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Friday, August 21, 2020Culture

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It all began inauspiciously enough, in the first game of a Fourth of July holiday doubleheader in Philadelphia when he homered in a 9-0 Red Sox win over the lowly Athletics. The next day, he hit another round tripper in an 8-3 victory.

Dick
Flavin

With the coronavirus lurking unseen behind every tree, last month was a July unlike any other. Yet, I found myself thinking about the usual things that occupy my attention in July: parades, fireworks, cookouts, and the like. Oh, and I thought about "Dutch the Clutch."

"Dutch the Clutch" was Clyde Vollmer, a right fielder with the Boston Red Sox of seven decades ago. July was his month; at least July of 1951 was. He was just a journeyman player, good on defense but just so-so on offense -- except for that July of 69 summers ago.

It all began inauspiciously enough, in the first game of a Fourth of July holiday doubleheader in Philadelphia when he homered in a 9-0 Red Sox win over the lowly Athletics. The next day, he hit another round tripper in an 8-3 victory. Then came a real test, a three-game series against the defending champion Yankees at Fenway Park. In the sixth inning of the opener, Vollmer laced a two-run triple, then scored on a base hit to provide the margin of victory in a 6-3 win. The next day, the seventh, he got the Sox off to a big start by lacing a grand slam home run off pitcher Allie Reynolds in the first inning; final score, Red Sox 10 Yankees 4. In the finale, he homered in the sixth off Vic Raschi with a man on base to convert a 2-3 deficit into a 4-3 lead in what ended as a 6-3 win and a three-game sweep for the Sox.

Then came baseball's annual three-day hiatus for the All-Star Game, but the layoff didn't dull Vollmer's edge. In the first game of a doubleheader after the break, he hit a two-run homer against Chicago to win it, 3-2. In the second game, his sacrifice fly provided the margin of victory in a 6-5 win. The next day, he homered yet again in a 5-4 loss; but the Red Sox won the following game, 3-2, when he hit a two-run single in the ninth inning.

This was taking place in a day and age when sports writers competed with one another to come up with lyric-sounding nicknames for elite players (Williams was "The Splendid Splinter"; DiMaggio, "Joltin' Joe"; Musial was "Stan the Man"). Soon, Vollmer had his own unforgettable appellation: "Dutch the Clutch." That's how he'd be known, particularly by Boston fans, for the rest of his career and beyond.

Meanwhile, his hot streak continued unabated. On July 18, he homered in a 4-3 win over Cleveland. The next day, he hit two home runs in a 5-4 loss. On July 21, he had a home run, a double, a single, and four RBIs in a 6-3 win over Detroit.

Now the streak was beginning to reach otherworldly dimensions. On July 26, he hit three -- count 'em, three -- home runs in a 13-10 victory over the White Sox. On the 28, he ended a 16 inning marathon against the Indians with a grand slam off none other than the great Bob Feller to provide an 8-4 Red Sox win.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Gone. It just seemed, in the words of Cole Porter, "to vanish like a gambler's lucky streak." In the Red Sox next game, Vollmer went hitless and struck out two times as they lost, 5-4.

In the 24 games from July 4 through the 28, he had raised his average from .263 to .287, hit 13 home runs -- most of them in clutch situations (hence the nickname) -- and had 38 runs batted in. If the streak had lasted through an entire season at the rate he'd been going, he'd have smashed to smithereens the all-time records for both home runs and RBIs. As it was, the Red Sox had crept to within a game and a half of the league leading Yankees.

There were 60 games left in the season, but in them Vollmer -- back in the real world -- had just four more home runs, and his batting average for the season plummeted to only .251. The Sox faded from the pennant race and finished in third place, 11 games out of the running.

The streak was by far the high water mark of his career, but it wasn't the only time he had drawn attention to himself. In 1940, as a 20-year-old, he was briefly called up to the Cincinnati Reds, his hometown team. Just prior to going up for his first at-bat, he confessed to Bill McKechnie, the crusty old Reds' manager, that he didn't know what the take sign was. Seeking to keep things simple for the youngster, McKechnie replied, "Never mind the take sign. Just swing at the first pitch."

Vollmer followed instructions, and so it was that he became one of just a handful of players to have hit a home run on the very first pitch thrown to him in the major leagues.

On June 8, 1950, while filling in for the injured Dom DiMaggio in centerfield, he became the only player in baseball history to bat eight times in eight innings, as the Red Sox slaughtered the hapless St.Louis Browns by a score of 29-4. His line score was not particularly impressive that day though, only one hit in seven at-bats with a walk. He managed to score just one of the 29 runs the Sox rang up that day.

At the outset of the 1953 season, the Red Sox sold Vollmer, who died in 2006, to the Washington Senators, from whom they had acquired him three years earlier, for the waiver price of $10,000. In his 10-year career with Cincinnati, Washington, and Boston, he hit .251 with 69 home runs and 339 runs batted in, just average numbers. But embedded in them was the glorious month of July 1951, the month that he earned forever the moniker of "Dutch the Clutch."

- Dick Flavin is a New York Times bestselling author; the Boston Red Sox "Poet Laureate" and The Pilot's recently minted Sports' columnist.