May 7, 1946: Leon Culberson’s 14th-inning grand slam gives Red Sox 12th straight win

Leon Culberson didn’t start for the Boston Red Sox against the St. Louis Browns on May 7, 1946, but manager Joe Cronin had him bat for .164-hitting rookie third baseman Eddie Pellagrini in the bottom of the fourth inning.1

By then, St. Louis already had a 6-2 lead in the Tuesday afternoon game at Fenway Park. Boston starting pitcher Tex Hughson – a 20-game winner by the end of 1946 – had departed the game, too.2

But 10 innings later, the 27-year-old Culberson was the hero of the latest Red Sox triumph. 

Boston began the day with a 17-3 record, three games ahead of the second-place New York Yankees and eight in front of the fourth-place Browns. The Red Sox had their stars back after World War II and had kicked off the season with five consecutive victories.

An even longer streak began with a 12-5 victory over the Yankees on April 25. The May 6 doubleheader sweep of the Browns – capped by Dom DiMaggio’s ninth-inning RBI single, driving in Ted Williams – made it 11 Red Sox wins in a row. It was the club’s third walk-off win of the season, following a come-from-behind 10-inning win over the Philadelphia Athletics in the first game of an April 21 doubleheader and a 10-inning victory on May 2 over the Detroit Tigers on Williams’ home run.

Against Hughson, whose most recent start had been a no-decision in the walk-off win over the Tigers, the Browns opened the first inning with back-to-back singles. Catcher Hal Wagner’s error on a sacrifice loaded the bases and their first run scored on a double play. In the second inning, they added three more, to take a 4-0 lead. After shortstop Mark Christman tripled, Browns starter Jack Kramer singled him in and scored a few batters later on right fielder Joe Grace’s two-run single. Hughson was pulled from the game, and 30-year-old rookie Mel Deutsch – like Hughson, a University of Texas product – relieved.

The Red Sox halved the gap in the third when Johnny Pesky singled and Williams hit his fifth homer of the season into the bleachers a dozen rows over the home-team bullpen, but they then saw the Browns promptly re-establish their four-run advantage off Deutsch, on a single, double, and back-to-back run-scoring flies in the top of the fifth.3

It was still a 6-2 game going into the bottom of the sixth, but Boston loaded the bases with nobody out against Kramer, making his third start of the season after a complete-game win over the Athletics on May 2. Rudy York’s single and walks to DiMaggio and Wagner brought up Culberson, who had remained in the game at third after his pinch-hit groundout in the fourth. Culberson drove in York by grounding into a force at second base and, after another out, DiMaggio came home when George Metkovich singled to right.

The Red Sox were on their third pitcher by this time – Randy Heflin. He pitched two scoreless innings before departing for a pinch-hitter. Clem Dreisewerd took over mound duties starting in the top of the seventh.

A couple of errors by St. Louis shortstop Christman helped the Red Sox tie the game in the seventh. Kramer walked Williams, and York hit a one-out single off the left-field wall. Christman couldn’t get a grip on a ball hit by DiMaggio, and the bases were loaded on the error. Wagner grounded to first baseman Ed Stevens, who threw to Christman at second for a force on DiMaggio, but the relay to first base ended up in the Red Sox dugout for Christman’s second error of the inning. York scored, and it was a 6-6 game.

The Browns’ Tex Shirley took over pitching for St. Louis and retired the Red Sox in order in the eighth. St. Louis singled twice off Dreisewerd in the top of the ninth, but the score remained tied. Ted Williams – on his way to a majors-high 156 walks – walked in the bottom of the inning, but the next three batters all made outs, and the game went into extra innings.

For the next four innings, Shirley and Dreisewerd kept working. They both recorded one-two-three innings in the 10th. The Browns got a single and a base on balls in the 11th but couldn’t cash in. Metkovich hit a leadoff single in the Red Sox half but three outs followed.

Catcher Frank Mancuso singled to lead off the St. Louis 12th – the Browns’ 19th hit of the game – but Shirley hit into a forceout and Berardino hit into a double play. In the bottom of the inning, Boston just got a one-out single by DiMaggio. Culberson made the third out, leaving him 0-for-5 for the day.

In the 13th, Culberson was charged with an error on a ground ball hit by Grace, but the next three batters all made outs. The Red Sox got two runners on base, thanks to a walk by Metkovich and a single by Williams, but the score remained tied.

The Browns went down in order in the top of the 14th. In what turned out to be the longest bullpen outing of his four-season big-league career, Dreisewerd had pitched eight scoreless innings of relief, giving up six hits and a walk and striking out three. The Browns hadn’t scored since the fourth inning.

