May 30, 1949: Ted Williams hits late home run to sink A’s at Fenway Park

The Boston Red Sox won both halves of the Memorial Day doubleheader against the visiting Philadelphia Athletics, 10-2 and 4-3, but Ted Williams hadn’t helped much until the eighth inning of the second game. In the first game, he had gone 0-for-3, hitting into two double plays, grounding out 3-1, and walking a couple of times. Right fielder Al Zarilla drove in six of the 10 Red Sox runs – four on a sixth-inning grand slam off Philadelphia rookie Bobby Shantz. One unusual feature of the first game was that no one from either team struck out.1

In the second game, Williams started out with another grounder to first base, with the pitcher covering. His second time up, he grounded to shortstop. And his third time up, in the sixth inning, he grounded out, third to first. The game was 1-1 through the first six innings. Williams still hadn’t gotten the ball out of the infield in the doubleheader.

Left-hander Mel Parnell was pitching for the Red Sox and 22-year-old righty Carl Scheib was pitching for the Athletics.

For Parnell, this was his second full year in the majors. He had enjoyed a 15-8 season in 1948, with a 3.14 earned-run average. He was off to an excellent start in 1949 and was already 6-1 with an ERA of 1.75. He’d started the season with back-to-back shutouts. Seven of his previous eight starts had been complete games. The one game he lost was a 4-3 defeat at the hands of the reigning World Series champion Cleveland Indians, in Cleveland, on May 7 – a game he took into the 12th inning before losing by one run. This was the same Indians team that had beaten the 1948 Red Sox in a single-game playoff that determined that year’s American League pennant winner.

Center fielder Sam Chapman singled off Parnell in the first inning of this Memorial Day Monday afternoon game at Fenway Park. Right fielder Wally Moses walked. Neither scored. Parnell induced three infield groundouts in the second inning.

Scheib walked third baseman Johnny Pesky in Boston’s half of the first inning, but he was the only Red Sox batter to reach base. Scheib got the side in order in the second, with all three outs on flies to the outfield.

The Athletics scored first, in the top of the third. After Parnell struck out the first two batters he faced, Moses “beat out an infield hit when Parnell failed to tag first in time after taking Billy] Goodman’s throw.”2 A’s first baseman Ferris Fain walked. Chapman got his second hit off Parnell, a single to left field. Moses scored. But alert defense limited the damage; Williams threw the ball in to shortstop Vern Stephens and Fain was out trying to go first to third on the play.

The Red Sox went down in order again in their half of the third, this time all on infield grounders.

Each team had one hit in the fourth. For the Athletics, it was a double to left field by second baseman Pete Suder. For the Red Sox, it was a single to right field by Pesky.

Shortstop Eddie Joost got Philadelphia’s only hit in the fifth. The Red Sox tied it up, 1-1, in the bottom of the fifth. First baseman Billy Goodman walked, leading off. Zarilla singled, moving Goodman to second. Catcher Matt Batts grounded back to Scheib, who threw to third base and got the lead runner. Scheib then struck out Parnell for the second out. But Dom DiMaggio singled to center field and Zarilla scored.

In the sixth inning, both sides were set down in order. Parnell also set down the Athletics in the top of the seventh, giving the Red Sox the chance to take the lead after the seventh-inning stretch. Goodman singled to left, benefiting from a “wind-blown fly ball.”3 Zarilla flied out, but Batts singled to right. On a 3-and-2 count, Parnell singled, also to right field, and Goodman scored. It was 2-1, Red Sox.

The lead didn’t hold. In fact, it tipped the other way. Joost – whose 149 walks in 1949 were second in the AL only to Williams’s 162 – led off the eighth with a walk. Moses doubled to center field, driving in Joost from first base. That tied the score, 2-2.

The A’s played for one run; Fain bunted Moses to third base. Chapman singled to center field and Moses scored easily. The score was Philadelphia 3, Boston 2. A’s manager Connie Mack – at age 86 in his 49th season at the helm in Philadelphia – perhaps began thinking of coming out of the doubleheader with a split. The next two batters made outs to end the inning.

