Fred Caligiuri
From BR Bullpen
Frederick John Caligiuri
- Bats Right, Throws Right
- Height 6' 0", Weight 190 lb.
- Debut September 3, 1941
- Final Game September 20, 1942
- Born October 22, 1918 in West Hickory, PA USA
[edit] Biographical Information
Fred Caligiuri, a late-season 1941 call-up from Wilmington of the Inter-State League had a 1-2 won-loss record on September 28, 1941, when he started the second game of a season-finale doubleheader between the Red Sox and A's at Shibe Park in Philadelphia against future Hall of Famer Lefty Grove. The game lives on in baseball history as the one with which Ted Williams completed his .406 season, the first since 1923 in the American League, the first since 1930 in MLB, and the most recent in the majors. Williams had gone four-for-five with a home run in the first game, won by the Red Sox 12-11. In the second game Fred Caligiuri had a three-run lead when he faced Williams for the first time. Williams singled, then doubled off a speaker in the Shibe Park wall in his next at-bat, but the A's kept picking away at Grove, gone by the second inning, and his successors. Caligiuri retired Williams on a fly to right in his last-at bat, didn't yield a run until the ninth, and finished with a complete game, six-hit, 7-1 win in an hour and 21 minutes.
(The start was Grove's last in the majors. He retired before the 1942 season and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1947.)
[edit] Related Sites
Sources: Personal research, including review of newspaper account and box scores; Acknowledgment: Eric Enders, fellow member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
