Month: August 2007

Did You Know? – Late-Season Red Sox Leads

As Boston continues to make its push to win the team’s first division title since 1995, a once-comfortable, double-digit lead has shrunk to five games through games played last night. While this may be a cause for concern to some Red Sox fans, records show that in franchise history, Boston has more often than not managed to stay the course and maintain this lead through the end of regular season play. Fifteen times, the Red Sox have held or shared the lead at the end of play on 22 August and gone on to win a division title or the pennant eleven times. The largest lead ever held at this date was a 13-1/2 game divisional lead in 1995, while Boston was tied for the lead in the American League pennant chase in 1967, two years before divisional play began.

Only three times has Boston failed to make the playoffs with a lead this late in the season, all within the remarkable span of five years. In 1974, the Red Sox held a 6-1/2 game lead over the second place Indians and a seven-game lead over the third-place Orioles, but a severe late-season slump put Boston in third-place at the end of the regular season, seven games behind Baltimore. Three years later, Boston held just a half-game lead over second-place New York. Despite going 26-15 over the remainder of the season, the Red Sox would tie for second with the Orioles as the Yankees went 28-11 over that same stretch to win the division by 2-1/2 games.

In 1978, the Sox owned a seven-game lead over the second-place Milwaukee Brewers and a 7-1/2 game lead over the third-place Yankees, but another collapse, marked by the infamous “Boston Massacre” in early September, dropped Boston as far as 3-1/2 games behind New York. An eight-game win streak to end the season put the two teams in a first-place tie, forcing a one-game playoff at Fenway Park. Unfortunately for Boston, thanks in part to light-hitting Bucky Dent’s three-run home run for New York, the visitors prevailed with a 5-4 win, leaving the Red Sox out of the playoff picture.

Only one other time has Boston held a lead at this point in the season and not gone on to win a division title or the pennant, but the Red Sox still made post-season play. In 2005, the club held a 3-1/2 game lead over second-place New York and the lead would get as high as four games on 10 September but, thanks in part to a late-season surge by the Yankees, the two teams would finish with identical 95-67 records. However, New York had won the season series between the two teams 10-9, with the Yankees needing just one win in a season-ending three-game series in Boston to ensure this, thereby giving the Bombers their ninth straight division title. However, the Red Sox would still end up in the post-season as the wild card team.

Today In History – Switch-Hitting Smith Helps BoSox Sweep

20 August 1967 – On this day forty years ago, Red Sox outfielder Reggie Smith hits three home runs in two games at Fenway Park as Boston not only sweeps a doubleheader against California, 12-2 and 9-8, but completes a four-game series sweep against the Angels. The four wins also avenges a sweep at the hands of the Angels in Anaheim one week earlier and moves the surging Red Sox to within 1-1/2 games of first place in the American League, but comes at a price; Tony Conigliaro is beaned by a Jack Hamilton pitch in the first game of the series and the young outfielder will miss not only the rest of the season but the entire 1968 campaign as well.

In the first game, Smith becomes the first player in franchise history to hit home runs from both sides of the plate in a single game; his first, a three-run shot, comes in the first inning off left-handed starting pitcher George Brunet and the second, a two-run blast, comes in the sixth off right-hander Pete Cimino. Rico Petrocelli and Carl Yastrzemski also homer as Boston scores five runs in the first and six runs in the sixth to make it a laugher.

In the nightcap, the Angels take a commanding 8-0 lead before Smith hits his third home run of the day, a solo shot off Angels starter Jim McGlothlin, with one out in the fourth inning. The Red Sox then score three in the fifth on Yastrzemski’s second home run of the day and four in the sixth to tie the score at eight runs apiece; third baseman Jerry Adair then completes the scoring with a solo home run into the netting above the Green Monster. In the ninth inning, the Angels attempt to salvage at least one game in the series thanks to a single and a double to open the frame that put runners on second and third. However, reliever Jose Santiago manages to pitch out of the jam by inducing a groundout to second base, a strikeout, and a international walk followed by a groundout into a force at second.

Did You Know? – Jack Wilson

Former Red Sox pitcher Jack Wilson may not be a name familiar even to die-hard Fenway fanatics and his career hardly made a blip on the radar as a professional ballplayer. In nine big-league seasons, seven with the Red Sox between 1935 and 1941, the University of Portland, Oregon product was 68-72 with a 4.59 ERA and 590 strikeouts. His best season, arguably, came in 1937 when he went 16-10 with an ERA of 3.70 in 51 appearances, splitting time between the starting rotation and the bullpen as he also saved seven games at a time when this was not a recognized statistic.

He may be better remembered, however, for what he did with his bat rather than with his arm. In September of 1935, Boston trailed Washington 7-0 in the first game of a Labor Day doubleheader at Fenway Park before the team rallied to tie the score at 8-8 after eight innings. Wilson then capped the comeback with a game-winning solo home run to dead center field, his first-ever major league home run, as the home team won by a final of 9-8 in 11 innings. Nearly five years later, pitching in the second game of a June 1940 doubleheader at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Wilson helped his own cause with two home runs as the visitors collected five home runs and 20 total hits en route to a 14-5 rout of the White Sox. These would be the only three home runs out of 15 extra-base hits that Wilson, a .199 hitter, would manage in 413 career at-bats.

Today In History – Dom DiMaggio’s Hitting Streak Ends

09 August 1949 – On this day 58 years ago, Red Sox outfielder Dom DiMaggio’s franchise-record 34-game hitting streak comes to an end as he goes 0-for-5 at the plate against Yankee hurler Vic Raschi, but Boston still wins the game 6-3 in front of more than 35,000 fans at Fenway Park behind eventual 23-game-winner Ellis Kinder. With one last chance to extend the streak in the bottom of the eighth inning, Dom’s line drive to center field is caught on the shoestrings by his own brother, Joe DiMaggio, who today still holds the major league record for the longest consecutive-game hitting streak at 56.

Known to teammates as “The Little Professor,” the five-foot-nine bespectacled outfielder looked more like he belonged in front of a classroom than on a baseball diamond, yet he was perhaps one of the best to play the outfield for Boston. Seven times, DiMaggio was named to the All-Star game during his 11 seasons in Boston, sandwiched around three years of service with the Coast Guard during the second World War. DiMaggio would also hit in 27 straight games in 1951 and, used primarily as a leadoff hitter, scored 100 or more runs seven times. Though his numbers were not enough to earn consideration for Hall of Fame induction, he was part of the original class of former players inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 1995.