The 'Red Seat': How Weather Made Boston's Most Famous Home Run Possible

Yahoo

2 days ago

If it seems too good to be true, it usually is. But that was never the case with Ted Williams, one of the best baseball players to ever step on a field.
And on June 9, 1946, when Williams entered the batter's box for his first at-bat in the second game of a doubleheader, the Boston Red Sox left fielder hit a ball so far into the right-field bleachers at the then-34-year-old Fenway Park that there's still a red seat at the stadium today to commemorate the feat.
The red seat is still there because nobody – not Mickey Mantle, David Ortiz or even Shohei Ohtani (yet) – has been able to hit a ball 502 feet at Fenway like Williams did on that famed June afternoon.
They've tried. They sure have tried.
None of those legends, living or departed, had the assist from weather that Williams had on June 9, 1946.
"For me, Ted Williams is the second-greatest hitter of all time to Babe Ruth," said Tim Kurkjian, ESPN senior writer and analyst and the co-host of the "Is This A Great Game, Or What?" podcast. "If someone wants to put him first, you're not going to get a big argument from me."
Williams was an imposing figure, 6-foot-3 and nearly impossible to fool at the plate. And when he connected with the baseball, it often went a long way.
"Ted Williams was bigger and stronger than basically anyone that he played with or against at that time," said Kurkjian. "And that combination of power and strength, and understanding ... the art of hitting better than anyone who has ever played the game. There is no doubt that he hit a home run to that seat."
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In 19 seasons, Williams amassed a lifetime .344 batting average and had 2,654 hits, 521 of which were home runs. His career OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, which Kurkjian believes is the truest way to measure a player's offensive worth) exceeded that of every other single season played by every other Major League Baseball player in history until New York Yankees center fielder Aaron Judge topped it in 2024.
"And this thought that he would not be a great hitter today just makes me laugh, and it makes me angry that people do not recognize what we saw from Ted Williams ... right from the day he started till the day he finished," Kurkjian added. "He was a great hitter on every level, and to me, again, the second-best hitter of all-time. And the best left fielder of all-time, period."
A good baseball story isn't complete until it includes an element that is so of-the-era that it's almost unbelievable, but once you hear it, the story can't be told without including it.
Enter Joseph Boucher, who was sitting in the right-field bleachers as the Red Sox did battle against the Detroit Tigers. The hometown Sox had already won Game 1 of the doubleheader 7-1, so spirits must have been high.
And then, in the first inning of Game 2, Boucher – and his hat – became eternally linked to baseball history. For it was his head that the home run ball landed on, splitting a hole in the headgear he was sporting that day.
"How far away must one sit to be safe in this park?" Boucher questioned in a Boston Globe article written the next day.
And thus, because the ball landed somewhere, the home run could be measured. That's a rarity with historic home runs, because they often land outside the stadium and then the measurements become fuzzy or hotly debated for decades after.
But this one landed in Seat 21, Row 37, Section 42. And in just his 48th game after resuming his Major League Baseball career following three years of service as a fighter pilot in World War II (he would later pause his baseball career for nearly two more seasons due to service in the Korean War), Williams entered the record books with a 502-foot homer that remains Fenway's longest, 113 years after the stadium opened.
Two things were definitely true on June 9, 1946: One of the greatest hitters of all-time absolutely destroyed a baseball, and the weather conditions couldn't have been more perfect to launch a historic home run.
"A cold front swept away the near 90-degree heat, severe thunderstorms and humidity from the previous day," said weather.com senior digital meteorologist Jon Erdman. "As is often the case in New England, strong winds lingered behind the front.
"The setup couldn't have been better for a left-handed hitter, much less one of the all-time greats."
According to observations from Logan Airport 5 miles to the northeast, west to northwest winds from 20 to 26 mph buffeted Fenway Park that afternoon during the doubleheader, Erdman added. And that meant the wind was blowing straight out to right field, making the day a left-handed pull hitter's dream.
We don't have data on wind gusts, but it's fair to assume, given the front's passage, that gusts over 30 mph and perhaps even 40 mph likely occurred.
"There were power losses throughout the day that day," said Alex Speier, a sports reporter with the Boston Globe. "There were reports of hospitals where babies were being delivered without power and where they were shining flashlights … in the delivery room. So there was an extreme weather circumstance that played into this."
Greg Rybarczyk, a former Red Sox employee who launched Hit Tracker Online to more closely examine the physics of famous home runs, estimated in 2006 that the Williams home run was hit with a launch angle of 38.3 degrees and an exit velocity of 118.9 mph. A ball hit that high and hard with a strong wind immediately aiding its flight is bound to be historic.
Ultimately, it's been determined that without these weather conditions in place, the homer wouldn't have traveled 500-plus feet. And in fact, because home runs are now measured by how far the ball would have traveled to the ground level (the seat where it landed was about 30 feet off the ground), Rybarczyk concluded the distance was actually 527 feet, which would make it one of the 10 longest home runs hit in MLB history.
"There's no question that it would not have happened in April, May or September," said Bob Ryan, a retired Boston Globe sports columnist who covered the Red Sox for decades. "The ball carries very differently in Fenway according to the weather conditions."
Even with all the technology advancements and players getting larger, one sentiment has been repeated for years by the game's best lefties: Hitting a ball to the red seat is impossible.
And it's not really their fault. One key reason why it'll probably never happen again is that Fenway Park has grown up. As in, it has literally been built up in some areas.
One such area is the press box and suites that were added behind home plate in recent decades. Those additions have blocked the jet stream that propelled balls over the right-field fence – or made them fly dozens of feet farther.
"It really changed because I was taking batting practice and telling Walt Hriniak, our hitting coach, 'Man, I got all of that ball and it's not going to the warning track,'" said Wade Boggs, Baseball Hall of Famer and a member of the Red Sox from 1982 to 1992. "And it really changed my philosophy because I'm a tremendous wind player, especially in Fenway Park, because I can elevate the ball, get it up in the air, and it'll blow to the wall."
More recently, when legendary Red Sox slugger David Ortiz took an aluminum bat out to batting practice with the goal of getting a ball to the red seat on the fly, the odds were stacked against him, and like so many before him, he landed short.
"David Ortiz is, I think it's safe to say, very, profanely skeptical of the idea that anyone could hit a ball there," said Speier. "And the reason is that he never came close to hitting a ball there."
But there was hope with Shohei Ohtani. After all, he was – and is – doing things that few players since Babe Ruth had done. And although he came closer than anyone else during a batting practice session, he still fell several rows short.
Williams's historic home run has withstood the test of time at Fenway – different baseballs, the steroid era and everything else that the game of baseball has seen in the 79 years that have passed since that incredible day.
"I am sure that every night, or every day, that some guy walks in with his 10-year-old for the first time and says, 'See that red seat out there? Well Ted Williams hit one out there.' You know that's happening. There's no question. And there's no other place where that's going to happen."
But even with all the greatness of the Splendid Splinter, without weather, that red seat in the right-field bleachers would just be another green one.