A Hero Named Boo
While Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr were serving in World War II, an unlikely Red Sox phenom on a team of journeymen ballplayers taught one family a memorable lesson.
1945 WAS A GOOD YEAR FOR AMERICA and a dismal year for the Boston Red Sox. In a season roughly bracketed by victory in Europe and the surrender of Japan, the Sox limped to a 71-83 record, finishing seventh out of eight teams in the American League. While marquee players like Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr served in the armed forces, Boston fielded a team of journeymen with names like Catfish Metkovich and Skeeter Newsome.
But there was hope. By the summer of 1945, the country had had a bellyful of war and death and hardship and privation, and it was ready to have fun again. Crowds streamed back into Fenway and other parks. Attendance would soon double from prewar years. And in Boston that summer, there was another reason to pay attention: a strapping 6-foot-2-inch package of raw upcountry muscle named Dave "Boo" Ferriss, who rose from the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta and set the American League on fire. A rookie right-hander with a hellacious sinking fastball, he opened the 1945 season with eight victories in a row, beating every team in the league. As part of the punchless, cellar-bound Red Sox, he went 21-10.
1945 was also the year that my father turned 16, an event that is related, in a most peculiar and remarkable way, to Ferriss's precocious achievements on the mound. My dad was the son of a Worcester obstetrician, a freckle-faced and extravagantly outgoing boy who was also, quite possibly, the most rabid Red Sox fan on earth. That summer he got the wildly implausible notion that if he invited Ferriss to dinner, Ferriss would come. The hook: My dad's birthday was approaching, and he wanted, more than anything else in the world, to celebrate it with the Mississippi right-hander. To my grandparents' slack-jawed amazement, Ferriss, who was getting so much fan mail that the Red Sox had assigned someone to help him manage it, said yes. He arranged tickets for a day game for my father and grandmother. After the game, the three of them went out to dinner at the Red Coach Grill in Boston. When my grandmother commented on his kindness, Ferriss replied, in an accent thicker than buttermilk pie: "It don't cost nothin' to be nice, ma'am."
That wasn't the end of it. My father continued to correspond with Ferriss into the 1946 season, when Ferriss was even more dominant than he had been in 1945. He had a 25-6 record that year and helped pitch the Red Sox into the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. He got my dad tickets for the third game, in Boston, in which Ferriss twirled a machinelike 4-0 shutout. I am not certain of this, but I think that seeing that game - as the guest of the ace - may have been my father's greatest thrill. The moment was more special than even he could have imagined. The following season, Ferriss tore the cartilage in his shoulder, and he never regained his old form. He went 12-11 that year, 7-3 in 1948, and did not win a game in 1949. He struggled in the minor leagues for five more years.
I know all this because this story is one of our most precious pieces of family lore and because its subject is someone I have known my entire life as Uncle Boo. That improbable dinner (imagine persuading Manny Ramirez to accept such an invitation!) was the beginning of an equally improbable friendship between Boo and my father that lasted until my father died in 1998. It was rooted in hero worship, love of baseball, and both men's encyclopedic knowledge of the sport and its history, but it ripened into something deeper and richer. Our families became friends. Uncle Boo, his wife, Mariam, and their two children were frequent visitors at our family's summer house in East Falmouth, boating with us on Vineyard Sound. Uncle Boo showed up at several of my childhood sports events. In 1959, he took me into the Red Sox dugout at Fenway. He took my parents to Red Sox banquets. As a 70-year-old, he pitched batting practice to my nephews on the tiny, burned-out diamond of our summer community. We were all just as thrilled to know him - the man who pitched the Sox into the '46 series! - as my dad had been in the summer of 1945.
But as we grew up, we also learned that Uncle Boo was about much more than just celebrity and legend and our proximity to it. His shoulder injury and subsequent decline as a pitcher could have made him bitter, but it did not. His defining feature was the profound kindness my grandmother had observed. He was, simply, the nicest, most thoughtful man we had ever met. He showed it in a thousand ways: remembering our birthdays and sending frequent, long, newsy letters to my parents and later to my mother and to the children. He became an ideal to us, not only of physical prowess but of selflessness, thoughtfulness, and generosity.
We were not the only beneficiaries of Boo's generous spirit. At 84, he has more friends than he can count. In Mississippi, where he lives, he is a certifiable legend. As baseball coach for 26 years at Delta State University, he became one of the winningest coaches in NCAA history. He became famous in a different way: as someone who was loved by his players. Of the 500 who played for him, he is in contact by phone or letter with all but five. He remembers their mothers' birthdays and sends cards. He hosts biannual reunions where 250 people show up. The baseball field at Delta State is Boo Ferriss Field, and the award for the best college baseball player in Mississippi is the Boo Ferriss Award. "There is no other single Mississippi sports figure," says Rick Cleveland, Mississippi's leading sportswriter, "who has such universal appeal."
Sixty years after his dinner with my dad, he remains our Uncle Boo, a very decent man who taught us that, after all, it really does not cost anything to be nice.
Sam Gwynne is executive editor of Texas Monthly. Send e-mail to magazine@globe.com. 