Ready Teddy: Williams shined on Opening Day

Fellow Boston Red Sox slugger Jimmy Foxx greets Ted Williams' after Williams' three-run homer in the first inning April 14, 1942, in Boston. Williams went 3-for-4 in the Red Sox's 8-3 season-opening victory over the Philadelphia Athletics. (Getty Images)

By Phil Ellenbecker

  One thing among many you must say for Ted Williams: When Opening Day came around, he was ready to answer the bell.

  Williams hit safely in 13 of 14 Opening Day games for the Boston Red Sox, with a .444 average and .880 slugging average, three homers, seven doubles, a triple, 14 RBIs and 13 runs scored.

  Only in the 1958 opener, when he was limited to a pinch-hit appearance, did he fail to get a hit.

  Because of injuries and the Korean War, Williams did have to miss four Opening Days in the 1950s. But when he could take his place in the lineup, he delivered, right through his final season. Williams swatted a homer his first time up at Washington in his swan-song campaign of 1960.

  Even when slowed by a broken foot at the start of his historic 1941 season in which he batted .406 -- last player to hit .400 -- he put in a pinch-hitting appearance on Opening Day. And he delivered a game-winning single in a 7-6 victory over the Senators at Boston's Fenway Park.

  Even when he'd sat out for three full seasons because of World War II, Williams was ready when all the boys were back in 1946. On his second time up of the season, he hit a solo homer to help the Red Sox beat the Senators 6-3.

  Here's a look at Williams' best Opening Days:

  -- Probably his best opener came in his final year before entering the service, on April 14, 1942, before only 9,901 at Fenway. Teddy Ballgame went 3-for-4 with a homer and three RBIs in an 8-3 victory over the Philadelphia Athletics.

  Ted wasn't a drinker, but he certainly started the year with a belt -- a three-run homer off Phil Marcheldon three batters into the bottom half of the first inning, with Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky aboard. Pesky, who became known as "Mr. Red Sox" during a lengthy career in Boston as a player, manager, coach and broadcaster, and a lifetime .302 hitter, was making his major league debut. He'd finish the season with a rookie record 205 hits before, like Williams, entering the service for three years.

  Williams added run-scoring singles in the second and seventh innings and walked in the sixth. He grounded out to first base in the fourth, with Pesky on third, for the only blemish at bat on the day.

  Postscript: The 1942 Red Sox finished with a 93-59 record, good for a second straight runner-up finish in the American League, nine games behind the New York Yankees. It was a nice improvement over 84-70 and 17 games back of the Yanks in '41. They slid back in the war years but in 1946 won their first pennant since 1918.

When it came to Opening Day, Ted Williams came out swinging. The Boston Red Sox legend hit safely in 13 of 14 Opening Day games with a .444 average and .880 slugging average, three homers, seven doubles, a triple, 14 RBIs and 13 runs scored.

  -- The April 18, 1950, lid-lifter also got off to a rousing start, but the 31,822 on hand at Fenway left shell-shocked. In a game between bitter rivals who'd battled it out to the final day for the American League pennant the year before, the Red Sox blew leads of 9-0 and 10-4 as the defending world champion New York Yankees scored 11 runs in the final two innings to snare a 15-10 victory.

  Williams' day mirrored his team's. The defending AL MVP, who'd received his award before the game, finished 2-for-3 with three runs scored and two RBIs. But he flied out to center field off Joe Page in his final turn at bat, leading the bottom of the ninth, after the bottom had fell out for Boston.

  His season started with a run-scoring double to left off Allie Reynolds, a not-often-seen opposite-field hit for Ted. After he drove in DiMaggio, he came around to score on Bobby Doerr's single, and the 1950 Red Sox were off to a 3-0 opening-game lead.

  Williams drove in DiMaggio again in the second, this time with a single to center, giving Boston a 4-0 lead.

  When last seen pitching, Reynolds had thrown 12 shutout innings in the 1949 World Series coming off a 17-6 season. But he didn't have it this day, giving up seven runs and leaving with none out in the fourth.

  "The Chief" found a way around Williams in the fourth by walking him, but he was gone after Al Zorilla's single scored Williams, giving Boston a 6-0 lead.

  The Yankees kept pitching around Williams as Fred Sanford in the fifth and Don Johnson in the seventh each issued him bases on balls. Williams scored his third run of the day for a 10-4 lead in the seventh when Billy Goodman drew a bases-loaded walk.

  Then the roof caved in on Boston as the Yankees exploded for nine runs in the eighth off four Red Sox pitchers. The rally was punctuated by a two-run double by Johnny Mize and two-run singles by Billy Johnson and Billy Martin. For Martin it was his second at-bat in his first major league game -- and his second hit of the inning.

