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Friday, May 8, 2020Culture

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In only two weeks' time, the kid of whom no one had ever heard had become the talk of the baseball world.

Unless you're as old as I am, you probably have no personal memory of Dave "Boo" Ferriss when he was a pitcher for the Red Sox. But if you know anything about Red Sox history the chances are that you are well aware of him and the impact he made in his abbreviated career with the team back in the 1940s.

His career was like a shooting star; it flashed brilliantly but briefly across the sky, then quickly faded from sight.

When he came up to the big leagues, young Boo Ferriss -- he was called that because as a toddler he couldn't pronounce the word "brother" -- was not a highly-touted phenom. He had played just one season in the minors, in 1942 with Greensboro in the Class B Piedmont League, where he compiled a seven and seven record before joining the Army Air Corps. When he suffered the recurrence of the asthma that had plagued him from childhood, he was discharged from the military in February of 1945.

He reported directly to Spring Training with the Red Sox, who owned his contract. He did not, however, make the team. He was assigned to the Louisville Colonels in the American Association. When the Red Sox, who weren't very good that year, opened the season with eight consecutive losses, manager Joe Cronin, desperate for pitching help, summoned Ferriss, who hadn't even appeared in a game for Louisville, to the big league team in Boston.

The unknown and untested rookie was pencilled in to start the first game of a doubleheader on Sunday, April 29, just 75 years ago, in Philadelphia's Shibe Park against the A's. Manager Cronin, looking on from the dugout in the first inning of that game, must have thought that the beleaguered Boston pitching staff had gone from really bad to, if possible, even worse.

Did Ferriss have a case of the jitters in his first major league game? You be the judge. He walked the first batter he faced on four pitches; then he threw a wild pitch to the second batter before walking him on four pitches. When he fell behind the next hitter, 2-0, he had thrown 10 pitches, not a single one for a strike. But he somehow got the batter to ground out, advancing the runners to second and third. Then, he proceeded to walk the cleanup hitter to load the bases. But the next man up grounded into an inning-ending double play. He had barely survived a total disaster in his first ever big league inning, but he had found his sea legs.

The A's never again threatened to score and when it was over, the unknown and unheralded Boo Ferriss had notched a complete game shutout. The Red Sox won, 2 to 0.

His next start was a week later against the Yankees, who were expected to be more challenging than the A's. If they were, it wasn't by much. Ferriss shut them out, too, by a score of 5 to 0.

In the fifth inning of his third start, the opposition finally scored a run off him (he went on to win the game, 8 to 2), but in starting off his career by throwing 22 scoreless innings he established an American League record that stood for more than 60 years.

In only two weeks' time, the kid of whom no one had ever heard had become the talk of the baseball world. When he threw still another shutout in his next start, the volume of that talk increased to a roar. For the year he ended up with 21 wins and 10 losses for the Red Sox, who finished seventh in an eight-team league. No other pitcher on the team had more than eight victories. Not a strikeout pitcher, he averaged only about three per game, his "go-to" pitch was a hard sinker that broke down and in to right-handed batters and away from lefties. It produced tons of ground balls -- to the extent that in 264.2 innings pitched he gave up only six home runs. He made 31 starts and had 26 complete games. Those numbers are unimaginable by today's standards.

But there remained a question: how would he do the next year, 1946, when baseball's best players would be back from the war?

He would be even better. He was the scourge of the American League, going 25 and 6 while leading the Sox to their first pennant in 28 years. He was still only 24 years old, and the Red Sox seemed to have an ace they could rely upon for years to come.

But on July 14, 1947, it all changed. In the bottom of the seventh of a night game at Cleveland, he felt something pop in his right shoulder. He finished the game, a 1 to 0 Red Sox win, but the next day couldn't lift his arm above his shoulder. Nowadays, he'd be shut down and given arthroscopic surgery, but back then he was just held back from his next start. He was used in relief nine days later, but had nothing, giving up hits to all four batters he faced and being charged with the loss. He struggled the rest of the way, finishing with a 12 and 11 record for '47. The soreness in his shoulder didn't improve in 1948. He was able to make only nine starts all season but did compile a seven and three won-lost record.

By the '49 season, his arm was completely dead. He appeared in only 6.2 innings all year.

On Opening Day of 1950, he was lit up in one inning of relief, and that was it. His big league career was over. He came back as the Red Sox pitching coach from 1955-59, then returned to his native Mississippi, where he became a legend as the long-time coach of the Delta State baseball team. By the time he passed away at 94 in 2016 he was one of his home state's most beloved citizens.

When one thinks of how close the Red Sox came to dislodging the Yankees from their dynasty in the post World War II era and how it all could have turned out differently with a healthy Boo Ferriss in the rotation, one can't help but think of the words of the poet John Greenleaf Whittier: "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'"

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