May 26, 1964: Despite Jim King’s cycle, Senators score just two runs and Red Sox rally for walk-off win

In 1964 Johnny Pesky, longtime Boston Red Sox star, was in his second season as Red Sox manager. According to his SABR biography, Pesky “brought some fire to the position, after years of yawns under the likes of Pinky Higgins.”1 Boston had not posted a winning record since 1958. Since 1961, when the American League expanded to 10 teams, the Red Sox had not finished higher than sixth place.

Pesky’s fire seemed to give the Red Sox an advantage at home in the early part of the ’64 season, although they struggled on the road.2 After splitting a four-game series with the Minnesota Twins to begin a 14-game May homestand, Boston swept three games from the Los Angeles Angels and took three of four from the Kansas City Athletics.

The last three games of the homestand at Fenway Park were against the Washington Senators. Before the series began, the Red Sox were pretty much an average team. They had evened their record at 18-18 and were in the middle (sixth place) of the American League standings, just five games behind the league-leading Baltimore Orioles.

Washington was managed by a second-year skipper of its own, future Hall of Famer Gil Hodges. In their fourth season after joining the AL as an expansion franchise, the Senators were 3½ games beneath Boston in the standings with a 17-24 record.

The Red Sox won the first game against the Senators, 6-5. It gave Boston a winning record for the first time since the initial week of the season.

A crowd of 10,181 turned out to Fenway Park for the second game of the series, on May 26. It was a Tuesday night affair, the third-largest midweek attendance so far in the season. Fans saw Boston add to its four-game win streak. As a bonus, they witnessed Washington right fielder Jim King hit for the cycle.

The 31-year-old King had played for three National League clubs in the 1950s, then spent two seasons in the Triple-A International League before getting a shot with the expansion Senators in 1961. His 24 homers in 1963 were second on the club behind Don Lock’s 27. A left-handed batter, King had posted a .171 batting average in April 1964, but raised his average 100 points over the next 10 games. He came to Boston hitting .263 but went hitless in the first game of the series.

The second game featured a pair of right-handers on the mound: Bennie Daniels for Washington and Earl Wilson for Boston. After four seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Daniels had been traded to the Senators in December 1960. Throughout his career, he split time between roles as a starter and a reliever, because he exhibited “often brilliant and then mediocre performances.”3 Daniels began 1964 as a starter. He came into this game with a 5-2 record and a 2.96 earned-run average, having won his last three starts.4

Wilson was in his fifth big-league season, all with Boston. Primarily a starter, he had a few relief appearances early in the season. Wilson’s problem was control. In 1963 he had led the majors with 105 walks and 21 wild pitches. Still, he had recorded the AL’s first no-hitter by a Black pitcher in 1962, and 1963 was the first of seven seasons in his career with at least 30 starts and 200 innings pitched. Wilson brought a 1-2 record and a 5.81 ERA with him to the hill. This was the second time in the season that Wilson had pitched against the Senators.5

The Senators scored a run in the top of the first. With two outs, Chuck Hinton singled to left. King, batting cleanup, then doubled off the Green Monster in left, driving home Hinton. Dick Phillips struck out looking to end the inning, stranding King at second.

In the bottom of the third, the Red Sox had two hits, two walks, and a runner reach on an error, but came away with only one run. Wilson – who had hit a two-run homer in his most recent start, on May 22, then had been used as a pinch-hitter in Boston’s next two games – led off with a single to left.6 Dalton Jones walked, and Eddie Bressoud’s single plated Wilson and tied the game.

Frank Malzone grounded to Washington shortstop Ed Brinkman, who muffed the play, and Boston had loaded the bases. The Red Sox seemed primed for more runs with 1963 AL batting champion Carl Yastrzemski up, but Daniels fielded Yastrzemski’s comebacker and threw home to catcher Mike Brumley, who threw to first for a double play. After an intentional walk to 1963 AL RBI king Dick Stuart, Daniels struck out Román Mejías – like Stuart a former Pittsburgh teammate – to end the threat and keep the score tied, 1-1.

Boston took the lead in the fourth. After Daniels struck out Bob Tillman, Lou Clinton took his turn in the batter’s box. Clinton was playing right field in place of talented rookie Tony Conigliaro, who had suffered a broken hand two days earlier.7 Clinton drove Daniels’ offering well beyond the wall in left field for his second home run of the season. His first had also come against Washington, on May 8.

In the top of the sixth, King batted again. He had singled in the fourth (but he was thrown out at second by Yastrzemski trying to stretch it into a double), and now, in his third at-bat, he tied the game with his fifth homer of the year, a solo shot to deep left.

Right-hander Jim Hannan relieved Daniels in the sixth. Hannan had begun the season in the bullpen, but then he made four starts from May 5 to 23. In those four games, his ERA ballooned from 1.42 to 4.74, the Senators lost all four games, and Hannan was sent back to the bullpen.8 In three innings of work against Boston, he allowed just one hit, blanking the home team.

Wilson held the Senators scoreless in the seventh and retired the first two Washington batters in the eighth. With two outs in the eighth, King batted for the fourth time and drove a pitch that bounced off the center-field wall, good for three bases. This was King’s first and only triple of the season, and it completed the cycle for him. He was stranded at third when Phillips grounded out to second baseman Don Blasingame.

