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Fenway Park before 1946 All-Star game Fenway Park was packed, the stars of both leagues were all lined up, and the band was playing the national anthem -- it was nearly time for the umpire to yell "Play ball!" for the park's first All-Star Game in 1946. (Globe Staff File Photo)

Sox on stomping grounds

Williams led a Boston barrage in classic's 1946 Fenway debut

By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Staff, 07/12/99

ifty-three years ago, when all the players were white and most of the best ones were in the American League, the All-Star Game came to Fenway Park for the first time.

It was a special game because the boys were back from war, and Ted Williams dominated like no man in the history of the midsummer event. Against the National League in 1946, Ted went 4 for 4 with a walk, two homers, and five RBIs in a 12-0 victory. Don't bother waiting for anyone to duplicate the feat.

''We had a special team that year,'' says Williams, who will throw out the ceremonial first pitch tomorrow night. ''We won the pennant easy and all the rest. In those years, we were dominating that game pretty good.''

The 13th All-Star Game was played on July 9, 1946, a summer in which the Red Sox were shredding the American League. The Sox were en route to their first pennant since 1918, and eight Boston players - Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr, Rudy York, Hal Wagner, Dave Ferriss, Mickey Harris, and Johnny Pesky - graced the AL roster. Pesky, DiMaggio, Williams, and Doerr batted 1-2-3-5 in the AL lineup. Sadly, the ''other'' DiMaggio, Joe, did not play. The Yankee Clipper was injured a day earlier in Philadelphia and did not make the trip to Boston. Brother Dominic started in center.

Even with the eight-man Boston contingent, there was some local controversy regarding AL manager Steve O'Neill's (then of the Detroit Tigers) selections. Sox fans wanted to see Boston righty Tex Hughson (en route to a 20-win season), and they also wanted to know why Sox manager Joe Cronin wasn't part of the AL coaching staff. Reporters speculated that Cronin was omitted because he didn't get along with St. Louis Browns skipper Luke Sewell, who was part of O'Neill's All-Star staff. (O'Neill later managed the Red Sox and was the only manager Williams disliked.)

Fenway was sold out (34,906, which yielded a gate gross of $111,338.75) for the big game and owner Tom Yawkey accommodated the press throng of 200 reporters and photographers, throwing a huge bash at the Copley Plaza the night before the game. He also built temporary press boxes on the first- and third-base rooftops. The auxiliary All-Star press seating eventually became Fenway's permanent roof boxes, still among the best seats at the old park. Proving that things don't change much, the Sox this year have built two more press additions to accommodate the Knights of the Keyboard, and the extra seats are expected to stay for the rest of the year, if not longer.

Because of World War II, there had been no All-Star Game in 1945 and NL All-Star Frank McCormick, a Phillies first baseman, said, ''I don't think I've ever seen a more festive occasion than the 1946 All-Star Game. Guys who hadn't seen one another in years were crossing back and forth before the game to shake hands and visit.''

Bob Feller, another war veteran who had pitched nine innings for the Indians two days earlier, started for the AL and allowed two hits and struck out three in three innings. On his way to a 26-win, 348-strikeout season, Feller was credited with the victory. He was followed to the mound by Detroit's Hal Newhouser (who had also pitched two days earlier) and St. Louis's Jack Kramer. The trio allowed only three hits and fanned 10 National Leaguers.

But it was Williams and the American League offense that got the headlines. Teddy Ballgame walked in his first at-bat, which came against Claude Passeau, the Cub who'd surrendered Ted's game-winning All-Star homer in Detroit in the stardust season of 1941.

In the fourth, Ted faced Brooklyn righty Kirby Higbe and hit a line drive 420 feet into the sixth row of the center-field bleachers to give the AL a 3-0 lead.

As the rout continued, Williams singled home a run in the fifth, then singled again in the seventh. In the bottom of the eighth, with the game hopelessly out of reach, NL manager Charley Grimm called for Pittsburgh righty Rip Sewell. Sewell's best-known pitch was the infamous ''eephus'' ball. The eephus was a high lob that dropped through the strike zone as if it had fallen from the sky. It was the subject of much conversation, and before the '46 game, Williams had asked Sewell if he'd dare throw the pitch in the big game. Sewell promised to serve one to The Kid.

In the bottom of the eighth, Vern Stephens set the table with a single to right, bringing Ted back to the plate with two men aboard and the AL leading, 9-0. On his first delivery, Sewell wound up mightily, then floated an eephus toward home plate and Williams almost hurt himself with a wicked cut that resulted in a feeble pop, out of play. Sewell managed to sneak a fastball past Ted for a called strike, missed on another eephus, then tried a third moonball and Williams literally stepped into the pitch and smacked it into the right-field bullpen, where it was caught by Williams's teammate, Harris. Ted laughed all the way around the bases. According to Sewell, Williams was the only man who ever hit an eephus pitch for a home run.

''Ted took a couple of steps to get to that ball,'' teammate DiMaggio says with a chuckle. ''He was probably a little bit out of the batter's box.''

''I never had a chance to talk to Sewell after that,'' says Williams. ''How he could get it over the plate with the trajectory he had was a big secret. But he just kept throwing 'em.'

The game proved to be a dress rehearsal for the 1946 World Series. (Sox fans are welcome to consider this an omen of things to come.) The Globe ran the box score in big type on Page 1, right next to a story about two downtown Boston parking lots that had increased their all-day rate to a whopping $1 per day.

It was a bad day all around for the National League. Compounding the indignity of the 12-0 beating, NL president Ford Frick had his wallet stolen from his Boston hotel room and arrived at the park with only 38 cents in his pockets. Frick would have his revenge 15 years later when he came back to Boston as baseball commissioner and sent everyone home when it started raining with the All-Star game tied, 1-1, after nine innings. It remains the only tie in All-Star history. Ted Williams threw out the first ball in that one, too.

This story ran on page C12 of the Boston Globe on 07/12/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.