes. They don’t care about human beings.” He went on and on at some length. See Mike Berardino, “Millar Takes Cuts at Marlins Hierarchy,” South Florida Sun-Sentinel, June 28, 2003: 3C.   

6 The Phillies won that Shibe Park game, 12-7.

7 Previously, the Red Sox record for runs in the first inning had been 11, on August 13, 1933, against the Philadelphia Athletics and on June 26, 1999, against the Chicago White Sox.  

8 The record for runs scored by a team in the first inning was set by the Brooklyn Dodgers, who scored 15 runs at Ebbets Field on May 21, 1952. The visiting Cincinnati Reds lost that game, 19-1, but had their own 15-run first inning on August 3, 1989, beating the visiting Houston Astros 18-2.

9 It was the 56th and final appearance of Levrault’s three-season major-league career.

10 Clark Spencer, “Reliever Is Expected to Be OK,” Miami Herald, June 28, 2003: 5D. Olsen was kept overnight in the hospital for observation but was released the next morning in good condition.

11 Howard Ulman (Associated Press), “Red Sox Blow Away Marlins,” Indiana (Pennsylvania) Gazette, June 28, 2003: 16.

12 Fine, “Sox Smash Marlins, Records.”

13 Howard Ulman (Associated Press), “First Strike at Fenway,” Washington Post, June 28, 2003: D1.

14 Bob Hohler, “Record Changer,” Boston Globe, June 28, 2003: E5.

15 It set a career high for Mueller, but he surpassed it on July 29 that season, when he drove in nine runs at Texas. His end-of-year .326 batting average led the American League.

16 Clark Spencer, “Going Down Hard,” Miami Herald, June 28, 2003: 1D.

17 As it happened, Pavano played a big role in the postseason. He helped get the Marlins to the World Series, winning two of the four games against the Giants in the NL Division Series. And in Game Four of the World Series, a 4-3 win in 12 innings, “he went toe-to-toe with Roger Clemens, firing eight innings of one-run ball to help his team beat the Yankees. But June 27 in Boston was not his game.” Andrew Simon, “The Most Crooked Numbers in MLB History,” MLB.com, January 25, 2022, https://www.mlb.com/news/highest-scoring-innings-in-mlb-history.