May 27, 1955: Norm Zauchin drives in 10 runs as Red Sox beat Nationals, 16-0

When Boston Red Sox first baseman Norm Zauchin enjoyed a 4-for-5 night with 10 RBIs at Fenway Park in late May 1955, it was hardly a surprise that his team won the game. Right-hander Tom Brewer did his part as well, throwing a six-hit shutout. The final score was 16-0, Boston beating the visiting Washington Nationals.

Only once before had a Red Sox player driven in 10 runs in a game: Rudy York on July 27, 1946. Unsurprisingly, Boston won that game, too – 13-6 over the St. Louis Browns at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. Two grand slams gave York eight of his 10 RBIs. 

It was early in Zauchin’s first full season with the Red Sox. The 6-foot-4, right-handed-batting Michigan native had been a September call-up in 1951 after driving in 104 runs for Triple-A Louisville. He was regarded as a strong prospect, but he spent 1952 and 1953 in the US Army.

Zauchin was discharged in time for the 1954 season. In the meantime, however, the Greater Boston-born and Boston University-educated Harry Agganis had emerged as the Red Sox’ top first-base prospect, as reported in The Sporting News. As a returning military veteran, he “had the right to stay on the big-league roster for the full 1954 season, but he requested that he be sent to Louisville instead, where he’d have a chance to play.”1 He batted .289 with 18 home runs and drove in 118 runs for Louisville.

Agganis played in 132 games as a rookie in 1954, with 11 homers and 57 RBIs. Despite hitting as high as .301 in early June, his batting average fell off as the season progressed, ending at .251.

Zauchin won the position from Agganis during 1955 spring training, then lost it again in the season’s early days. Agganis was batting .307 on May 15 but ended up in a Cambridge hospital, diagnosed with pneumonia. He returned for only two more games. The 26-year-old Agganis was much more seriously ill than had been realized, and on June 27 died of a pulmonary embolism.

With Agganis in the hospital, the 25-year-old Zauchin took over as the team’s regular first baseman on May 17. But he was batting just .214 by May 26 and hadn’t driven in a run in seven games. In 29 major-league games, he had just one home run and five RBIs.

On May 23 the New York Giants had played an exhibition game at Fenway Park and Zauchin had homered three times in a pregame homer-hitting contest and twice during the game.2

After Boston was shut out by the eighth-place Baltimore Orioles, 2-0, on May 26, the sixth-place Red Sox were 11 games out of first with a record of 16-24. The New York Yankees were in first place. Washington was fifth, just a game ahead of Boston in the standings. The Red Sox had lost six of their last seven games.

May 27 was Red Sox manager Pinky Higgins’s 46th birthday. Agganis had been released from the hospital, and he joined his teammates in the dugout, looking weak and pale, coughing and perspiring.3 A crowd of 15,775 came to Fenway Park for the Friday night game.

Tom Brewer was in his second major-league season. He’d been 10-9 (4.65) in 1954 but was faring very poorly in 1955 – he was 0-6 coming into this game. He’d lost to the Nationals, 1-0, on April 21, and then held them scoreless for 10 1/3 innings on May 21, a game the Red Sox also lost, 1-0, in the 12th.

There was an error by Red Sox shortstop Billy Klaus in the top of the first, but no other National reached base.

Veteran Bob Porterfield was Washington’s starter. Just two years before, his 22-10 record led the league in wins. He had led the league in complete games with 24 in 1953 and 21 in 1954. In the bottom of the first, two singles and a groundout had Red Sox at first and third. Jackie Jensen’s sacrifice fly gave Boston its first run. Zauchin followed with a two-run homer into the netting above Fenway’s left-field wall that made it 3-0.

Brewer walked two but got out of the second inning unscathed. In the Red Sox half, the bases were loaded with no outs on a walk, a double, and a fielding error on a ball Brewer hit to second base. Back-to-back sacrifice flies by infielders Billy Goodman and Billy Klaus made it 5-0.

After Gene Stephens singled and Jensen walked, there were again three Red Sox on base. Nationals manager Chuck Dressen called in left-hander Dean Stone from the bullpen to pitch to Zauchin, who hit a grand slam that, according to the Boston Herald, “just cleared the [left-field] wall into the netting.”4 It was a 9-0 game.

In the top of the third, Pete Runnels walked and Mickey Vernon singled, giving Washington runners at the corners with two outs, but nothing came of it. Stone walked one in the Boston third, but the other three batters made outs.

In the bottom of the fourth, rookie righty Ted Abernathy took over pitching for the Nationals. It was Abernathy’s eighth appearance of what turned out to be a long career as a reliever, and the 22-year-old North Carolina native was pitching for the third day in a row. He walked leadoff batter Klaus. After Stephens flied out, Jensen walked. That brought up Zauchin, who had already driven in six of Boston’s nine runs. This time he doubled off the wall in left and drove in Klaus, Jensen taking third. Catcher Sammy White hit a sacrifice fly and Jensen scored. Third baseman Grady Hatton tripled and Zauchin scored. It was 12-0, Red Sox.