  “An explosion that all but leveled Bunker Hill,” The New York Times' John Drebinger wrote of the Yankees' uprising, as quoted by Alan Raylesberg in a Society for American Baseball Reseach Games Project article.

   It wasn't a good day for pitching standouts on either side. Red Sox starter Mel Parnell, coming off a season in which he'd led the major leagues with 25 wins, gave up eight runs and left with none out in the eighth.

  Much had been attached to just the first of 154 games. “(The) pennant could be lost here and now,” the New York Times' Arthur Daley wrote before the game.

 In the aftermath, the Boston Traveler declared that if the Yankees “win the American League pennant — and now they are supremely confident that they will — and if the Red Sox don’t win the pennant — and nobody’s sure that they will — the opening game of the American League season will have settled the pennant race.” 

   Postscript: Well, the game didn't quite decide the pennant. After finishing one game behind the Yankees in 1949, the Red Sox were four back and in third place at the end of 1950. Williams' absence for two months after he shattered his elbow making a diving catch against the wall in the All-Star Game probably cost the BoSox the flag.

  -- Williams' last big Opening Day came before 32,563 at Fenway on April 17, 1956. He went 3-for-4 with an RBI and a run scored in a 8-1 Red Sox victory over the Baltimore Orioles.

  Williams walked off Bill Wight and scored on Mickey Vernon's single in the first inning to give Boston a 2-0 lead. He doubled to left off Babe Berrer to score Goodman in the eighth for Boston's final run, then gave way to a pinch runner.

  In between he doubled with two outs in the second off Hal Brown but was left stranded; grounded out back to Brown in the fourth; and singled to center with two out and stayed there in the sixth.

  Postscript: By this time the Red Sox were no longer pennant contenders. They finished 1956 in fourth place for a fourth straight season at 83-71, 13 games behind the Yankees.

 -- Williams went 2-for-4 with a double and two RBIs on April 15, 1947, in a 7-6 win over Washington before 30,822 at Fenway. But missed opportunities, including a couple on the basepaths, cost Williams a chance at an even bigger day.

  Williams started the year with a single to right off Early Wynn that scored -- who else? -- DiMaggio and gave Boston a 1-0 lead. But when Doerr followed with a double, left fielder Joe Grace combined with second baseman Jerry Priddy on a relay to catcher Al Evans to throw out Williams trying to score. It was out No. 3.

  Williams doubled in the third but was thrown out trying to stretch it into a triple, the relay going Buddy Lewis in right to Mark Christman at shortstop to Cecil Travis at third. An Eddie Pellagrini homer earlier in the inning had given Boston a 2-0 lead.

  With none out and runners at first and second and the Red Sox still up 2-0 in the fifth, Williams went out on a ball to Priddy. Wynn retired Williams again in the seventh on a grounder to Priddy, but this time Pesky was on third and Williams got him home for his second RBI, increasing Boston's lead to 6-2.

  The Senators rallied to tie it in the eighth, but Doerr's sacrifice fly with one out in the bottom of the inning scored Pellagrini with what proved to be the winning run.

  Wynn, in the seventh year of his 23-season Hall of Fame career, walked Williams intentionally to load the bases for Doerr, after Wynn had wild-pitched Pesky to second.

  Postscript: After winning their pennant in 1946 and falling to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, the Red Sox faded to third in 1947 with an 83-71 mark, 14 games behind the Yankees.

  Williams had two other Opening Days with two hits. He was 2-for-3 with an RBI in a 3-2 win at Philadelphia in 1949. He was 2-for-4 with a double in a 1-0 win at Washington in 1940.

  In the next year he signaled Opening Day heroics to come when, despite being hobbled by a broken foot, he batted for Earl Johnson in the ninth inning and singled in Frankie Pytlak to give the Red Sox their 7-6 win over Washington on April 15, 1941.

  Although he went only 1-for-5 on April 16, 1946, at Washington, Williams' lone hit, in his first game back after three years in the service of Uncle Sam, was certainly momentous.

  After grounding out to first in his first at-bat, Williams homered his next time up against Roger Wolff, with two out in the third. That gave Boston a 2-0 lead on the way to a 6-3 victory.

 In the only year in which Williams failed to hit safely on Opening Day, Williams batted for Don Buddin in the eighth and grounded out to second off Johnny Kucks in 1958. The Yankees defeated the Red Sox 3-1.

  Two years later Williams launched his final season by connecting for a solo homer off Washington's Camilo Pascual in the second inning. It was the only run Pascual gave up in a 10-1 win on a day when he struck out an Opening Day record 14 batters. Williams went 1-for-2 with a walk before giving way in the seventh to a defensive replacement.

