May 30, 1951: Ted Williams and Vern Stephens both have their ‘greatest day’ against Yankees in 15-inning Red Sox win

“Ted Williams had his greatest day against the Yankees.”1

So wrote Harold Kaese of the Boston Globe. For most Boston Red Sox fans, any win against the New York Yankees has always seemed like a good day. To win a game in a walkoff is always a thrill. That the game ran 15 innings made it a little sweeter. To sweep a doubleheader is even better.

Ted Williams was a force in the May 30, 1951, doubleheader. He had seven hits in the twin bill, and all but one were for extra bases. He drove in five runs. He also pulled off a heads-up baserunning play to score a run.

The Red Sox came into the Wednesday afternoon doubleheader riding an eight-game winning streak, including a 3-2 win over the Yankees on May 28. The Chicago White Sox, winners of 12 in a row, were in first place, percentage points ahead of the two-time defending World Series champion Yankees; Boston was three games behind, in third place.

The first game on May 30 featured Chuck Stobbs (4-1) starting for Boston and Eddie Lopat (8-0) for Casey Stengel’s Yankees. The Red Sox got off to a quick 3-0 lead in the first inning. After Stobbs got all three Yankees to fly out in the top of the first, center fielder Dom DiMaggio led off with a single. Right fielder Billy Goodman sacrificed him to second. Ted Williams lifted a fly ball to Yankees first baseman Johnny Mize. Shortstop Lou Boudreau walked. Third baseman Vern Stephens hit a three-run homer to left field, his fifth of the season.

The Yankees got two runs back in the top of the second. After one-out singles by Mize and left fielder Hank Bauer, second baseman Jerry Coleman doubled off the wall in left-center, and both Mize and Bauer scored.

The next run in the game was Boston’s, in the bottom of the third. Williams reached on an infield single to Coleman. Boudreau hit the ball back to Lopat, who threw to second and forced out Williams. Stephens singled. First baseman Walt Dropo singled, and Boudreau scored for a 4-2 lead.

Nobody for either team reached base in the fourth.

In the top of the fifth, Lopat singled and third baseman Gil McDougald walked, but the score remained 4-2 until the Red Sox added two more in the bottom of the inning. Williams kicked things off with a double to center field. Boudreau laid down a “dinky sacrifice bunt” toward first base. It rolled slowly about 30 feet down the line—and Williams scored all the way from second base. Yankees catcher Yogi Berra had left home plate uncovered and couldn’t get back in time.

Third base coach Eddie Mayo explained: “Ted was on his own on that one. He rounded third, held up just long enough, and then saw a chance to score because the catcher and the pitcher were so busy waiting for the ball to roll foul. It was real alert baseball.”2

Stephens lofted a fly ball to second base for the second out, but Dropo singled to left. Boston second baseman Bobby Doerr singled, and Dropo moved up to second base. Catcher Les Moss doubled, and Dropo scored. Stobbs made the third out with a fly ball to rookie Mickey Mantle in right, but Boston’s advantage was 6-2.

Yogi Berra reached on a Boudreau error to start off the sixth. Center fielder Joe DiMaggio walked. Mize grounded out, both runners moving up. Bauer hit a sacrifice fly to right field, scoring Berra and cutting the deficit to 6-3. Mantle struck out. Reliever Jack Kramer retired the Red Sox in order in the bottom of the sixth.

In the seventh inning, the Yankees scored seven runs, going from a three-run deficit to a 10-6 lead. Coleman led off with a home run, his second of the season. Pinch-hitter Billy Martin walked, and Red Sox manager Steve O’Neill replaced Stobbs with reliever Ellis Kinder. McDougald singled. Shortstop Phil Rizzuto sacrificed, advancing both baserunners. Berra flied out to right; Martin tagged and scored. Joe DiMaggio singled off the wall in left, tying the game.

Mickey McDermott relieved Kinder. Mize singled, Bauer doubled, driving in both Mize and DiMaggio. It was 8-6. Jackie Jensen pinch-hit for Mantle (who struck out five times on the day) and hit his sixth homer of the season to left field. That made it 10-6. Harry Taylor came in as the fourth pitcher of the inning for the Red Sox. Martin batted again, this time flying out to right field.

In the bottom of the seventh, with Tom Ferrick pitching, Boudreau walked. Stephens singled. Dropo doubled to right, driving in Boudreau. Doerr walked, loading the bases. Moss popped up to first base. Johnny Pesky pinch-hit for Taylor. He grounded out to first base, unassisted, but Stephens scored. Dom DiMaggio grounded out. The inning ended New York 10, Boston 8.