The Red Sox came to bat in the bottom of the eighth. First up was Johnny Pesky. He walked on five pitches. Ted Williams was next.

The Boston Herald set the stage for Williams: “He was due. He hadn’t hit the ball out of the infield all day. He had walked twice in the first game but had slapped harsh drives into double plays twice in the opener and been thrown out by the over-shifted Philadelphia infield three times in the nightcap.”4

Athletics catcher Mike Guerra tried to distract Williams with chatter, Bill Cunningham of the Boston Herald reported. Perhaps it had worked some earlier on. This time Williams reportedly kept saying, “Yeah. Yeah,” as Guerra appeared to intensify his tale. As Cunningham told it, Guerra came out with the climax line on a 3-2 count. Williams swung, connected, and sent the ball on its way. As he crossed the plate, having circled the bases, he is said to have asked Guerra, “Yeah, and what did she say?”5

The Herald game story said, “The towering drive stayed up long enough to give the fans a thrill. When it came down it was well over the screen in front of the Sox bullpen.”6

The two-run homer tilted the scale back the other way. Now the score was 4-3, Red Sox.

After the home run put the Red Sox ahead, Stephens flied out. Bobby Doerr singled, but Goodman grounded into a 1-6-3 double play.

In the ninth inning, Parnell retired the first two batters on fly balls. Tod Davis pinch-hit for Scheib and grounded out, Pesky to Goodman, ending the game.

Parnell improved to 7-1. It was Scheib’s first loss of the year; he became 2-1.

Scheib later talked about Williams’s decisive at-bat. “I pitched him curveballs low and inside and got him out three times at bat. A story later was that he told the guys on the bench, if I started him again on curveballs, he would hit a home run … and he did. It beat me in the ball game.”7

Will Cloney’s next-day account in the Boston Herald quoted Red Sox catcher Birdie Tebbetts as saying that Williams had told him, “If he throws me a couple of curves, I’ll knock one clear into the bullpen.”8

Given the number of close games in which Parnell had pitched in 1949, Cunningham’s Boston Herald article declared him “a candidate for nervous prostration by the end of the season because he seems eternally doomed to nurse a one-run lead, or to toll unerringly while panting for even a one-run lead.”9

For his part, after the game Parnell asked reporters: “But how about my hitting? That’s eight games out of nine I’ve made one.”10

Parnell threw 27 complete games in 1949, leading both the American and National Leagues. His 25 wins also led both leagues. He was 25-7, and his 2.77 ERA was second only to Mike Garcia in the American League (2.36).

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

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/BOS194905302.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1949/B05302BOS1949.htm

Photo credit: Ted Williams, Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 In 1949 this was the only American League game in which no batter struck out. It happened twice in the NL that season. Thanks to Gary Belleville for this information.

2 Jack Barry, “Ted’s Homer Gives Sox Sweep,” Boston Globe, May 31, 1949: 16.

3 Barry.

4 Arthur Sampson, “Williams and Zarilla Jolt A’s; Phillies Keep Tribe in N.L. Tie,” Boston Herald, May 31, 1949: 1, 8.

5 Bill Cunningham, “Red Sox Must Fight for Top,” Boston Herald, May 31, 1949: 6. Cunningham said Williams swung on a 3-and-2 count, but all other accounts, such as Sampson’s game story and the Associated Press story, say that Williams swung at the first pitch.

6 Sampson.

7 Dave Heller, ed., Facing Ted Williams (New York: Sports Publishing, 2013), 177, 178.

8 Will Cloney, “Teddy Calls Winning Clout,” Boston Herald, May 31, 1949: 8.

9 Cunningham.

10 Ed Rumill, “Ted Calls the Turn on Killing Curve,” Christian Science Monitor, May 31, 1949: 16.