by John Powers
That was enough for the front office, which decided to go with bonus babies in 1953. Except for Williams, who was on sabbatical above the 38th parallel, the 1946 pennant winners were gone. Doerr had retired after the 1951 season and Johnny Pesky had been dealt to Detroit. When Boudreau elected to go with rookie Tom Umphlett in center, Dom DiMaggio called it a career in early May after playing only three games that season. “After all the good years I’ve had,” said the 36-year-old, “I’m not going to be sitting on the bench.”
Boston had finished in the second division for the first time since the war, attendance had dropped by nearly a half-million in three years and the Yankees had won four more rings. Investing in the past was a losing proposition, Yawkey concluded. “We take the long view,” said Boudreau. “We can’t expect to be a pennant contender for at least two years.”
Yet the “Green Sox”—the league’s youngest bunch in 1953—still managed to be entertaining, winning 35 one-run games and clubbing the Tigers by 16 and 20 in a two-day June outburst at Fenway. In the second bashing, Boston rolled up a record 17 runs in the seventh inning alone, batting around twice. “Who made the three outs?” cracked pitcher Skinny Brown in the wake of the 23-3 victory.
Not that the sound-and-light show counted for much. The Sox already were in fourth place, 14 games behind New York, and were still there when Williams returned from Korea at the end of July and promptly whacked a pinch-hit homer against the Indians. “There’s no doubt about it—flying jet planes improves the eyesight,” Yankees Manager Casey Stengel cracked after Williams knocked in four runs during a Labor Day weekend doubleheader at Fenway. “Baseballs now look as big as grapefruits to Williams.”
Red Sox catcher Lou Berberet took time out to mingle with the Topsfield girls’ softball team during its Fenway visit in 1958.
Ted Williams launched yet another Fenway home run on September 26, 1954, against the Washington Senators.
“I can’t wait to see the new park when it’s done. I want Boston to have the best. If any city needed a new park, it’s Boston. I won’t shed a tear.”
—Ted Williams, Hall of Fame Red Sox slugger
ECHOES OF “SWEET GEORGIA BROWN”
The Harlem Globetrotters made a pair of stops at Fenway Park in the mid-1950s, and the antics of the famed troupe included star dribbler Reece “Goose” Tatum punching a basketball into the crowd behind the third-base dugout, part of a faux-baseball skit performed in deference to the ballpark surroundings.
The exhibition on July 29, 1954, was part of a 12-city “Summer in America” tour organized by Globetrotters founder and promoter Abe Saperstein. The famed basketball road show was in its 27th season of play and fresh off a tour of South America. The hoop doubleheader drew a crowd of 13,344. Preview stories alluded to the possibility of attracting the largest basketball crowd ever in New England, but the attendance turned out to be smaller than a typical sellout crowd at Boston Garden.
Still, Francis Rosa of the Globe reported that fans “thrilled to the gyrations of Tatum, Leon Hillard, and Sweetwater Clifton” of the Trotters, who incidentally won the game, 61-41, over a collection of NBA players and draft picks that included future Hall of Famers Paul Arizin and Frank Ramsey and local stars Togo Palazzi and Ronnie Perry of Holy Cross. A preliminary game between the Boston Whirlwinds and the traveling House of David squad ended in a 47-46 win for the Whirlwinds, although Rosa noted that none of the winning team’s players were actually from Boston.
The doubleheader was played on the Globetrotters’ own portable court, which measured 80 feet by 50 feet and covered much of the infield, stretching from just in front of home plate almost to second base. The six-ton court was cutting-edge for the time and included a skid-proof surface developed by the U.S. Navy that would allow the Trotters to play in driving rain and other daunting conditions.
A small crowd of 3,332 watched the Globetrotters defeat the Honolulu Surfriders, 45-38, the following August at Fenway. The Trotters “clowned and capered their way through another victory,” though the team was in transition and did not feature their longtime stars Tatum or the retired Marques Haynes. Among the opponents, the best-known player was Clyde Lovellette of the Minneapolis Lakers. The evening also featured a variety of vaudeville performers before the game and at halftime.
