May 8, 2004: Pokey Reese hits inside-the-park home run for Red Sox

It was still early in the 2004 season, but the teams playing this Saturday afternoon game at Fenway Park were off to very different starts. The visiting Kansas City Royals were 8-19 under manager Tony Peña and in last place in the American League Central Division. The host Boston Red Sox were 18-11 under Terry Francona and leading the AL East.

They had played a close game the night before, the Red Sox coming from behind with two runs in the eighth and three in the ninth to win, 7-6.

The starting pitchers on May 8 were veteran right-hander Curt Schilling for Boston and 22-year-old lefty Jimmy Gobble for the Royals. As with every game throughout the 2004 season, the park was sold out. The attendance for this game was 34,929.

Neither team got a base hit in the first or second inning, though Boston’s Johnny Damon reached on an error in the first and Jason Varitek on a base on balls in the second.

Kansas City stirred against Schilling in the third, as first baseman Ken Harvey led off with a single and catcher Benito Santiago – who had debuted in the major leagues in 1986, two seasons before Schilling – followed with another single. Second baseman Desi Relaford sacrificed them to second and third, but Schilling got a shallow fly ball and a pop fly to shortstop to end the threat.

The Red Sox scored the first run of the game in the bottom of the third with a one-out single to right-center by Johnny Damon followed by a double to left by second baseman Mark Bellhorn, scoring the speedy Damon.

In the top of the fifth, Santiago hit a solo home run into the Green Monster seats atop the left-field wall, tying the score, 1-1.

Red Sox shortstop Pokey Reese batted with one out in the bottom of the fifth. An outstanding defender and baserunner who had claimed Gold Gloves at second base with the Cincinnati Reds in 1999 and 2000, the 31-year-old Reese had signed with the Red Sox in December 2003 after thumb and hamstring injuries marred his two-year stay with the Pittsburgh Pirates.1

Against Gobble, Reese hit a line drive to right field. As Bob Ryan wrote in the Boston Globe, “The ball bounded off the low-lying angled fence and began an excursion toward the Red Sox bullpen, or thereabouts.”2

Globe colleague Nick Cafardo picked up the story: “It was a shot down the right-field line that hugged the railing. The fans didn’t touch it, and the ball darted past [Royals right fielder] Juan Gonzalez. [Gonzalez] finally retrieved it, but the relay was too late to beat the racing Reese, whose heart was beating rapidly as he slid into home.”3

It turned out to be the run that put Boston ahead to stay. Schilling buckled down and retired the side in order in the sixth and again in the seventh. He gave up only one more hit in the remainder of the game – a two-out single to center field by shortstop Angel Berroa in the top of the eighth.

The Red Sox padded their one-run lead by adding five more runs in the sixth. Gobble gave up hits to the first four batters he faced. The first was a double to center field by designated hitter Kevin Millar. Left fielder Manny Ramirez doubled down the line in left, driving in Millar.

First-pitch swinging, catcher Jason Varitek singled to left, scoring Ramirez. On Gobble’s first pitch to third baseman Bill Mueller, Varitek stole second base, his second steal of the game. On the next pitch, Mueller singled to center and Varitek scored.

Varitek, whose 10 stolen bases in 2004 were nearly half the 25 he swiped over a 15-season career, minimized any meaning of his two-steal game: “It was an aberration,” he said.4

Peña called in a relief pitcher, Jason Grimsley, who got first baseman Dave McCarty to ground out, second to first. Mueller took second on the play but was thrown out trying to advance on right fielder Gabe Kapler’s grounder to short.

Reese batted with two outs and Kapler on first. He drove Grimsley’s pitch over the fence in left field and into the Monster seats for his second home run of the game and a 7-1 Red Sox lead.

The blast earned Reese a curtain call. The Kansas City Star’s Bob Dutton wrote, “It was, no surprise, the first two-homer game of Reese’s career since he entered the game with just 41 over his previous 2,669 at-bats covering 785 major-league games.”

“This is the first time for [a curtain call], too,” Reese said. “[Kevin] Millar said, ‘If they start chanting your name, go out there.’”5

“I’m a speed guy,” Reese said afterward. “It’s good for me to have at least one inside-the-park job.”6

Reese was prized for his fielding, not his power. Millar offered: “He’s the best defensive player I’ve ever played with.”7

After Damon singled, Shawn Camp relieved Grimsley and got the third out by striking out Bellhorn on three pitches.

