Dave Ferriss

Link to Bobby and Dave Boo Ferrriss, pitcher. 

https://msfame.com/ferriss-and-bobby-doerr-teammates-for-life/

Ferriss and Bobby Doerr: Teammates for life

Posted on: February 11,2014

Baseball Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr reads from Boo Ferriss’s biography, as his son, Don Doerr, and David Pesky, son of the late Johnny Pesky, look on.

Baseball Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr and Mississippi and Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Boo Ferriss, teammates for life, form a two-man mutual admiration society.
They have much to admire.
Doerr, 95, and Ferriss, 92, are the two living members of the 1946 Boston Red Sox American League champions, who finished 104-50, finishing 12 games ahead of the Detroit Tigers and a whopping 17 games in front of the New York Yankees.
Said Ferriss of Doerr: “He’s one of the absolute best people I ever met, so genuine, such a great friend.”
Doerr batted .409 in the 1946 World Series, which the Red Sox lost in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals. In Ferriss’s third game shutout of the Cardinals, Doerr set a World Series record for assists.
Here’s what Ferriss said of Doerr in his 2008 biography: “…we had Bobby Doerr, the picture book second baseman. Bobby made all the plays and was just so graceful. As great a player as he was, he’s an even better person, so genuine, so level-headed, so solid. I used to watch infield practice and just marvel at him. Ted (Williams) always called him the Red Sox’ ‘silent captain,’ and I agree. He was a quiet guy who led by example. And he could hit for power. The guy had 284 Major League home runs playing second base. Even in today’s game you don’t see many second basemen do that.”

The great Boo Ferriss.

And here’s what Doerr said of Boo Ferriss for the back cover of the 2008 biography, “Boo Ferriss is one of the most classy people I have ever been around in baseball. If he hadn’t hurt his shoulder, there’s no doubt he would have been a Baseball Hall of Famer, but he has always remained a Hall of Fame person. Young people can learn so much about how to live their lives from reading a book about Boo Ferriss.”
Doerr was playing second base behind Ferriss in Cleveland on July 11, 1947, when Ferriss threw the pitch that would change his life and the immediate future of the Boston Red Sox. In the book, Doerr says he had no idea Ferriss had hurt his shoulder so badly with an overhand curve ball in the bottom of the seventh inning. Somehow, Ferriss stayed in the game and completed a 1-0 shutout. Doerr hit a home run for the Red Sox only run.
The next day, Ferriss couldn’t lift his arm above shoulder level. His pitching arm was never the same. Doerr believes the Red Sox would have won several more pennants had it not been for Ferriss’s shoulder injury that curtailed one of the most promising pitching careers in baseball history.
“…there’s no telling how many pennants we would have won,” Doerr said. “I think we would have won in ’48, ’49 and ’50.”
Ferriss and Doerr have remained close through the years, even though Doerr lives in Junction City, Oregon, approximately 2,500 miles away from Ferriss’s Cleveland home.
The two have been together for several Red Sox reunions and Boo and Miriam Ferriss have visited Doerr in Oregon. They drove to Cooperstown, NY.,  for Doerr’s 1986 induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Doerr and Boo Ferriss last saw one another at Bobby Doerr Day at Fenway Park in 2007, but they talk on the phone often.
Says Ferriss, “It’s always a treat to talk to Bobby.”
And, as so many in Mississippi know, it’s always a treat to talk to Boo Ferriss.
•••

 

Ted Williams SLG, Slugging Percentage

 Ted Williams, .634 is second only to Babe Ruth's .690 in all time slugging percentage. Gehrig .632 is third. Jimmie Foxx, .609, is fourth. These are four fabulous ball players. (Gehrig was 38?when he died and Ted missed five prime years in the military.) Bobby Doerr SLG in 1944 was.528 and .461 career. Like the Yankee Tommy Heinrich, Doerr was consistent and hit in the clutch, as did Heinrich.

Bobby Doerr's Hall of Fame Plaque

 

Days when players stayed with their team

 As a kid it never occurred to me that Ted or Bobby would ever play for the Yankees or for any  other team wharever. Babe Ruth was not in my memory. I asked the pastor if I could go as I knew he had complementary tickets, as it turned out, to the opening game of the season. Joe DiMaggio was supposed to play and the announcement whether he would or not was going to be withheld intil game time. Of course he wouldn"t because of his heel.  