HOSTING THE BRAVES
The Boston Braves built the 40,000-seat stadium known as Braves Field in 1915, and they were its primary tenants until the end of the 1952 season when the team left for Milwaukee. The Braves played second fiddle to the Red Sox for nearly all of their Boston years, even though their National League franchise began in 1876, a quarter-century before Boston’s American League entry was founded in 1901.
Ironically, when the “Miracle Braves” rallied to win their only World Series in 1914, they played their World Series home games at nearby Fenway Park because Braves Field, just off Commonwealth Avenue about a mile away, was under construction. It would not be ready until the following season, and in 1915 and 1916, the Braves returned the favor and allowed the Red Sox to host their own World Series games at new Braves Field, now the much larger stadium. The ballpark would host its only Braves’ postseason games in 1948, when the Braves lost the World Series in six games to the Cleveland Indians. The Indians had beaten the Sox in a one-game playoff the previous week to spoil the prospect of Boston’s only two-team “trolley” World Series.
Though the Boston Braves were marginal at best on the field (with only 11 winning seasons in 38 years at Braves Field), they had their share of historic feats. The longest major-league game in history was played at Braves Field on May 1, 1920, when they battled the Brooklyn Dodgers to a 26-inning, 1-1 tie before the game was called because of darkness. It was also the site of several Boston baseball firsts, including the Hub’s first night game and the first televised game, and the Braves also had the first black player to wear a Boston uniform: Sam Jethroe in 1950, who was named NL Rookie of the Year that season. The National League’s longest hitting streak, 37 games, was compiled by the Braves’ popular Tommy Holmes in 1945, though Pete Rose broke the record years later.
The Braves’ most successful seasons came too late—from 1945-48. Beyond that, they were a tough draw, attracting only 245,000 in 1943. It wasn’t until 1947 that the team drew a million fans in a season.
Meanwhile, local football fans had an equally fickle relationship with another Braves team. The NFL’s Boston Braves played their inaugural season (1932) at Braves Field, and then moved to Fenway Park, changing their name to the Boston Redskins. The team headed to Washington four years later because of a lack of support in Boston.
A sold-out Braves Field on Gaffney Street in Allston. Though crowds of 43,000-plus at one time packed Braves Field to watch the likes of Warren Spahn pitch—including 1.4 million in 1948—owner Lou Perini moved the team to Milwaukee in 1953 because of dwindling attendance.
WHEN FEAR STRUCK OUT: JIMMY PIERSALL
No one who lived in Boston in the 1950s can forget Jimmy Piersall, the center fielder for the Red Sox. A swift, graceful, handsome athlete, he would be off at the crack of a bat, racing toward the wall at Fenway Park, running, straining, and then timing his leap to spear the ball at the last moment.
One day in the summer of 1953, Roger Birtwell, a Globe sportswriter not given to excesses, was so moved by Piersall’s fielding that he wrote: “35,000 persons sat spellbound in Cleveland Municipal Stadium yesterday and watched the greatest exhibition of outfielding in major-league history as the Red Sox beat Cleveland, 2-0, 7-5, and went into third place.”
But Piersall suffered from mental illness, reportedly bipolar disorder. In his rookie season of 1952, he was involved in fights with the Yankees’ Billy Martin, and teammates Mickey McDermott and Vern Stephens. Finally, a series of bizarre demonstrations on and off the field led to several ejections from games and culminated in a breakdown. Piersall was confined to Westborough State Hospital for electroshock therapy and psychotherapy. To everyone’s surprise, he r
ecovered and the next year he returned to the Red Sox and became a star. Piersall was selected to the American League All-Star team in 1954 and 1956, thanks in great part to his outfield play. In 1956, he posted a league-leading 40 doubles, scored 91 runs, drove in 87, and had a .293 batting average. The following year, he hit 19 home runs and scored 103 runs. He won a Gold Glove Award in 1958, but that winter he was traded to the Cleveland Indians for first baseman Vic Wertz and outfielder Gary Geiger. Piersall earned a second Gold Glove with the Indians in 1961, also finishing third in the batting race that season with a .322 average.