Camp retired the side in order in the bottom of the seventh. In the eighth, though, the Red Sox got two more runs when new Royals pitcher Nate Field walked the leadoff batter, Mueller, and McCarty hit a home run to right field.

Schilling did throw a complete game, a 9-1 win on five hits. He walked no one and struck out eight. “It was a cool day, and I felt strong,” Schilling said. “You know, that’s the situation I’ve been thinking about for five or six months – being on the mound at Fenway Park in the ninth inning with the lead and two outs. I wanted to finish this one.”8

Had he reassured his manager that he was feeling strong enough to work the full nine innings? Francona answered the question: “Oh, about 10 times – so did Wally [pitching coach Dave Wallace]. Everybody thought it was the right thing. He deserved to be in there.”9

It was the first complete game of the season for a Red Sox pitcher; for Schilling, it was the 80th of his career. His record improved to 4-2 in his first season with the Red Sox. He finished 2004 with 21 wins (leading both leagues) against 6 losses. He finished second in the Cy Young Award voting – for the third time in four years. Johan Santana was first (20-6, with an ERA of 2.61 to Schilling’s 3.26.)

There were heroics to come for Schilling in the postseason, though he suffered one mauling at the hands of the Yankees in Game One of the League Championship Series. Injured ankle repaired, with blood visibly seeping onto his sock, he held them to one run in seven innings in Game Six and won that game as well as Game Two of the World Series against St. Louis, allowing just one unearned run in six innings.

After the May 8 game, there was a lot of baseball yet to play before the Red Sox reached the postseason. Pokey Reese hit three home runs all season long, two of them in this one game.

Reese played in 96 regular-season games in 2004, starting regularly at shortstop from the beginning of the season until Nomar Garciaparra returned in June from an Achilles tendon injury. Reese contributed his trademark stellar defense to the Red Sox’ postseason push; Baseball-Reference.com credited him with 2.0 Defensive Wins Above Replacement, fifth best in the AL.

He finished 2004 by playing in 10 postseason games, mostly as a defensive replacement, and earning a World Series ring. It was Reese’s major-league swan song; he played in the minors for the Seattle Mariners in 2005, then retired after attempting a comeback in 2008 in the Washington Nationals organization.

Reese’s inside-the-park home run was the only one of the 2004 season for the Red Sox. David Newhan of the Orioles hit one against them on July 21, a two-run homer at Fenway Park in the top of the seventh inning in a game Baltimore won, 10-5.

Prior to Reese, the last Red Sox player to hit two homers in one game, with one of the two an IPHR was Tony Armas on September 24, 1983.10

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Russ Walsh 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 for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS200405080.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2004/B05080BOS2004.htm

Notes

1 Ron Cook, “Reese’s Play Gets the Fans in a Head-Bobbing Mood,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 19, 2002: B-1; David Heuschkel, “Sox Safer at Second: Reese Agrees to 1-Year Deal,” Hartford Courant, December 24, 2003: C6.

2 Bob Ryan, “The Catch on This Day His Increased Power,” Boston Globe, May 9, 2004: C1.

3 Nick Cafardo, “Nice Pokes by Reese,” Boston Globe, May 9, 2004: C9. Reese said he figured he could get three bases out of it, but between second and third saw third-base coach Dale Sveum waving him around third and he had to “kick it back in and almost didn’t make it.”

4 Nick Cafardo, “BP for Garciaparra, Then Some Defense,” Boston Globe, May 9, 2004: C9. In 1,549 major-league games from 1997 through 2011 (all for the Red Sox), Varitek stole a total of 25 bases. Ten of the 25 were in 2004.

5 Bob Dutton, “Boston Pokes Around Royals – Reese’s Two Homers Help Red Sox Rout,” Kansas City Star, May 9, 2004: C1.

6 Ryan, “The Catch on This Day.”

7 Ryan.

8 Dutton.

9 Francona added, “But, again, you tend to be a worrywart watching from where I am. He was fine. He never would have been in that game if I had any qualms.” Paul Harber, “Completely Satisfying,” Boston Globe, May 9, 2004: C8.

10 So wrote Heuschkel of the Hartford Courant. He added that Reese was the 24th player to have hit both home runs in consecutive at-bats, the most recent being Robin Yount in 1982 with the Brewers. Dave Heuschkel, whose column also ran in the Stamford (Connecticut) Sunday Advocate, May 9, 2008: C3. Yount’s 1982 game was on June 19 at Tiger Stadium.