Darkness was approaching at Fenway Park, which was still more than a year from adding lights. Shirley had allowed but three singles in his first six innings. He walked York to begin the inning. DiMaggio singled to right field, and Grace “momentarily fumbled” the ball, allowing York to reach third.4 Boston had runners on first and third with nobody out.

Cronin inserted the swifter Andy Gilbert to run for York.5 St. Louis manager Luke Sewell stuck with Shirley, and ordered an intentional walk to Wagner.

That brought up Culberson. He didn’t wait a moment, but, as the Boston Globe reported, “plastered the first pitch by Tex Shirley right on the beezer. It was a line drive which just cleared the fence above the left-field scoreboard.”6 It landed in the netting, a grand slam to win the game.

He had “smacked…a fast ball, on the line barely into the left field screen,” added the Boston Herald.7

Culberson had gone 1-for-6 with an error, but the sixth-inning groundout and grand slam gave him five RBIs. The Red Sox had won their 12th game in succession, tying a team record set in 1939. They won their next three games as well, giving them a record of 21-3 after beating the Yankees in New York on May 10.  

The Red Sox won the American League pennant in 1946, their 104-50 record putting them 12 games ahead of the second-place Tigers at season’s end.8 They played the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series and lost in seven games, perhaps in large part due to an injury to Ted Williams while preparing for the postseason. Williams, the AL MVP with a .342 batting average and 123 RBIs, hit only .200 in the World Series with just one RBI, in Game Five.

Culberson hit .313 in 59 regular-season games in 1946, driving in 18 runs. He did play in the World Series and batted .222 with one RBI, a solo home run in Game Five.9 His final year in the majors was in 1948 with the Washington Nationals.

His walk-off grand slam was only the second in Red Sox history. The first had been hit by Jimmie Foxx on August 23, 1938, in the second game of that day’s doubleheader. Since Culberson’s, Red Sox batters have hit 20 others, through the 2025 season.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Photo credit: Leon Culberson, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and coverage of the game in a number of newspapers.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS194605070.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1946/B05070BOS1946.htm

Wallar, Glen L., “Browns Bow to Red Sox in Fourteenth,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 8, 1946: 3C.

Notes

1 Though Pellagrini had homered in his first big-league at-bat – the first Red Sox player to do so – on April 22, he only had eight more hits in his next 58 plate appearances. He didn’t return to the lineup until June 26. Sportswriter John Drohan wrote, “[W]hen Eddie Pellagrini fell down so badly in his hitting, Cronin had no alternative other than to put Leon in there and bench Eddie.” John Drohan, “Sox Slam Browns by Double Cross,” Boston Traveler, May 8, 1946: 28.   

2 By the end of the 1946 season, Hughson had become a 20-game winner for the second time in his career, with a record of 20-11, and ERA of 2.75, and the best strikeout-to-walks ratio in the American League: 3.37.

3 It was the third and final appearance of Deutsch’s major-league career, which lasted just 6 1/3 innings.

4 Burt Whitman, “Culberson Grand Slam Gives Sox 12th in Row, 10-6, in 14th,” Boston Herald, May 8, 1946: 1, 29.  

5 It was the final game of Gilbert’s eight-game big-league career.

6 Hy Hurwitz, “Culberson’s 4-Run Homer Tops Browns in 14th, 10-6,” Boston Globe, May 8, 1946: 1.

7 Whitman, 29.

8 The Browns finished in seventh place, 38 games behind the Red Sox, but still 17 games ahead of last-place Philadelphia.

9 Unfortunately, there is a perception that he may have contributed to the loss in Game Seven. Dom DiMaggio, a superior defensive center fielder, pulled a hamstring while driving in two Red Sox runs to bring Boston from behind and tie the game in the top of the eighth. Culberson replaced him in center. Enos Slaughter singled to start off the bottom of the eighth. Red Sox pitcher Bob Klinger got the next two Cards, then Harry Walker hit a ball to left-center which Culberson played routinely, never imagining that Slaughter – off with the pitch from first base – would try to go any further than first to third. But Slaughter was off on his “Mad Dash.” When Walker’s ball dropped in front of Culberson, he lofted it to Johnny Pesky at shortstop. No one had any idea that Slaughter was tearing around the bases and through the “stop” sign from the third-base coach, allowing him to score from first base with the run that won the World Series for the Cardinals. It was said that “Pesky held the ball,” but film of the play shows that Culberson fielded it with no sense of urgency. By the time Pesky got the ball, there was really no play to be had. Walker’s hit was scored a double, but it truly was a single in the view of St. Louis sportswriter Bob Broeg, who said he believed DiMaggio would have caught the ball in the first place. As to scoring the hit a double, Broeg says he told the three official scorers, “Gentlemen, you know what? By scoring this a double, you’ve taken the romance out of a great run!” Author interview with Bob Broeg on March 26, 2001.