In June 1963, while playing with the New York Mets, Piersall famously ran the bases while facing backward after hitting the 100th home run of his career.
He described his breakdown in a 1955 book, Fear Strikes Out: The Jim Piersall Story, which became a movie in 1957 starring Anthony Perkins and Karl Malden. (After seeing Perkins play Piersall in the film, director Alfred Hitchcock signed the actor to portray Norman Bates in Psycho.) Though in his autobiography Piersall blamed much of his condition on pressure from his father, he later disavowed the film, saying it distorted the facts.
One afternoon in the early 1980s, Globe writer Jack Thomas, who idolized Piersall as a youngster, visited him in South Carolina and accompanied him to a psychiatric ward at a Charleston hospital. When Piersall stepped off the elevator, there was a bustle among the patients, who loved Piersall, not as a ballplayer, but as a symbol of hope that perhaps they too could overcome mental illness. Piersall shook hands with the doctors, admonished two nurses for smoking, and then settled into an easy chair to chat with the children hospitalized for psychiatric care.
“Have you read my book or seen the movie about me?” he asked. “It will let you know that we all have problems. . . . I don’t have a college degree, but I’ve got a PhD in some other things. Don’t ever let anyone tell you there’s no stigma to mental illness. You’re going to have to prove yourself all over again. I know how tough it is to be alone. I’m a graduate of a mental institution.”
Suddenly, when Piersall said he was opposed to women as umpires, there was a sharp exchange between the Sox legend and a 13-year-old patient named Cynthia. It was brief, but acrimonious, and both seemed hurt. As Piersall and Thomas were leaving, Cynthia’s voice called out, “Jimmy?” He turned and walked to her quickly, knelt, and the two embraced. He kissed her cheek, and she squeezed him hard, turning her face so he wouldn’t see her tears.
“You’re a doll,” he said, “and you’re going to be OK. You’re going to make it.”
On September 17, 2010, Jimmy Piersall was inducted into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame.
Fenway Park played host to numerous boxing matches over the years. In July 1954, Tony DeMarco, left, a welterweight from Boston’s North End, fought lightweight George Araujo of Providence. DeMarco won by a TKO in the fifth round.
In June 1958, park personnel prepped for the arrival of television personality Ed Sullivan, who came to host the annual Mayor’s Charity Field Day.
JOHN KILEY: A THREE-SPORT STAR
Radio station WMEX was on Brookline Avenue, adjacent to Fenway Park, and John Kiley was the station’s musical director and studio organist from 1934 to 1956. When Kiley played in the studio in the early 1950s, he had a regular visitor. Unbeknownst to Kiley, that listener was Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, and Yawkey wanted to hire him.
“He was a very delightful, pleasant man,” Kiley once recalled, “and he complimented me a lot when he was around the studios, but I’d just tell him to be quiet [because Kiley was on the air]. I didn’t know who he was until he offered me the job.”
Yawkey brought Kiley on board in 1953 when he decided to add music to the Fenway experience. Kiley was also the house organist at Boston Garden from 1942 to 1984 and was proud to be the answer to the trivia question: “Who played for the Bruins, the Celtics and the Red Sox?” Kiley was quick to point out that he also played for the Boston Braves before they left town—in fact, the Braves became his first sports gig in 1941.
Kiley began taking piano lessons when he was 6 and he later quit Dorchester High School to enroll in the Boston Conservatory. He landed jobs playing for the silent movies at the old Criterion Theater in Roxbury and several other theaters, starting at age 15, before taking over at the opulent Keith Memorial Theater downtown. When The Jazz Singer ushered in talking pictures in 1927, Kiley found himself out of work before taking over at WMEX and the sports venues.
Kiley started at Fenway in an era when the goal was to please the owner’s wife with songs like Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When?” (Tom and Jean Yawkey’s favorite song). He was known to pump out “White Christmas” on a scorching day, and his 20-minute pregame medley of songs might include “Embraceable You,” “Clarinet Polka,” “Misty,” and “The Way We Were.”