  The home run by Williams was his 493rd lifetime, tying him with Lou Gehrig on the all-time list. He'd finish the year with 29 homers and 521 lifetime, tied for 21st on the career ledger.

   It was a fitting final opening statement by Williams and also a fitting start to his last season, which ended with a homer in his last at-bat.

  His bat never rested.

Sources:

Ted Williams career (with links to daily breakdowns by year): https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/W/Pwillt103.htm

1950 opener: https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/april-18-1950-yankees-storm-back-9-run-deficit-beat-red-sox-opening-day

Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com

  

  

8-15-51: Mays amazes early with catch, throw

New York Giants rookie Willie Mays, three years before "The Catch" in the 1954 World Series, made a defensive play perhaps as spectacular on Aug. 15, 1951. He made a running catch and threw out a runner at the plate to help the Giants to a 3-1 victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers near the start of their historic rally to win the National League pennant. 

By Phil Ellenbecker
  The 1951 New York Giants were 18-18 without Willie Mays, 80-41 with him as they rose from fifth place in the National League to pennant winners after beating the Brooklyn Dodgers 2-1 in a momentous tiebreaker playoff.
  So it can be fairly said that "The Say Hey Kid" made a difference after he was brought up from Minneapolis, where he was hitting a sizzling .477. And it can also be fairly said that Mays, with his effervescent personality and love of the game, inspired the Giants just by his presence. Perhaps it was karma that Mays was in the on-deck circle when Bobby Thomson hit his "Shot Heard 'Round the World" to beat the Dodgers in the decisive playoff game.
  But Mays, launching a 22-year career that resulted in many calling him the greatest player of all time, also had a tangible effect on the Giants in 1951, winning NL Rookie of the Year honors after hitting .274 with 20 homers and 68 RBIs.
  He was at his inspiring best, perhaps -- tangibly, intangibly, cosmically and karmically -- on Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 15, against the Dodgers.
  Mays made a spectacular catch and throw from center field to erase a Brooklyn threat in the eighth, with the game tied 1-1. He then singled and scored on Wes Westrum's homer in the bottom half of the inning off Ralph Branca, the forever ill-fated pitcher who gave up Thomson's playoff homer. That gave the Giants a 3-1 victory before 21,007 at the Polo Grounds.
  Mays is most noted for "The Catch," and his ensuing throw, in the opening game of the 1954 World Series, a play that may have taken the wind out of the sails of the 111-game winning Cleveland Indians in the Giants' upset sweep that year. But his robbery of Carl Furillo on this day may have been just as jaw-dropping and impactful -- maybe more.
   "The finest defensive play of his career might have been on August 15, 1951, when Mays was a 20-year-old rookie who had played fewer than 80 games in the major leagues," Dan Fields wrote in an article for the Society for American Baseball Research's Games Project.
  With the score tied 1-1, runners on first and third and one out, Mays flagged down at full speed a drive to right-center field by Furillo and threw out Billy Cox at the plate trying to score after tagging up. Cox had reached base on an infield single, went to second on Jim Hearns' balk and moved to third on Branca's single.
  Mays had shaded Furillo to left-center, so he had to range far to gather in Furillo's fly. And he was facing away from the position he needed to be in to make the throw. Then he let fly.
  “It looked plenty deep enough to bring in Cox, especially since Mays had to run a long way to get the ball,” wrote Joseph M. Sheehan in the New York Times the following day. “But Willie, making a complete whirling pivot on the dead run, cut loose with a tremendous peg that boomed into (Wes) Westrum’s mitt in perfect position for the catcher to tag the sliding Cox."  In a 2009 Bleacher Report article, Harold Friend stated, "It was one of the greatest plays of all time. It wasn't one of the greatest CATCHES of all times. It was one of the greatest PLAYS of all time. Hundreds of outfielders could have caught the ball, but only Willie Mays could catch the ball and throw out the runner."

New York Giants catcher Wes Westrum snapped 1-1 tie by homering with Willie Mays aboard in the eighth inning, giving the Giants a 3-1 win over the Brooklyn Dodgers on Aug. 15, 1951. Westrum was also on the receiving end of a miraculous throw from Mays, a half-inning earlier, that put out Billy Cox at home and completed an inning-ending double play. 