Ray Scarborough retired the Yankees in order in the eighth. In the bottom of the inning, Billy Goodman singled to center off Ferrick. Ted Williams tied the game, 10-10, with a home run over the Red Sox bullpen and into the right-field bleachers. It was Williams’ 11th homer of the season, the most in the AL.

Spec Shea got the last out of the inning, and the game became a battle of the bullpens. From the 9th through the 14th innings, Scarbrough and Shea pitched scoreless ball. Shea gave up three hits and four walks, and Scarborough gave up three hits and one walk.

The Red Sox loaded the bases in the bottom of the 10th. Williams hit a one-out double, followed by walks to Boudreau and Stephens, but Dropo flied out to Berra. Doerr—ducking to avoid a pitch—accidently had the ball go off his bat and bounce to Mize at first base, Shea covering to take Mize’s toss for the third out. 3

Joe DiMaggio tripled off the center-field wall leading off the 12th, but he remained at third while two Yankees flied out to infielders, Jensen walked, and Coleman struck out. Doerr made what the Boston Herald called a “sensational catch [that] saved the … game” on Gene Woodling’s bid for a go-ahead hit.4

“Doerr turned at the crack of the bat, snatched Woodling’s blooper, spun and fired the ball back to the infield, holding [DiMaggio] on base,” reported the Boston Globe.5

With two outs in the bottom of the 15th inning, Stephens hit his second home run of the game, into the left-field screen, winning the game for Scarborough.

“I guess the pitch was about chest-high and maybe outside a little,” Stephens said afterward. “It might have been called a ball.”6

The second game pitted Boston’s Willard Nixon against New York’s Vic Raschi. It was a 9-4 win for the Red Sox. Williams singled, doubled, and tripled and drove in three. His double in the seventh inning gave the Red Sox their fourth run, tying the game, just as his home run had tied the first game. Two batters later, Stephens drove him in with the go-ahead run. Stephens drove in the winning run in both games and had a six-hit day. It was also, Kaese noted, Stephens’ best game against the Yankees.7

The Red Sox home winning streak had now run to 10 games. The crowd numbered 35,824, said to be the largest crowd in two years.

The home run that Williams hit in the first game was his fourth his career off Tom Ferrick. Each one of the four was hit while Ferrick was working for a different club—respectively the Philadelphia Athletics, Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns, and Yankees.8

A brief standalone note in the Boston Globe read, “The Yankees must have set some kind of record when they pitched to Ted Williams 17 times in their three-game series with the Red Sox and did not give him a base on balls. Whenever Williams came up with men on base, first base was never open.”9

Williams hit .318 with 30 home runs in 1951. Stephens hit .300 with 17 homers. The Red Sox finished third in the AL with an 87-67 record, 11 games behind the Yankees, who went on to win their third consecutive World Series title.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by John Fredland.

Photo credit: Vern Stephens, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and

Keane, Clif. “Red Sox Slam Yankees in Twin Bill, 11-10 and 9-4,” Boston Globe, May 31, 1951: 1, 4.

McGowen, Roscoe. “Red Sox Beat Bombers, 11-10, 9-4: First Battle Ends in Fifteenth,” New York Times, May 31, 1951: 14.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS195105301.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1951/B05301BOS1951.htm

Notes

1 Harold Kaese, “Ted Comes Through With Greatest Day Ever Against Yanks,” Boston Globe, May 31, 1951: 5.

2 Will Cloney, “Vern, Ted, Ray, Bill and Bob Play Hero Roles in Twin Win,” Boston Herald, May 31, 1951: 18. The “dinky sacrifice bunt” was Cloney’s phrase. The Boston Globe ran a photograph of Williams scoring. See “Scores from Second on Bunt,” Boston Globe, May 31, 1951: 17.

3 Clif Keane, “Red Sox Slam Yankees in Twin Bill, 11-10, 9-4,” Boston Globe, May 31, 1951: 1.

4 Cloney.

5 Keane.

6 Keane.

7 Kaese.

8 Bill Nowlin, 521- The Story of Ted Williams’ Home Runs (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Rounder Books, 2013), 180.

9 “Yank Pitchers Face Williams 17 Times, Give Him No Walks,” Boston Globe, May 31, 1951: 4.