Kiley was not a flamboyant organist, but he did add the occasional flourish, including his spirited playing of the “Hallelujah Chorus” when Carlton Fisk hit his historic Game 6 home run in the 1975 World Series. Kiley retired in 1989 and died at age 80 in 1993.
These days show tunes on the ballpark organ are fading out in favor of loud rock on expensive sound systems. Fenway is one of a handful of ballparks that still feature organ music. “We try to do either of two things at every game: make a child fall in love with baseball, or remind an adult where, when, and why they fell in love with baseball,” Red Sox Vice President Charles Steinberg explained in 2005. “That’s why it’s essential to use the organ and pop music at Fenway.”
Ted Williams enjoying himself sitting in a miniature car, tooting its horn to the amusement of Fenway Park fans, August 22, 1958. The small car was one of several used by the Shriners in a pregame ceremony.
Said Yogi Berra: “He don’t look like he used to; he looks better.”
The Splinter, who ended up hitting .407 with 13 homers and 34 RBI in his abbreviated season, immediately jacked up Fenway attendance by more than 3,000 a game. Not that Boston fans had a better alternative. Once the Braves decamped for Milwaukee just before the season, the Sox literally were the only game in town.
Even though the club was in seventh place by mid-May (losing Williams with a broken collarbone on the first day of spring training didn’t help), and ended up 42 games behind the Indians in 1954, nearly a million spectators came through the Fenway turnstiles, with more than 85,000 turning up for a weekend series with the Yankees in late August that the Sox swept.
So it went for the next several years with the Sox, who remained just competitive enough to justify the price of a ticket, either staying in contention long enough or reviving late enough to keep their adherents interested. In 1955, they crept up from sixth in May to fifth in June to fourth in July and were only three games back on Labor Day before losing 12 of 14. “Our tank went dry when we needed gas,” Piersall concluded, “and we just couldn’t get a refill.”
There was always enough wall-banging to keep the customers reasonably satisfied, always a new prospect—a Harry Agganis, a Jackie Jensen, a Gene Stephens—for them to check out. And, always, there was Williams—prodigious and profane, invigorating and infuriating. He vowed that the 1954 season would be his last, saying, “You think I’m kidding, but I’m not.” But he came back by mid-May of 1955 (too late to qualify for the batting title) and hit .356 to lead the league.
His chilly relationship with “the knights of the keyboard” had turned acerbic by 1956 when he twice spat in the direction of the press box. Soon after came “The Great Expectoration,” when Williams, after being booed for muffing a two-out fly ball in the 11th inning against the Yankees, reeled in a blast by Yogi Berra and, on his way in to the dugout, directed several saliva shots at a record crowd of 36,350. “I’m not a bit sorry for what I did,” later declared Williams, who’d walked to produce the winning run in a 1-0 decision. “I was right and I’d spit again at the same fans who booed me today. Some of them are the worst in the world.”
Yet they were cheering him a day later after W
illiams, who was fined a record $5,000 by Yawkey (who never bothered collecting), smashed the game-winning homer, and then theatrically covered his mouth as he rounded the bases. “Atta boy, Ted,” one grandstand denizen applauded. “We’re all with you.” Homers always had been an instant remedy at Fenway. But there were other ways to please a crowd. Spectators were startled three weeks earlier when former ace Mel Parnell, spurned after two injury-ruined seasons, became the first Sox hurler in 33 years to pitch a no-hitter.
Parnell, who’d been knocked around by the Yankees 10 days earlier on Independence Day and hadn’t appeared since, baffled the White Sox with sinkers, facing only one man over the minimum. “That makes up for a lot of those days the past few years when things didn’t go so good,” said the 34-year-old left-hander after he’d done on July 14 what no Boston pitcher had done since Howard Ehmke in 1923—and no Sox pitcher had done at home since Ernie Shore in 1917. “Boy, it felt good to hear those people cheering me.”
“There are two places that I’ve played in my entire career that you can actually feel momentum change: Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium. You can actually feel it change.”
—Tim Wakefield, Red Sox pitcher