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TED COMES BACK FROM KOREA
WITHOUT LOSING A STEP ...
The Red Sox score 17 runs on 20 hits
June 17, 1953 ... Willard
Nixon pitched his third straight full distance game at Fenway Park,
as the Red Sox beat up the Detroit Tigers, 17 to 1. The Red Sox
compiled their American League record equaling hit total of 20 for
the season, plus a new high of seven runs scored in one inning.
Nixon missed throwing a shutout by one putout. Using a slow curve and a speedy
slider efficiently, he held the Tigers to five scattered hits. The run against
him was unearned. In his last three starts he had given up only one earned run.
Dick Gernert hit two home runs and knocked in four runs. Tom Umphlett cracked
out four consecutive singles and Billy Goodman had a perfect afternoon with
three hits and three walks. Floyd Baker, elevated to the cleanup spot, hit
across three runs. The Red Sox got at least one hit in every inning against four
Detroit pitchers.
Going into the ninth, Nixon had pitched 21 scoreless innings. He should have
had a second straight shutout game. Opening the ninth, Walt Dropo dribbled a
routine ground ball down to first base. Floyd Baker's throw into the dugout
allowing him to reach second base. Nixon walked the next batter, his sixth pass
of the day, but then set down the next two hitters on fly balls. Pat Mullin then
singled to center to bring Dropo across. Nixon ended the contest with a
strikeout.
Gernert lined a two run homer into the nets in the first inning. The Sox
chased Tigers starter Dick Marlowe in the second inning, following Umphlett's
single and Johnny Lipon's double. Nixon singled both his teammates home and
Billy Goodman drew a walk to end Marlowe's day.
The Sox scored seven in the fourth inning. Goodman opened with a double and
Jimmy Piersall reached when Dropo booted his ground ball. Walks to Gernert and
Baker forced home one run and Sammy White singled home two more runs.
Consecutive hits by Umphlett, Lipon, Nixon and Goodman produced the additional
runs.
The Red Sox were on the verge of clinching their hit mark in the eighth
inning against Ray Herbert, the last of the Tiger pitchers. They had five runs
across on four hits and two free passes, when George Kell, who had replaced Gene
Stephens in the top of the eighth, flied out. White was on first base and took
off with Kell's swing and wound up as a doubleplay victim to end the Sox
offense. |
