Ferriss chronicled in new book|Baseball
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Only one other pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball had a better two-year run to start a career than Dave “Boo” Ferriss.
In his first two seasons with the Boston Red Sox from 1945-46, Ferriss compiled an outstanding 46-16 record, which included leading Boston to the American League pennant and a spot in the 1946 World Series.
The only other pitcher to win as many as Ferriss in a two-year span was Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1910-11.
Ferriss was in Vicksburg Tuesday at Lorlei Bookstore, signing his new book written by Clarion-Ledger sports columnist Rick Cleveland called, simply “Boo.”
The book covers Ferriss’ rise out of the Delta cotton fields to stardom in the major leagues where he played alongside Red Sox greats Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr. Yet the focus of the book is what happens to Ferriss following his two breakout seasons.
Midway through the 1947 season, Ferriss felt a pop in his right pitching shoulder. He was never the same and his career was over by 1949. Instead of becoming a player destined for the Hall of Fame, Ferriss became a Hall of Fame coach on the collegiate level.
In 26 years at Delta State, Ferriss led the Statesmen to 693 wins and a handful of appearances in the NCAA Division II College Baseball World Series. After retiring in 1988, he was elected to the Baseball Coaches of America Hall of Fame. He was one of the founding members of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and in 2002 was elected to the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame.
“I guess the story behind the book is that I didn’t lie in the gutter after the arm injury,” Ferriss said during his book signing.
“The book is going well. We published 2,500 and we sold those in the first three weeks, all at Delta State,” Ferriss said. “We printed another 3,000 copies and they are moving good, too.”
Cleveland, the son of former Southern Miss sports information director Ace Cleveland, said he’s been wanting for quite some time to do a book on Ferriss’ life, but kept getting rebuffed.
“I would approach him about it, and he say, ‘No, books are meant for people like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams.’
“But, I always felt Boo’s story was more compelling. Here’s a guy who gets off to one of the greatest starts in all of baseball, only Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1911 had a better start. Boo was on his way to Cooperstown. Then he has the injury. I went to see an orthopedic surgeon in Jackson and he looked at what happened to Boo and said he had torn his labrum. Today, that is pretty easy surgery with a six-month recovery.”
But those surgical advancements were not available in 1947 and Ferriss had to find something else.
He took up coaching after the Red Sox offered him a job as their pitching coach in 1950. He held that job for five seasons before going back to his alma mater at Mississippi State to work on his graduate degree before heading to Delta State.
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Contact Jeff Byrd at jbyrd@vicksburgpost.com.