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THE CURSE OF THE BAMBINO, PART 2 ...
A POWERFUL RED SOX TEAM FAILS
IN THE WORLD SERIES ...
Earl Johnson comes to the rescue again
May 25, 1946 ... The American League leading Red Sox came home to Fenway Park and ruined Bill Dickey's debut as manager of the Yankees by handing him a 7 to 4 setback that was unanimously
approved by a welcoming committee of over 31,000 fans. This 12th straight Red Sox success lengthened their lead to six full games over the second-place Yanks. This was a ball game worthy of two pennant contenders, brimming over with tension, dramatics and fancy fielding, on top of authoritative slugging.
Dave Ferriss, who had been beaten in his last five appearances against the Yankees, got off to a shaky start. He walked both Stuffy Stirnweiss and Johnny Lindell, and had a 3-1 count on Charlie Keller before he settled down.
The Red Sox got a run in the bottom half of the first inning on Johnny Pesky's double into the right field corner, and Bobby Doerr's broken bat bloop hit down the third base line. The Yankees got that run back in the third inning and took a 2 to 1 lead on Joe Gordon's homer in the fourth.
His second of four straight singles put Bobby Doerr on the bottom half of the fourth inning. Rudy York in a ground ball that move Doerr to second base and DiMaggio sacrificed him to third. Russell's ground out to Rizzuto brought Bobby across to tie the game.
The Sox put the game away in the
fifth inning. George Metkovich
started with a single to left,
took second on Pesky's ground
out and scored on Ted Williams
broken bat single into right.
Bobby Doerr singled and Williams
took third on a fly out. Dom
then splashed a single to center
bringing in Ted. With two outs,
Glenn Russell came to the plate and with a 3-0 count, Joe Cronin led him hit away. Russell grabbed a Spud Chandler pitch for a line drive homer well up into the left field screen.
War hero Earl Johnson had to rescue starter Dave Ferriss to give him seven straight wins against no defeats. Stepping into a delicate situation in the seventh inning, Johnson ran his string of hitless and runless relief innings to 9 1/3. Successive singles by Keller, Lindell, Joe D., and
Etten, sent Ferriss to the showers. Johnson whiffed Joe Gordon to end the threat. Johnson also saved Ferriss in the second game of the season at Washington. He also saved Joe Dobson in both New York and Detroit during the recent road trip. during his last four relief roles, Johnson has
pitched 14 1/3 innings of runless ball. He has blank the Yankees for one hit over 7 2/3 innings this season.
Sox fans at a reason to get nervous on two occasions. Ted Williams bounced off the left field scoreboard trying to catch Spud Chandler's fly ball, and later on in the game Hal Wagner hit the support holding the screen behind home plate while chasing Joe DiMaggio's foul pop up. Wagner grabbed
his arm as he bounced off the concrete wall, but both he and Ted are fine. |
