June 3, 1950: Red Sox score six runs in the first inning again, but more were needed

Twenty runs, 22 base hits, 41 total bases, 13 walks, 3 errors, 7 pitchers, 3 pinch-hitters. There was a lot of action in this Boston Red Sox-Cleveland Indians game.

The scoring started pretty quickly.

Boston’s Mel Parnell had won a major leagues-leading 25 games in 1949. His 2.77 earned run average had been second-best in the American League (to Cleveland’s Mike García) and his 27 complete games had also led both the AL and NL. He hadn’t made it through the first inning in the first game of a doubleheader on May 30, his previous start, driven off the mound at Yankee Stadium by five runs before he could get the third out.

On this Saturday afternoon at Fenway Park, he struck out the first batter, Cleveland left fielder Dale Mitchell. But Bob Kennedy, the right fielder, singled, and first baseman Luke Easter homered to left-center field, giving the Indians a 2-0 lead. Parnell then got outs from the next two batters.

García couldn’t get anyone out. He had led both the American and National Leagues in ERA in 1949 with a 2.35 mark over 41 appearances, half of them starts. He had been 14-5.

Against the Red Sox, however, he only lasted five batters before being replaced. Boston center fielder Dom DiMaggio singled to left field. Johnny Pesky walked. So did Ted Williams. Shortstop Vern Stephens singled, and two runs scored. First baseman Walt Dropo – batting .358 at the time, and on his way to being named AL Rookie of the Year in 1950 – doubled “high off the left-field wall” and another run scored.1 Manager/shortstop Lou Boudreau concluded that Garcia didn’t have it and summoned reliever Gene Bearden.

Bearden had a superb rookie season in 1948, his 2.43 ERA helping the Indians through the single-game playoff against the Red Sox for the AL pennant (his 20th win) and the World Series against the Boston Braves, throwing a shutout in Game Three. But that was the peak of his career; by August 1950, he was placed on waivers and claimed by the Washington Nationals.

Replacing Garcia, Bearden walked right fielder Al Zarilla, reloading the bases with Red Sox, and then gave up a bases-clearing triple to Bobby Doerr, a ball which “did some tricks bouncing around the flagpole.”2 (At that time, Fenway Park had a flagpole in the field of play in straightway center field, and a little bit to the left.)

With six runs across, Birdie Tebbetts lined out to left field. Doerr tagged and scored the inning’s apparent seventh run – or thought he had. Umpire Bill McKinley ruled that Doerr had left third base too early; the ball thrown in to Boudreau was relayed to Al Rosen at third base and Doerr was called out. Parnell flied out to Joe Gordon at second base, holding the score at 6-2.

It was the second game in a row the Red Sox had scored six runs in the first inning against the Indians; they had won on June 2, 11-5. All six of those runs had scored off Bob Feller, who’d started the game by walking the first three batters.

With a walk to Boudreau, a strikeout of Gordon, and catcher Jim Hegan hitting into a double play, the Indians did not score in the second inning.

The Red Sox added two more runs in the bottom of the frame. Having batted around in the first inning, it was DiMaggio’s turn to lead off again. He reached on a fielding error by Bearden. Pesky singled to right field. Williams walked again, and, for the second inning in a row, Boston had the bases loaded with nobody out. This time they scored twice. After Stephens struck out, Dropo singled to center for one run. The second came in on a groundout by Zarilla for an 8-2 lead.

In the third inning, neither team scored. The Indians went down in order. Pesky walked and Williams singled for the Red Sox, but no one scored.  

Cleveland rallied in the fourth. After Parnell got Easter to ground to second base, the next five batters all reached base. Larry Doby was safe on an error by Stephens. Al Rosen walked. So did Boudreau.

Gordon singled off  Pesky’s glove at third base and drove in two runs. Hegan doubled to left and drove in another. Manager Joe McCarthy called on Al Papai to take over for Parnell. Allie Clark pinch-hit for Bearden. He grounded out and Gordon scored from third. Mitchell singled to left and drove in Hegan. At the end of the inning, it was 8-7, Red Sox.

Papai pitched the rest of the game for the Red Sox. He had come in with a 6-14 record in the big leagues and had pitched for both the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns. The Red Sox had acquired him over the previous winter to bolster their bullpen; he was waived just over a month after this game, on July 5.

Jesse Flores was Cleveland’s new pitcher, back in the majors in 1950 after spending the two previous seasons with San Diego in the Pacific Coast League. With a fly ball, Zarilla single, and Doerr double play, he threw a scoreless fourth.

The Indians loaded the bases in the top of the fifth but did not score.

The Red Sox gained some breathing room by scoring three more runs in the bottom of the inning. Birdie Tebbetts led off with a home run, “a drive to left that barely scaled the fence and landed in the net.”3

Papai followed with a walk. Two outs later, Ted Williams homered “a dozen or so rows up in the right-field bleachers above the visiting bullpen.”4 That made it Boston 11, Cleveland 7. 

Suddenly the scoring ceased. Neither team scored in the sixth, seventh, or eighth. Mitchell singled for Cleveland in the sixth, but Papai got three others to hit fly ball outs. Al Benton took over mound duties for the Indians and gave up sixth-inning singles to Dropo and Doerr, but nothing came of it.

Papai retired the side in order in the seventh, the first clean half-inning since the top of the third. He then walked to lead off the bottom of the seventh, but the Red Sox couldn’t get a runner to second base. He was forced out at second and, after a fly out, Williams hit into another force out at second.

In the eighth, Papai got two fly outs and then retired Bob Lemon – pinch-hitting for Benton – on a 4-3 groundout. Sam Zoldak became the fifth pitcher for Cleveland in the bottom of the eighth. He got two outs, was tagged for a double by Zarilla, and then got the third out.

With one out in the ninth, Bob Kennedy tripled off the top of the center-field fence. Easter struck out. Larry Doby hit a two-run homer. Doby’s ball was hit to “almost the identical place” as Kennedy’s but “Doby’s was a little higher and went into the screen for a home run.”5 The Cleveland Plain Dealer said Doby’s two-run homer “merely made the final outcome less humiliating.”6 Rosen grounded out, Stephens to Dropo, ending the game.

Papai got the win. The Williams home run that produced the 10th and 11th runs in the 11-9 victory was the hit that made the difference – the game-winning home run.7 An illness had cost Williams seven games in April 1950, but he was now back on track with 13 home runs in only 140 at-bats and a robust .664 slugging percentage.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by John Fredland.

Photo credit: Bobby Doerr, 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/BOS195006030.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1950/B06030BOS1950.htm

Notes

1 Arthur Sampson, “Indians Bow as Williams Poles No.13,” Boston Herald, June 4, 1950: 54.

2 Hy Hurwitz, “Red Sox Sweep Indians Series, 11 to 9,” Boston Globe, June 4, 1950: 46.

3 Sampson, 54.

4 Hurwitz.

5 George B. Kelleher, “Sox and Braves Score Triumphs, 11-9, 10-6,” Springfield (Massachusetts) Union, June 4, 1950: 1B.

6 Harry Jones, “Red Sox Again Tally 6 in 1st; Edge Indians, 11-9,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 4, 1950: 1-B

7 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 they 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.)