September 5, 1927: Last-place Red Sox beat the Yankees, 12-11, in 18 innings

The 1927 New York Yankees were a legendary team. The “Murderers’ Row” Yankees won 110 games, in what was then a 154-game season, finishing a full 19 games ahead of the second-place Philadelphia Athletics and then sweeping the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. Lou Gehrig drove in 173 runs. Babe Ruth drove in 165, thanks in part to his record-setting 60 home runs. It was the Yankees’ most wins in a season until 1998, when they won 114 in a 162-game schedule. The ’27 Yankees’ winning percentage of .714 remained a franchise record as of 2023.1

But they didn’t win all their games.

The 1927 Boston Red Sox finished in last place, 59 games behind the Yankees, with a record of 51-103. This wasn’t that unusual a spot for them to find themselves in at season’s end. From 1922 through 1930, the Red Sox finished last in the eight-club American League every year except 1924, when they finished seventh.2

Coming into a Labor Day doubleheader with the Yankees, the Red Sox had won just two of 17 games between the teams, and ended the season 4-18. They had won 6-3 in New York on April 19 and 3-2 in a walk-off in Boston on April 30.3 In the meantime, New York had won 10 in a row over the Red Sox, including a five-game sweep at Fenway Park in June. The Yankees had a 90-38 record, easily the best in the National and American Leagues; the Red Sox were the worst at 40-86.

Given makeup games due to earlier rainouts, there were two games scheduled for Monday, September 5, and two games to be played the following day, September 6.

The September 5 doubleheader drew a massive crowd to Fenway Park – said to have been 36,000 at a time when capacity was around 28,000.4 Photographs show the crowd on all sides of the outfield and along both foul lines, and particularly so in front of the left-field wall with the people packed in perhaps 15 to 20 deep. The Associated Press noted, “Hundreds stormed the gates after the sale of tickets was stopped.”5 Some 20 foot and mounted police corralled the crowd and the game started only 20 minutes late. Ground rules made a ball hit into the crowd a double.

The New York Times observed, “Ostensibly, the crowd had turned out to see Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig continue their great struggle in the Great American Home Run Derby, as no one in Boston hardly could be expected to become enthused over a mere engagement between the Yanks and the Red Sox. But as the Sox bobbed up with a surprising amount of energy … interest gradually shifted from the derby to the game itself.”6

Red Ruffing was the Red Sox starter for manager Bill Carrigan.7 It was the 22-year-old Ruffing’s fourth year with the Red Sox. He was 5-13 at this point in the season.8 The Yankees loaded the bases with two outs in the top of the first inning without getting a base hit, but second baseman Tony Lazzeri struck out. Ruffing was the immediate beneficiary of three Red Sox runs scored off Yankees starter George Pipgras. A ground-rule double and a walk set the stage for a two-run double to left-center by right fielder Jack Tobin. Left fielder Wally Shaner singled, scoring Tobin.

Ruffing put up another scoreless inning in the second, but the Yankees, managed by Miller Huggins, struck back in the third. Back-to-back singles by center fielder Earle Combs and shortstop Mark Koenig put runners on first and third with none out. Combs scored on a fly out by left fielder Babe Ruth, the slugger’s 125th RBI of the season.

Gehrig, the first baseman, then homered into the right-field bleachers to tie the score. The homer also tied Ruth for the league lead, each of them at 44.9 Right fielder Bob Meusel singled, stole second, and scored the go-ahead run on Lazzeri’s single.

New York made it a 6-3 lead in the fourth. After two outs, Koenig doubled and both Ruth and Gehrig walked. Meusel hit a ground-rule double to drive in two.

The Red Sox showed they still had some life by scoring four times in the bottom of the fourth. Shaner doubled; first baseman Phil Todt drove him in with a single. Another single, followed by a safe bunt by Ruffing, loaded the bases. After walks to shortstop Jack Rothrock and third baseman Buddy Myer scored two Red Sox runs and tied the game, Joe Giard relieved Pipgras. A 5-2 force play erased Ruffing at home. Rothrock scored on a groundout, and it was 7-6, Red Sox. Myer was out trying to steal home.