Two Nationals singled in the top of the fifth, but Vernon hit into a 4-6-3 double play to end any threat.

In the bottom of the fifth, Abernathy hit Goodman with a pitch. Two fly-ball outs followed, but Jensen singled and Zauchin again stepped into the batter’s box. He hit a three-run homer over everything in left and onto Lansdowne Street beyond, and it was 15-0, Red Sox, with Zauchin having driven in 10 of those 15 runs.

Each of his three home runs was hit off a different pitcher. Zauchin said he had hit them on a slider, a curveball, and a side-arm fastball.5

Another rookie, Pedro Ramos, relieved Abernathy in the sixth. Like Abernathy, the 20-year-old Cuban was making his eighth big-league appearance and pitching for the third day in a row. The first man he faced was Hatton, who homered into the Red Sox bullpen in right field. That made it 16-0 after six innings. Neither team scored the rest of the game. 

Zauchin came up one more time, in the seventh, facing Ramos with two outs and Jensen (hit by a pitch) on first. He took two pitches for strikes, one for a ball, and then swung and missed for strike three. Ted Williams, taking in the game from the dugout, had told him to look for fastballs, but Zauchin said he had been looking for a change of pace. The two pitches he took for strikes were both fastballs.6

Brewer walked six in the game and struck out two. Boston committed just one error, and the Nationals left 12 runners on base.

Despite Zauchin driving in a team-record-tying 10 runs, the game-deciding run was the result of Jensen’s first-inning sacrifice fly. Fred Lynn (June 18, 1975) and Nomar Garciaparra (May 10, 1999) later matched York and Zauchin’s Red Sox record of 10 runs driven in during one game.7

The next day – May 28 – Ted Williams returned to the Red Sox lineup, ending a strategic “retirement” during divorce proceedings. Zauchin credited Williams with advice that had allowed him to relax at the plate: “He told me to forget striking out. … He said I could strike out four or five times in a row and still hit the long one when it counted. … I seemed to relax and I forgot to worry.”8

By the end of the 1955 season, Zauchin had driven in 93 runs and homered 27 times – both figures close to double his totals in any other year. He had also struck out 105 times, five more than anyone else in the majors.

It turned out to be Zauchin’s only season as a starter in Boston. Mickey Vernon came to the Red Sox in a nine-player trade in November and became the first-string first baseman in 1956.9 Dick Gernert served that role in 1957. Zauchin was a reserve in both seasons, batting .240 with 5 homers and 25 RBIs in 96 games.

In January 1958, Zauchin was traded to the Nationals, with Albie Pearson, for Pete Runnels. He was with Washington until May 1959, when he was sold to the Orioles, who placed him with their Triple-A team in Miami. He played in the minors that year and in 1960, in part with Buffalo, but an ongoing shoulder injury effectively ended his career.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Norm Zauchin, 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/BOS195505270.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1955/B05270BOS1955.htm

Notes

1 Hy Hurwitz, “Home-Town Agganis New Pride of Hub,” The Sporting News, April 28, 1954: 14.

2 The game raised money to help hospitalized veterans in New England. Ted Williams homered in the game; Zauchin also doubled off the wall. John Gillooly, “Vets’ How Thrills Fens Fans,” Boston Daily Record, May 24, 1955: 20.

3 Mark Brown and Mark Armour, “Harry Agganis,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/harry-agganis/, accessed May 7, 2025.

4 Henry McKenna, “Zauchin Belts Three Homers, Bats in 10 as Sox Romp, 16-0,” Boston Herald, May 28, 1955: 1, 6.

5 Roger Birtwell, “Home Run Symphony Sets Stage for Ted,” Boston Evening Globe. May 28, 1955: 1, 7. See also Arthur Sampson, “Zauchin Guesses Wrong on Try for Fourth Homer,” Boston Herald, May 28, 1955: 6. The most recent Red Sox player to homer three times in a game had been Clyde Vollmer on July 26, 1951.

6 Clif Keane, “Ted Calls Turn on 4th Homer Try, but Zauchin Lets Pitch Go By,” Boston Globe, May 28, 1955: 4. Zauchin said, “O, how I’d like to have that first pitch back that Abernathy threw me. Right down the pipe, it was.” He added that Jensen and the other hitters had been getting changeups so that’s what he was looking for. He should have taken Williams’s advice. “If I’d listened to him, I might have had four homers.” Ed Rumill, “Red Sox Will Hit With Ted Williams Around, Says Norm Zauchin: Freshman First Sacker Clouts Three Home Runs,” Christian Science Monitor, May 28, 1955: 12.

7 As of 2025, Tony Lazzeri of the New York Yankees had the AL record of 11 RBIs in a game, set in 1936. Jim Bottomley (1924) and Mark Whiten (1993), both with the St. Louis Cardinals, hold the National League record of 12 RBIs in a game.

8 Tom Monahan, “Faith, Fate, Wife’s Letter Spur Zauchin,” Boston Traveler, May 28, 1955: 4.

9 Bob Porterfield arrived in Boston in the same trade.