May 27, 1941: Ted Williams helps roommate Charlie Wagner win another game for Red Sox

During the time he spent with the Boston Red Sox, Charlie Wagner was Ted Williams’ roommate. When Williams first arrived in Florida for spring training in 1938, “The Kid” asked manager Joe Cronin for someone who didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and liked to get to bed early and wake up early. Cronin pointed him to Charlie Wagner and both ballplayers frequently said it was a very good fit.1

On May 7, 1941, Williams hit a home run in the top of the 11th inning against the Chicago White Sox, giving Wagner his first win of the season. Twenty days later, Williams hit another game-winning homer and Wagner had his second win of the season, breaking a streak of three straight losses for the 28-year-old right-hander.2

Both teams playing in the May 27 doubleheader at Fenway Park—the Red Sox and Philadelphia Athletics—were in the middle of the pack in the American League standings. The fourth-place Red Sox trailed the first-place Cleveland Indians by 7½ games. The sixth-place Athletics were 8½ games out but had won seven of their last eight games.

Connie Mack, in his 41st season at the helm in Philadelphia, started Bump Hadley. After five years with the New York Yankees, Hadley had been purchased by the New York Giants during the 1940-41 offseason but returned at the end of April. The Athletics had bought his contract on April 30. This was just his fourth start with Philadelphia (he was 2-1), in what proved to be the final season of a 16-year major-league career. Coming into the game his season ERA, including his three appearances with the Giants, was an unintimidating 6.90.

After Wagner worked through the top of the first, with only a base on balls to second baseman Benny McCoy, Red Sox center fielder Dom DiMaggio doubled to left. DiMaggio took third base on Lou Finney’s grounder to shortstop and scored when Williams grounded to McCoy, who threw to first base for the second out. Jimmie Foxx took a called third strike.

No one reached base for Philadelphia in the second, and Cronin walked to lead off the Boston half of the inning. Right fielder Pete Fox struck out. Second baseman Skeeter Newsome grounded out, short to first, as Cronin took second base. Catcher Frankie Pytlak doubled down the right-field line and Cronin scored. Wagner grounded out to end the inning.

Mounting the mound in the third, Wagner gave up his first hit, a single by third baseman Pete Suder. He struck out Hadley and then got a couple of flyball outs.

The Red Sox made it three straight single-run innings with a two-out solo home run to right field by Williams. DiMaggio had singled, leading off the inning, but catcher Frankie Hayes threw him out attempting to steal. Finney flied out before Williams homered.

Where the ball came down was not entirely clear. The Boston Herald wrote, “Ted the Kid lofted one of his magnificently high homers into the right-field bleachers, right over the Red Sox bull-pen.”3 The Boston Globe simply dubbed it “a slam into the center-field bleachers.”4 The Associated Press story said it was “a bristling home run into the distant right field stands.”5 Ed Rumill of the Christian Science Monitor wrote that it “carried over the visiting bull pen and into the distant right-center field bleachers.”6 Later researchers might surmise it landed somewhere among the fans in right-center. Wherever it came down, it scored a run.

Foxx flied out to center to end the inning, but Boston led, 3-0.

McCoy singled to begin the fourth, but the next three batters all grounded out.

In the bottom of the fifth inning, the Red Sox added two more runs to their total. Pytlak singled to center, his second hit of the game. Wagner was called out on strikes. DiMaggio tripled, driving in Pytlak. Finney fouled out to third base and Williams walked. Shortstop Al Brancato dropped a popup hit to him by Foxx, and DiMaggio scored on the error, pushing the lead to 5-0.

Wagner took the shutout into the sixth, when McCoy walked with one out. Left fielder Bob Johnson singled and McCoy went to second base. After first baseman Dick Siebert fouled out, center fielder Sam Chapman doubled to right field. No longer a shutout, the score was 5-1, Red Sox. Hayes lined out to left to strand Johnson at third and Chapman at second.

With a two-out walk and a double by right fielder Wally Moses, the Athletics created a bit of a scare in the top of the seventh, but the score remained the same. The Red Sox likewise mounted a minor threat in the bottom of the seventh when DiMaggio drew a one-out walk and, with two outs, Williams was hit by a pitch. Both moved up 90 feet on a subsequent wild pitch, but Jimmie Foxx flied out to center field.

First up in the Philadelphia eighth was Bob Johnson. He walked. Siebert doubled to right-center field and Johnson scored. Chapman grounded out to second and Siebert ran to third, but uneventful fly balls from Hayes and Suder followed. The score was 5-2.

Hadley allowed Skeeter Newsome to single in the bottom of the eighth but otherwise retired the side.

Two pinch-hitters led off the ninth for the Athletics. Dee Miles hit for Hadley. Miles singled to right field. Eddie Collins batted for Brancato. He grounded back to Wagner, who started a 1-6-3 double play. Moses flied out to Williams in left field for the final out of the game. 

Both teams had seven hits. DiMaggio had three of Boston’s seven–a single, a double, and a triple. He also drew a walk. The 5-2 win saw Wagner improve his record to 2-5. Hadley dropped to 2-2. The game took 1 hour and 55 minutes, played before 4,900.

In the day’s second game, the Athletics routed the Red Sox, 11-1. Boston mustered only three hits off Phil Marchildon: singles by DiMaggio, Pete Fox, and Williams. The single by Williams extended his hitting streak to 13 games. He was hitting an even .400 at the end of the day.

Two days later, in the series finale on May 29, Williams hit another game-winning homer against the Athletics, a seventh-inning blast against Jack Knott.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Carl Riechers and copy-edited by Kurt Blumenau.

Photo credit: Charlie Wagner, 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/BOS194105271.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1941/B05271BOS1941.htm

Notes

1 Bill Nowlin, “Charlie Wagner,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/charlie-wagner/. Accessed May 2026.

2 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.)

3 Burt Whitman, “Red Sox Win, 5-2; A’s Retaliate, 11-1,” Boston Herald, May 28, 1941: 16.

4 James C. O’Leary, “Red Sox Win, 5-2, then Lose, 11 to 1,” Boston Globe, May 27, 1941: 21.

5 Associated Press, “Athletics Bow, 5-2, Then Halt Red Sox,” New York Times, May 27, 1941: 34.

6 Ed Rumill, “Little Professor Knows Trick of Getting On Base,” Christian Science Monitor, May 27, 1941: 16. At the time, the visitor’s bullpen was the one more toward center field and the Red Sox bullpen was the one closest to the right-field line, the opposite of the way it has been for more than half a century since.