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| Camilo Pascual set an Opening Day record with 15 strikeouts in the Washington Senators' 10-1 romp past the Boston Red Sox on April 18, 1960. |
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| President Dwight D. Eisenhower throws out a pitch to open the American League baseball season,April 18, 1960, for the game between the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox. Vice President Richard Nixon is seated at left. It was the seventh and final time "Ike" threw out an Opening Day pitch. (Associated Press photo) |
By Phil Ellenbecker
It was Monday, April 18, 1960, and the original Washington Senators were for only one more year in the 's capital before Calvin Griffith them up and moved them to the Twin Cities in Minnesota.
But Camilo Pascual, with a of high-powered from his teammates, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who threw out his seventh Opening Day , and the other 28,326 on something to remember on the original Senators' Opening Day at Griffith Stadium.
Pascual, a Havana, Cuba, , an Opening Day with 15 and pitched a three-hitter with three as the Nats romped to a 10-1 victory over the Boston Red Sox.
The right-hander topped the Opening Day mark by a fellow , Walter Johnson, in 1910, and the stands. pitchers have since threatened the Opening Day mark with 14 Ks, twice by Johnson, Randy.
Only a one-out solo in the second by Ted Williams, the last of his immortal 19 in the major leagues, kept Pascual from throwing a shutout.
Gary Geiger Williams' with a windblown double, but Pascual struck out the two batters and then the Red Sox hitless until Pumpie Green's single to start the eighth. Pete Runnels then a , but Pascual fanned Frank Malzone, for the third in the game, to end the .
That Pascual with Johnson, and he the by fanning Gene Stephens leading off the ninth. Stephens, too, was a third-time whiff victim. Pascual him 2-0, then threw
three past the Boston right . Marty Keough and Geiger managed to but out on a out and ground out, , to end the game.
The only other time before the eighth that the Red Sox had a runner in scoring position was the seventh. After Pascual had retired seven straight batters, Stephens drew a walk, stole second and to third on a throwing error by Earl Battey. But Pascual struck out Geiger and got Don Buddin on a ground out. Their only other base was Williams in the fourth after drawing a walk.
Meanwhile, the Senators were tattooing Red Sox pitching with four homers inside what ranks as the toughest park in the history of major league baseball to homer in, according to baseballreference.com.
Jim Lemon got the parade with a two-run blow in the second off Red Sox starter Tom Sturvidant with Don Mincher aboard. Pascual doubled in Billy Consolo later in the inning to make the score 3-1 Senators.
The Nats blew it with a three-homer, five-run fifth for an 8-1 advantage. Bob Allison led off the inning with a solo homer. Battey brought in Lemon after a double with a two-run shot.
Consolo, who'd been acquired from the Red Sox the year before after seven years in Boston, followed Battey with homer, off Al Worthington, who'd just relieved Sturvidant. Consolo would hit only two more homers the rest of the year. That's how well the ball was flying out of Griffith this day. Consolo's career high in homers was four in 1957.
The Senators tallied their final run of the inning on a walk to Billy Gardner, a double by Lenny Green and an error by Malzone on a ball by Killebrew that allowed Gardner to score.
The Nats added two runs in the seventh without the aid of the long ball when Battey singled in Harmon Killebrew and Allison. Killebrew had singled and Allison doubled, and the bases were loaded after Lemon was walked intentionally. Battey followed with his hit that rounded out the scoring.
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| Earl Battey, shown on his 1963 Topps baseball card after the Washington Senators had moved to Minnesota, went 2-for-4 with a homer and four RBIs in the Senators' 10-1 Opening Day victory over Boston on April 18, 1960. |
Battey finished the day 2-for-4 with four RBIs. Lemon was 2-for-2 with two RBIs and two runs scored, Consolo was 2-for-3 with two runs, and Allison was 2-for-4 with two runs.
The Senators got all this sock without Killebrew or Mincher, both very capable power hitters at the No. 3 and No. 4 spots in the batting order, weighing in with extra bases. Mincher, who was making his major league debut after being acquired along with Battey from the Chicago White Sox, would later in the decade have five 20-homer seasons. Killebrew was already established as a power threat, having led the American League the year before with 42 homers, the first of six such league-topping seasons.
While the Senators were muscling up and trotting around the bases, the Red Sox were walking back to the dugout. Besides Malzone's and Stephens' three whiffs each, Pascual struck out Red Sox pitchers three times, and Green and Geiger each fanned twice.
Pascual recorded a strikeout in each inning, including three (although not in order) in the second and fourth, and two in the sixth and eighth.