So as the game started the adult, a Sunday Svhool teacher, with me pointed down close to the field where we sat on the first base side, "there's where we would be sitting with the pastor's tickets".  No one told me how much my mother was to give me to bring that about. I"ll never forget his name or the stupid coloring books they gave us. The second year I complained, they sent me, mifted, to be with the "men". Another nail in my lititle atheist coffin.  

So Joe Page, a good Yankee reliefer, came in to pitch to Bobby Doerr and the crowd booed. I asked why and was told Page beaned Doerr last year. Seemed logical to me at the time, since time was not yet all that familiar to me yet. 

Well, Bobby bounced the next pitch off the green monster. I experienced a great thrill over that and he became my favorite player. I followed him in the papers and the sports cartoons of Bob Coyne. When he went into the ZHOLY of Fame in 1986, you would have thought I went myself.

I became known as a rabid Doerr fan and was offered a bet, this in the tenth grade, that he would not get five hits in tomorrow'so game. I grabbed it, but Bobby only got four hits the next day. I was so elated I gave him his quarter in great elation.  

Bunting in the clutch.....

When opportunities arose, Bobby could not only set down a perfect bunt, but steal a few bases as well when called upon. He hit for the cycle twice, which event seems a bit of an oddity to me as cycles don't earn anything special. I thought he could do almost anything as far as that went.

I used to throw a ball against our garage doors endlessly, wearing impressions in the drivewsy. As a youngster Bobby talked about doing the same thing. That became my connection,

still my role model at 99

Attending my first baseball game, the opening game of the season, time was about to enter into my memory when Bobby Doerr hit a triple high off the famous wall in left field.

The crowd booed the pitcher, Joe Page, who was brought in to pitch to Doerr. I wanted to know why and the adult who brought me said he hit Doerr with a pitch last season. Known as a outstanding relief pitcher, I later doubted this explanation, but at the time bought it sympathetically hook line and sinker. I was already on Bobby's side even before he bounced the reliever's pitch off the green monster and tagged up at third. I learned he was a veteran, likely approaching thirty at the time. I respected and was very sympathetic to veterans.


What a great focus for my admiration he was! When he was inducted into the baseball hall of fame I was so ecstatic I thought I was in the hall myself right along with him. Enos Slaughter said that he was a person who played the game hard, but left with no enemies. Bobby turned out to be a clutch hitter who was a class act, and a fantastic fielder. His moves were so smooth and beautiful to watch, even handling a routine double play. His double plays got many a Sox pitcher, like old Rubber Arm Kinder, out of trouble.

Bobby never contested umpire's calls. He was a class act all around. I followed his batting average every single day in the papers. I loved my hero Bobby Doerr. When he retired because of a bad back my interest in the game drastically changed. At the time Bobby had more runs batted in than Ted Williams and I was going to graduate from high school.

Spahn and Sain and pray for rain

There are several instances which struck me as to the accuracy of technically exact language as against the spiritually abstract view of any event. This is highlighted in the Spahn and Sain saying often attributed to Billy Southworth of the Boston Braves when he named his starting pitchers for the next day's doubleheader.

It, if I recall inside my version, was not said by Billy at all but rather by a sports writer in his column. And, it was not worded exactly like that at all. Bottom line however, is that the final wording no matter how it arrived was better than the actual technically correct version.

This happens over and over, one could recount examples all day. So which is the best? The abstract one often seen in the distant past that creates the spiritually correct wording that far exceeds the actual recorded words? The ancient historical writers could capture the most memorable incidents several years after an event, more so than a concretely correct recording. The latter version was often cluttered with minutiae that clouded rather than providing any clear explanation of an event.

Numbers, when quoted by the ancients were not exact either. Forty meant a lot of days, not exactly forty. The spirit is always the more accurate and cutting science off from the spiritual limited the gaining of new knowledge from the previously unknown. In these later day however, there is some evidence that science and religion is coming closer. It was a blow when they separated that may be healed in future days, if there are any.