The Red Sox added an eighth run in the fifth on a bases-loaded groundout by Ruffing, who maintained the two-run lead by holding the Yankees scoreless from the fifth through the eighth.

Carrying the 8-6 lead into the ninth, Ruffing struck out Lazzeri for the first out, then walked pinch-hitter Ray Morehart. Pat Collins’ popup to second left Ruffing and the Red Sox one out from victory.

Bob Shawkey had taken over pitching for the Yankees in the bottom of the seventh. After the fifth, neither team scored again until the top of the ninth. With two outs and a runner on first, Ben Paschal pinch-hit for Shawkey. He hit a ground-rule double, putting Yankees on second and third. Combs then hit another ground-rule double, down the left-field line, tying the score, 8-8. Combs’ hit was one that “Shaner could have easily hauled in if not for the people on the grass.”10

The Red Sox failed to score in the ninth; indeed, Wilcy Moore relieved Shawkey and didn’t allow a hit from the ninth through the 14th.

Neither team scored for the next seven innings. It was still 8-8 after 16 innings. The Yankees left the bases loaded in the 12th when Ruffing struck out Lazzeri for the fourth time in the game. Ruffing stranded Yankee baserunners on third in the 14th and 15th innings. Hal Wiltse replaced Ruffing to start the 16th; he got Lazzeri to ground out with two outs and runners on second and third to end yet another New York threat.

Finally, the Yankees broke the stalemate with three runs in the top of the 17th. Collins walked with one out. He was on second after a sacrifice. Combs singled him home; it was his fifth hit of the game. Koenig hit a ground-rule double into the crowd in center field. On an error by Wiltse, Combs scored and Koenig took third. Ruth walked. Gehrig singled and Koenig scored, but Ruth was thrown out trying to take third base.

After the three-run outburst, a good portion of the crowd filed out of the park. But improbably, Boston bounced right back with three runs of its own. Second baseman Bill Regan led off with a ground-rule double off the wall in left. Tobin singled to center, scoring Regan.

Waite Hoyt, who had pitched a complete game three days earlier against the Philadelphia Athletics, relieved Moore. Shaner hit a ball high off the wall in left, but – like Regan’s – it, too, fell into the crowd for another ground-rule double. Tobin scored on a grounder to second by Todt. Pinch-hitter Bill Moore hit for catcher Grover Hartley. He hit a high fly to right, which Meusel could not haul in. It drove in Shaner with the tying run. It was 11-11.

In the top of the 18th, Lazzeri walked with one out, but was caught stealing. There was no scoring.

With one out in the bottom of the 18th, Hoyt surrendered a double to Myer, into the crowd in left, and another to center fielder Ira Flagstead, who hit Hoyt’s pitch into the crowd in right, driving in Myer with the winning run.

The Yankees had outhit the Red Sox, 21-20. Gehrig’s homer was the only home run. The Yankees had eight doubles and the Red Sox had nine. Eleven of the two-baggers were ground-rule doubles, six for New York and five for Boston. Ruth had just one hit, a double to right in the 12th. Ruffing struck him out twice, “which, next to seeing him knock the ball out of the lot, pleases the crowd most.”11

At 18 innings, this was the longest game to date in Fenway Park history. The prior high had been 17 innings played in a scoreless tie against the St. Louis Browns on July 14, 1916.12

The opening game of the September 5 doubleheader lasted 4:20, and there was another game to play.13 There were no lights at Fenway Park, so it lasted only five innings, played in 55 minutes. Wiltse, who had won the first game. working three innings, pitched all five for the Red Sox, allowing five runs on seven hits. Urban Shocker pitched for the Yankees, allowing three hits and no runs. The game was called on account of approaching darkness. The Boston Herald estimated that only about 5,000 fans remained.

The Red Sox won one of two games played the next day, losing the first one 14-2, but then winning 5-2.14

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

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

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS192709051.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1927/B09051BOS1927.htm

Notes

1 At season’s end, the Yankees had four players with 100-plus RBIs, setting a franchise record that they bested in 1936, when they had five players – which still stands as a major-league record.