Pascual, 26 and his seventh season, was just beginning to emerge as one of the dominant pitchers in the American League at this time. The five-time All-Star ranked second in the league in strikeouts in 1959, sixth in '60, first in both '61 and '62, and second in '64. He was second in ERA in '59 and third in '63. He was fourth in victories in '59 and sixth in '61, and had 20-win seasons in '63 and '63. In WAR, a modern metric that attempts to summarize a player's total to their team in one statistic, he led the AL in '59, and was second in '62 and third in '63, according to baseballreference.com. In WAR for pitchers, he was first in '59, second in '61, fourth in '62 and first in '63.
Pascual's main weapon was a rainbow curve. Williams, who ought to have known, said it was the "most feared curveball in the American League for 18 years." A 2011 Bleacher Report article by Matthew Fairburn rated it the fourth-best curve of all time.
The only batters in the Red Sox lineup Pascual didn't strike out April 18, 1960, were Runnels and Williams. The only time Wiliams was retired was when he ran into his batted ball in front of the plate in the seventh on what was a true rarity a true rarity for Williams --
a attempt. He was in left field by Keough in the bottom of the inning and finished 1-for-2. (Giving way to a defensive caddie was a frequent occurrence this season. Williams played nine innings in little more than a quarter of the 113 in which he appeared.)
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| Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox knocks the ball out of the park in the second inning against the Washington Senators on April 18, 1960. Williams' Opening Day, opening at-bat shot launched a triumphant final season that concluded with Williams homering in his final at-bat in his final game. (Associated Press photo) |
By homering his first time up, in the second inning, Williams began a fitting, poetic bookend to his final season that a home run in his final at-bat Sept. 28.
Williams smashed a 3-2 over the 31-foot centerfield wall
between the 400- and 418-foot markers. It was reported to be the longest home
run hit at Griffith Stadium since Mickey Mantle hit two runs over the same wall on Opening Day,1956, Shirley Povich in The Sporting News, according to a Society for American Baseball Research Games Project article by Lou Hernandez.
The home run by Williams was his 493rd lifetime, tying him with Lou Gehrig on the all-time home run list. He'd finish the year with 29 homers and 521 lifetime, tied for 21st on the career ledger.
By homering his first time up he completed a phenomenal string of Opening Day success in which he batted successfully in 13 of 14 games with a .444 average, .880 slugging average and three homers.
Williams' running into his bunt was part of some first-game sloppiness that also included a dropped foul fly by Red Sox catcher Haywood Sullivan, another dropped foul fly by Mincher (on a ball hit by Sullivan), Lemon getting for base runner's interference on a play at first and Lemon getting picked off at third. The teams combined for four errors.
But there was nothing rusty about Pascual's outing, but as Hernandez , Pascual at this time was a "pitching machine." During a 10-month period from 1959 to February 1960, including pitching in the Cuban Winter League and the Caribbean Series, he threw 410 innings and racked up 363 strikeouts and a 34-15 record.
Triumphant as that debut against the BoSox was, ill fortune befell Pascual later in the year against Boston as he wrenched an arm in a scuffle July 7 and was sidelined for three weeks. His 1960 totals in wins, innings pitched and strikeouts were his lows in a six-year period starting in 1959. After going 17-10 the year before, he finished 1960 at 12-8 with 143 strikeouts and a 3.03 ERA in 151 innings.
He bounced back to average 17 wins a season the next four years, at the same time his team began to ascend the American League standings after its move to Minnesota. The Twins finished second in the AL in 1962 and third in '63, and after slipping to sixth the next year, they the franchise's first pennant since 1933.
Ironically, though, a decline for Pascual began with that pennant year as arm problems set in. He won a combined 17 games in '65 and '66 and never won more than 13 in a season again. He retired after the 1971 season with an 18-year mark of 174-170 with a 3.63 ERA. He had 21 games of 11 or more strikeouts, his top mark of 15 in 1961.
Later , when Pascual's right arm was right, he was downright nasty. Just ask Ted Williams.
“Nobody in this league can compare with that pitcher," Teddy Ballgame said after Pascual's historic Opening Day performance in 1960.
Sources:
Play-by-play: https://www.
Camilo Pascual biography: https://sabr.org/
Toughest parks to homer in: https://www.quora.com/In-
Best curve balls: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/585147-mlb-power-rankings-the-top-10-curveballs-in-baseball-history Pascual's 1960 injury: Dell Sports Magazine Baseball, 1961 issue, Dell Publishing Co.
Video of game: https://www.youtube.com/
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