September 5, 1951: One last flash from the Red Sox before their season falls apart

There was a pennant race going on. This Wednesday night game drew 58,462 to Yankee Stadium. Only percentage points separated the New York Yankees (82-48, .631) and Cleveland Indians (84-50, .627), with the Boston Red Sox just four games behind (77-51, .602) and still 20-some games to play.

The Indians were hosting the Tigers. Casey Stengel’s Yankees were hosting Steve O’Neill and the Red Sox, who had proved a formidable opponent so far in 1951, having gone 9-4 against the Yankees. They hadn’t faced each other since early July, though.

Red Sox left fielder Ted Williams had been out for a few days with the grippe, not having played since August 30. He was still weak but asked into the game and said that O’Neill could take him out if he wasn’t handling it well.1 “My legs are wobbly, but I’ll try to go four or five innings,” he said before the game.2

Stengel started Vic Raschi (17-8, 3.63). After both center fielder Dom DiMaggio and shortstop Johnny Pesky grounded out in the first, Williams walked. Bobby Doerr, the second baseman, singled to left field.

On a 2-and-2 pitch, the versatile Billy Goodman – playing third base after filling in for Williams in left for both games of the Red Sox’ September 3 doubleheader sweep of the Washington Nationals – hit a ball over first baseman Johnny Mize and down into the right-field corner for a two-base hit, and both Williams and Doerr scored, giving Boston a quick 2-0 lead. Raschi got first baseman Walt Dropo to fly out to right field for the third out.

O’Neill started 21-year-old rookie left-hander Leo Kiely from nearby Hoboken, New Jersey. Kiely was awaiting induction into the Army but was allowed to finish the season; he came into the game 4-3 with a 3.03 earned-run average. Yankees right fielder Hank Bauer flied out to left to begin the bottom of the first. Shortstop Phil Rizzuto flied out to center. Gene Woodling, playing left field, struck out.

Right fielder Charlie Maxwell struck out looking in the Red Sox second. Catcher Buddy Rosar singled, but Kiely hit into a double play.

Center fielder Joe DiMaggio singled to lead off the Yankees’ second inning. Catcher Yogi Berra popped up to first base. Third baseman Gil McDougald singled, DiMaggio stopping at second base. Mize grounded to his counterpart at first base, and Dropo threw the ball across the diamond to Goodman, forcing DiMaggio. Second baseman Jerry Coleman hit a grounder to his opposite number, Doerr, who threw to first for the third out.

With two outs in the top of the third, and on a 1-and-1 pitch, Ted Williams, as the Boston Herald reported, “got a toehold … and it was a jackpot wallop. The ball bounced off a railing fronting the top deck of the three-tiered stand in right field.”3 It had been hit right down the line and struck a girder supporting the second tie of the grandstand.4 “He powdered the ball deep into the right-field stand,” wrote the New York Times.5 It was 3-0, Red Sox.

Kiely struck out Raschi and then Bauer in the bottom of the inning, both taking called third strikes. Rizzuto grounded to first, Kiely taking the throw for the putout.

A leadoff single by Goodman was all the Red Sox managed in the fourth. The Yankees got singles from Woodling and Berra, but in between Joe DiMaggio hit into a double play to dampen the rally. McDougald grounded, third to first, for the final out.

The Red Sox added a fourth run in the top of the fifth. Again it began after two outs. Pesky walked – and wound up on third base, after a wild pitch and an errant throw past second base and into center field by Berra. Ted Williams walked. On a count of 0-and-2, Doerr singled to deep left-center field, scoring Pesky for a 4-0 lead. Stengel replaced Raschi with Joe Ostrowski, who struck out Goodman.

Mize singled in the fifth, but Coleman hit into a 4-6-3 double play and Ostrowski was called out on strikes.

After Dropo grounded out in the top of the sixth, both Rosar and Maxwell singled, but then Kiely hit into the fourth double play of the game. The Yankees were three-up and three-down in their half.

Williams singled in the top of the seventh. The Yankees went down in order again: Joe DiMaggio, Berra, and McDougald.

The Red Sox had a total of 11 hits, with at least one base hit in every inning. In the top of the eighth, it was Charlie Maxwell who had the honor. He singled with two outs, but the score remained 4-0 heading into the bottom of the eighth. That’s when the Yankees finally got to Kiely.

It started with an error by Kiely, who couldn’t get a grip on a little topper Mize sent his way. Stengel put in Joe Collins as a pinch-runner. Kiely struck out Jerry Coleman. Stengel had rookie Mickey Mantle, a month shy of his 20th birthday and back in the majors after a midseason demotion to Triple-A Kansas City, pinch-hit for Ostrowski. Mantle was batting .259 at the time. He drew a base on balls (Kiely’s only walk of the game), with Collins moving up to second base.

Bauer singled and the Yankees had their first run. Then Rizzuto singled and they had their second. With runners on first and second, still just one out, and Woodling up, O’Neill asked Mickey McDermott to relieve Kiely. McDermott hadn’t pitched since August 14, but he did the trick here, getting two outs on his first pitch. Woodling shot a “hot liner to Johnny Pesky, and Pesky took it with one step toward second base.”6 He jogged over to the bag Mantle had left and completed the unassisted double play.

In the ninth, Bob Kuzava pitched for New York. O’Neill wanted to stick with McDermott, so the pitcher batted for himself and popped up to Rizzuto. Dom DiMaggio doubled, but then Pesky lined out to Rizzuto, who – as Pesky had just done in the bottom of the eighth – stepped onto second base for the double play.

In the bottom of the ninth, McDermott got Joe DiMaggio to pop up to Pesky. Berra flied out to Dom DiMaggio in center field. McDougald hit a foul pop fly caught by Dropo and the game was over.

The Ted Williams home run – his 28th of the season and his fifth and last off Raschi in his career – was the game-winner for the Red Sox.7 Williams also walked twice, singled, and got extra credit for his outfield play. He took one ball from Hank Bauer right up against the fence in left field.

The loss cost the Yankees a bit in the standings, but they hosted Washington for the next four games and won them all, getting themselves back in a tie for first place. They dropped back again, tied on the 16th, took a half-game lead on the 17th, spent a couple of games tied again, and then went 8-2 over their last 10 games, beating Boston in seven of the eight games the two teams played. The Yankees finished strong, five games ahead of the Indians for their third American League pennant in a row.

The Red Sox came in third, but 11 games behind due to losing 12 of their last 13 games.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas E. Merrick and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Ted Williams, Trading Card Database.

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/NYA/NYA195109050.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1951/B09050NYA1951.htm

Notes

1 Hy Hurwitz, “Red Sox Knock Yankees Off Top, 4-2,” Boston Globe, September 6, 1951: 1.

2 Ed Costello, “Kiely, Red Sox Knock Yankees Off Peak,” Boston Herald, September 6, 1951:1.

3 Hurwitz, “Red Sox Knock Yankees Off Top, 4-2.”

4 Costello, “Kiely, Red Sox Knock Yankees Off Peak.”

5 John Drebinger, “Bombers Lose, 4-2, as 58,462 Look On,” New York Times, September 6, 1951: 40.

6 Hurwitz, “Red Sox Knock Yankees Off Top, 4-2.”

7 A “game-winning home run” is defined here as a home run that provides a game’s final margin of victory, giving the winning team at least one more run than the opposing team scored. For example, if a two-run homer increased a team’s lead from 2-1 to 4-1, and they went on to win 4-3, it qualifies as a game-winning home run. (This is different from the definition of “game-winning RBI” in baseball’s official statistics from 1980 through 1988, which counted as “game-winning” the RBI that provided a winning team the lead that it never relinquished.)