The tie held until the bottom of the ninth. As in the third inning, Wilson gave the Red Sox a leadoff baserunner by walking on a full-count pitch from veteran righty Ron Kline, who had entered in relief of Hannan. With the Senators expecting a bunt, Jones made an attempt anyway, but he fouled off the pitch. On Kline’s next offering, Jones “bounced a single over the head of charging first baseman Dick Phillips,” the Boston Globe reported,9 and Wilson advanced to third base.

Hodges visited Kline on the mound to discuss strategy. They decided to pitch to Bressoud, who came into the game batting .351 with two hits in each of his last four games. On Kline’s second pitch, Bressoud singled high off the left-field wall, driving in Wilson with the winning run. Boston’s streak was up to five, and the walk-off win resulted in their eighth victory in nine games.

This was the second appearance in a row in which Kline entered the game, faced three batters without retiring any of them and took a loss. Daniels and Hannan had combined to allow seven hits and three walks, which might have been good enough for a victory, except for Kline. Wilson earned his second win of the season, firing an eight-hit complete game.

Pesky had Boston playing .500 baseball through the end of July, when they were 52-52, but they faded in August (7-22) and September (10-16) and dropped to eighth place in the 10-team AL. They won only five of 18 one-run games in those two months, and Pesky was sacked on October 1.

King’s performance – he had collected four hits (three for extra bases), scored a run and driven in both of the Senators’ tallies – wasn’t enough to prevent Washington’s defeat. The Senators’ two runs set a major-league record for fewest runs by a team with a player hitting for the cycle.10 The top three batters in Washington’s order combined for a 1-for-12 day, and Wilson stranded the four Senators batters who had doubled or tripled.

With his cycle performance, King’s average jumped to .279. He came close to the .300 mark by the end of June, but then dropped off. King finished 1964 batting .241, with exactly 100 base hits, but 34 went for extra bases (15 doubles, 1 triple, and 18 home runs – second-best on the team).

King’s performance mirrored his team’s as the season played out. Washington did not post a winning record in any month of the season. As late as June 13, the Senators were 26-33. Then they finished June by losing 12 of 17 games and went 36-67 (.350) to finish the season in ninth place with 100 losses. The Senators were 28-38 in one-run games.

In 1972 the Senators moved to Texas, becoming the Rangers. King was the only player in franchise history with a cycle during the franchise’s 11-season stay in Washington.11

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Jim Sweetman and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks John Fredland and Gary Belleville for their suggestions. 

Sources  

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, MLB.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS196405260.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B05260BOS1964.htm

Notes

1 Bill Nowlin, “Johnny Pesky,” SABR Biography Project. Higgins had become Boston’s general manager.

2 Boston was 5-10 through mid-May in away games.

3 Larry Moffi, Crossing The Line; Black Major Leaguers: 1947-1949 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994), 164-165, as quoted in Donald Frank and Greg Erion, “Bennie Daniels,” SABR Biography Project.

4 Daniels made 14 starts in 1964, before moving once again to the bullpen. He finished the 1964 season with 33 appearances, of which 24 were starts. His 3.70 ERA was second-best of his eight-season career (not including the one game he pitched in 1957).

5 On May 10, at D.C. Stadium, Wilson earned the win in a 9-4 victory over the Senators.

6 Wilson had only 740 at-bats in his 11-season career, but he hit 35 home runs. In seven different seasons he posted an OPS over .700. The 35 career home runs by a pitcher tie him for fourth place, despite his having many fewer at-bats than the top three on the list. See https://stathead.com/tiny/M6yBT. Accessed December 2023.

7 Known for crowding the plate, Conigliaro was struck on his left wrist by Kansas City’s Moe Drabowsky on May 24, causing a hairline fracture. He only missed four games, giving Clinton a chance to bat. With Conigliaro back in the lineup, though, Clinton was traded by Boston to the Los Angeles Angels in exchange for Lee Thomas on June 4, 1964.

8 Hannan made three more starts in June, but he was charged with three more losses, and headed back into the role of a reliever.

9 Hy Hurwitz, “Same New Sox: Win in 9th, 3-2,” Boston Globe, May 27, 1964: 55.

10 The previous low-run record had been three, first set on October 4, 1904, when Sam Mertes hit for the cycle but his New York Giants scored only three runs and lost. This was equaled by the St. Louis Browns (Baby Doll Jacobson, April 17, 1924) and the Philadelphia Athletics (Doc Cramer, June 10, 1934), until Jim King and the Senators scored just twice in a cycle game. After this game, four more teams scored just three runs with a batter hitting for the cycle – the Los Angeles Angels (Jim Fregosi, July 28, 1964), the Houston Astros (Andújar Cedeño, August 25, 1992), the Atlanta Braves (Eddie Rosario, September 19, 2021), and the St. Louis Cardinals (Nolan Arenado, July 1, 2022) – but the Senators still hold the record with just two runs scored.

11 After King’s cycle, 21 seasons passed before Oddibe McDowell became the first player in a Rangers uniform to hit for the cycle, on July 23, 1985.