   And then as karmically seems to happen following great defensive plays, Mays was first up when the Giants batted. He singled to center, his first hit in three trips to the plate. Branca struck out Thomson, but Westrum then struck the decisive blow with his 16th of 20 homers he had on the season, over the left-field scoreboard.
  Hearn retired the Dodgers' No. 2, 3 and 4 hitters in order to close out the win. He got Pee Wee Reese to ground out, Duke Snider to strike out, and then appropriately enough, got Andy Pafko on a fly to Mays.
  The Giants still trailed the Dodgers by 10 1/2 games in second place in the NL following their fifth straight victory, but they were also on their way to a streak that would reach 16 straight wins, pulling them within five games of the Dodgers. They hardly let up the rest of the way, going 21-7 to forge the tie and force the playoff.
  After the Giants took a 1-0 lead in the first inning on Alvin Dark's double and Monte Irvin's single, neither team made much headway against Hearn or Branca until the later innings.
  Hearn had shut out the Dodgers on two hits through the sixth, singles by Furillo and Cox, who at 2-for-3 was the only player on either team with multiple hits. Branca limited the Giants to an Eddie Stanky single through the seventh after their run-scoring hits in the first.
  In fact, Hearn was nearly perfect until the seventh after Furillo had led off the game with a single. From there through the sixth he faced the minimum 18 batters, with Westrum throwing out Cox trying to steal to end the second.
  He'd retired 12 straight when Reese led off the seventh with a single, extending his hitting streak to 22 games. A wild pitch by Hearn, who hadn't walked a batter, allowed Reese to second. Hearn got the next two batters, Snider and Pafko, before Roy Campanella tied the game by grounding a single to center that plated Reese.
  Hearn finished with a six-hitter and no walks, with five strikeouts, as he improved to 11-7. 
  Branca dropped to 10-4 with a five-hitter, walking one and fanning five.
  Lost in the late-game heroics may have been an alert play by Dark leading off the Giants' half of the first. When he lined a hit to Furillo in right, he took a wide turn at first and Furillo threw behind him. Dark kept on going to second for the double, moved to third on Don Mueller's ground out and scored on Irvin's single for the 1-0 margin that held up until the seventh.
  Dark came over to the Giants along with Eddie Stanky from Boston in 1950, and those two along with the addition of Mays and others brought a more aggressive style of play more to manager Leo Durocher's liking.
  Furillo can't be faulted for being overly aggressive with his bid to nab Dark at first. The strong-armed "Reading Rifle" was attempting to add to what would be major league-leading assist total of 24 for outfielders that year, the highest in five seasons.

Billy Cox went 2-for-3 in the Brooklyn Dodgers' 3-1 loss to the New York Giants on Aug. 15, 1951. He was the only player in the game with multiple hits, but he'll be remembered as the victim of Willie Mays' historic catch and ensuing throw that retired Cox at home to end the top of the eighth inning, with the game tied 1-1.

  Nor can Cox, known in the day as perhaps the best defensive third baseman in the game, by any means be faulted for getting caught in the crosshairs of Mays' throw in the eighth. Who would have really thought Westrum would be waiting for him after an on-the-money hurl from Mays? "Westrum, not imagining a play at home, hadn’t bothered to remove his mask," Fields wrote. According to James S. Hirsch's definitive biography of Mays, Westrum “estimated that when the ball reached him, it was traveling 85 mph, and if the umpire had called it, it would have been a strike.”
  Said Giants first baseman Whitey Lockman, who was lined up as relay man and watched the peg sail by, "It wasn't a throw, it was a pitch."
   "The crowd's initial reaction was silence," Friend wrote. "No one believed what he saw. Then reality set in, and there was a tremendous roar."
  Cox's reaction? "Oh, shit," Friend wrote.
  Furillo, he of the prodigious arm himself,  wasn't ready at the time to give too much credit to the rookie.
  “Luck. That was the luckiest throw I ever saw in my life," Furillo said, as quoted in Jason Aronoff's "Going, Going … Caught! Baseball’s Great Outfield Catches as Described by Those Who Saw Them, 1887-1964." "He can try that 50 times and he won’t come close again.”
  Except he tried it again and succeeded on a similar throw on his "Catch" in the 1954 Series. Except he didn't throw anybody out that time, just kept Larry Doby from scoring from second on a ball that was long enough at the cavernous Polo Grounds for a runner to advance two bases normally on a fly out to deep center.
  In both cases, Willie couldn't afford to stop to set for the throw home, having to catch and fling in one motion.
  Eddie Brannick, the Giants’ traveling secretary, who had been with the team for more than 40 years, provided some perspective on Mays' 1951 throw.
  “I’ve seen (Tris) Speaker, (Joe) DiMaggio, (Terry) Moore, all of them,” Brannick said, referring to legendary defensive center fielders who'd preceded Mays. “But I’ve never seen anything like that throw. This kid made the greatest throw I ever looked at."

Sources:

Play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1951/B08150NY11951.htm  and https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-15-1951-willie--defensive-gem-caps-giants-victory
More on the catch:  https://bleacherreport.com/articles/201754-willie-mays-greatest-play-was-against-the-brooklyn-dodgers-in-1951
Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com

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