2 The 1924 Red Sox edged out the Chicago White Sox by a half-game, to escape another season in the cellar. 

3 The first win saw veteran Bob Shawkey lose his first decision of the year in what proved to be his final season. A four-time 20-game winner, he just didn’t have it any more but finished his career 195-150. The Red Sox scored six runs, while Boston pitcher Hal Wiltse allowed only three. The 10 games Wiltse won in 1927 were the most he ever won in a single season. In the April 30 game, Wiltse won again. He had allowed the Yankees one run in the fourth and one more in the top of the ninth, on a single by Yankees pitcher Urban Shocker. Shocker had shut out Boston through eight, but gave up back-to-back singles and saw both baserunners advance on a bunt single. A double by Jack Rothrock tied the game. Reliever Wilcy Moore walked one intentionally, got two outs, but then walked home the run that won the game for the Red Sox.  

4 Philip J. Lowry, ed., Green Cathedrals (fifth edition) (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2019), 47.   Figures differ greatly, the Boston Herald claiming it was 38,000 and that as many as 40,000 were turned away. Burt Whitman, “38,000 Watch Sox Win 18-Inning Game from Yanks, 12-11,” Boston Herald, September 6, 1926: 1. A subhead read, in part, “Turn away almost 40,000.” Whitman wrote that “15,000 would be a conservative figure [for] those who stood or sat in impromptu places.” He noted the sadness of many who had come from great distances to take in the holiday game – “all the way from Maine or the tip of Cape Cod, leading little freckle-faced kids by the hand, kids with faces that fairly beamed at the prospect of seeing Babe Ruth and the rest of the famed Yank horde.” Three gates behind the center-field bleachers were broken down by the crowd, who swarmed into the park. The official attendance for the entire season was 305,275. Thus perhaps close to 12 percent of the year’s crowd came to this one game.

5 “Red Sox Defeat Yanks after 18-Inning battle; Hugmen Annex Nightcap,” Schenectady (New York) Gazette, September 6, 1927: 14.

6 John Drebinger, “Yanks Bow in 18th, but Split 2 Games,” New York Times, September 6, 1927: 28.

7 Carrigan had managed the Red Sox to World Series championships in 1915 and 1916 as catcher-manager, then left baseball until he was enticed back to run the team in 1927 for three more years.  

8 Almost three years later, Ruffing was traded to the Yankees and spent 15 years with them (231-124), and was ultimately named to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

9 Though it had been years since Ruth had played for the Red Sox, he remained a crowd favorite and a big draw. Comparing the crowd reaction to Gehrig and Ruth, Whitman wrote, “The customers yelled more vigorously when Babe made a no-account double in the first game than when Gehrig blasted out his homer.” Whitman also wrote that Ruth had said in between games that the huge crowd “bothered his vision.” Whitman, 16.

10 Cecilia Tan & Bill Nowlin, The 50 Greatest Red Sox Games (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2006), 59. The authors noted that the immediately preceding pitch likely also would have been caught for an out, but it landed foul – in the crowd.

11 James C. O’Leary, “More Than 34,000 Jam Fenway Park,” Boston Globe, September 6, 1927: 1, 10. O’Leary wrote how the crowd loudly followed every swing, and that “[h]e played well in the outfield, as he always does, and made several fine catches.”

12 In franchise history, the 24 innings played on September 1, 1906, remain the record, that game a 4-1 loss to the Philadelphia Athletics. In Fenway history, the longest game was the 20-inning game of September 3-4, 1981 – an 8-7 loss to the Seattle Mariners.

13 During the first 16 seasons of play at Fenway Park, most games were played in less than two hours. This game, at 4:20, was much longer than the 3:32 time of the second game on September 29, 1923, when the Red Sox completed a 16-inning win, concluding a two-game sweep of the visiting Yankees.

14 In the first game on September 6, Gehrig homered once and Ruth homered twice. Starter Tony Welzer was tagged for 13 of the 14 runs. Herb Pennock got the win. The second game went the full nine innings (played in 1:26). Jack Russell earned the win; Dutch Reuther bore the loss. The two Yankees runs came on a leadoff homer by Ruth in the top of the ninth, followed by Gehrig’s triple and a single by Meusel. Russell then retired the next three.