NIGHT BASEBALL & JACKIE ROBINSON ...
Ted Williams leads the Red Sox
in a rout over Chicago

May 13, 1947 ... Ted Williams discovered that there was a short left field fence at Fenway Park this afternoon. As the Red Sox roared to a seasonal record, 19 to 6 when over the Chicago White Sox, Williams twice cleared the left-field wall for his sixth and seventh home runs of the season. It was the first time he had hit an opposite field home run at Fenway Park. That's approximately 375 games without hitting a left field home run in Boston.

Not until Ted teed off on an Earl Harrist fastball in the seventh inning, did the game become a rout. The first home run was not only a blast about 10 feet to the left of the centerfield light tower, but it also broke up an existing 5 to 5 tie game. It started a five-run explosion for the Red Sox.

The Red Sox had batted around in the seventh inning, so Ted again led off in the eighth. This time he was outguessed by lefty pitcher Edgar Smith. He was looking for a low and outside curve ball because that's the way Smith generally pitches to him. He swung late on the low fastball and that's why the ball and over the left field fence. His second belt went over the wall at the top of the first section of the twin American League scoreboard in left. It was as Williams admitted, and accident, but it showed how tremendously powerful is the Williams' swing.

It was a blow that the White Sox never recovered from, as the Red Sox went on a batting spree and sent nine runners across the plate. It brought Ted up for the second time as all told, 15 Red Sox went to bat, before Hal Wagner grounded sharply to Cass Michaels, to end the inning.

Williams declared in the clubhouse, that he had been in rut and he just swung and not tried to follow the ball. Williams got out of his rut all right. During the game clinching seventh and eighth innings, 24 Red Sox players went to bat. They pounded out ten hits, two home runs, two triples, two doubles and four singles.

In the process, Bobby Doerr hit for the cycle. He hit a home run off Johnny Rigney for the first Red Sox run, he tripled off Harrist in the seventh, singled off Smith in the eighth, and doubled off Joe Haynes also in the eighth inning.

Scoring two runs in the eighth and getting two hits in the same inning, enabled Rudy York and Doerr, respectively to tie and oft-equaled record. With the White Sox getting 17 hits, the 35 base hits for 65 bases by two teams, was not record-breaking, but sure one of the biggest batting days of all time.

It was when they came to bat in the fifth inning, that the White Sox held a 4 to 1 lead. The skies became black and it seemed as if rain would be the only thing the save the Red Sox, as Rigney was pitching effectively. In fact until the fourth, he had allowed only four runs this spring in 37 innings. Doerr started the Rigney collapsed with his fourth home run of the year, a tremendous wallop over the fence a little to the left of the flagpole.

In the fifth Rigney walked Hal Wagner. Dave Ferriss, the Red Sox starter, who is staggering 30 every one of the five innings he pitched, was allowed to bat for himself. Three doubleplays helps Ferriss hold the White Sox four runs in the first five innings. He dropped a triple into short left as the ball took a funny hop past Lloyd Christopher. He was further aided in getting a triple, when nobody bothered to cover third-base.