Red October — Oct 5, 1948: The Curious Tale of Denny Galehouse
It was a terrible way to end an exhilarating pennant race. Two games out of first place with four games left to play, the Red Sox took two from the Washington Senators, then two from the New York Yankees, knocking the Yanks out of the race and forcing a one-game playoff with Cleveland, the first in American League history.
The Indians could have won outright, but their ace, Bob Feller, was beaten by Hal Newhouser and the Tigers, 7–1, forcing the Tribe to board a train for an overnight trip to Boston to play the Sox the next day.
“Most of us packed only a toothbrush,’’ Indians player-manager Lou Boudreau said, “because we hadn’t figured on a playoff.’’
Thirty years later, Boudreau told Chicago Tribune columnist Dave Condon he didn’t like the Indians’ chances in Boston.
“The odds were tremendously against us in just one game in that weird Fenway Park,’’ he said. “I really was afraid of Fenway Park. I’d blown leads of six, eight runs there, behind pitchers like [Bob] Feller and [Bob] Lemon, because of that ‘monster’ in left field. I really didn’t look favorable.’’
The Red Sox, meanwhile, were looking to return to the World Series two seasons after losing in heartbreaking fashion to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1946, the Cardinals prevailing in Game 7 when Enos Slaughter scored all the way from first while shortstop Johnny Pesky hesitated before throwing home.
The Sox, in their first season under manager Joe McCarthy, recovered from a brutal start (14–23) and knocked off McCarthy’s former team, the Yankees, in dramatic fashion on the season’s final weekend in Fenway Park. Prior to the season, GM Joe Cronin had pulled off one of his best trades, acquiring All-Star shortstop Vern Stephens and pitchers Jack Kramer and Ellis Kinder from the St. Louis Browns, who happily accepted the whopping sum of $375,000 from owner Tom Yawkey, along with nine marginal players.
Kramer wound up posting an 18–5 record in ’48, leading the staff in wins, while Stephens paced the club in home runs (29) and RBIs (137). And after Kramer shut down the Yankees, 5–1, and the Sox withstood four hits by Joe DiMaggio in the 10–5 season finale (Joe’s brother Dom had three hits, including a home run), the Sox looked poised to polish off the Indians behind ace left-hander Mel Parnell, who went to bed early the night before assuming he would draw the start.
But then McCarthy made a decision that confounds Red Sox fans to this day. While Boudreau went to some pains to conceal the fact he planned to start rookie Gene Bearden — that rarity, a left-handed knuckleballer — McCarthy came to Parnell on the morning of the game and told him he had changed his mind. He had elected to go with Denny Galehouse, a 36-year-old right-hander who had gone 8–8 as a spot starter. Moreover, Galehouse had pitched just twice in the last three weeks, posting an 8.10 ERA in 6 2/3 innings of work.
The clubhouse was dumbfounded. Parnell, who later vigorously disputed a story attributed to veteran catcher Birdie Tebbetts that none of the team’s regular starters begged off the assignment, said McCarthy told him he’d changed his mind because there was a strong wind blowing out to left field and he didn’t want to go with a lefty.
“I thought of Denny Galehouse as nothing but a relief pitcher,’’ Sox catcher Matt Batt said. “When McCarthy picked him to start that game, the whole club was upset about it. The whole 25 ballplayers.’’
When Galehouse began warming up for the Red Sox, Boudreau said he had someone check under the grandstand, in case the Red Sox were secretly warming up one of their other pitchers.
Bearden, meanwhile, was preparing for what would become the most memorable start of his career. At 28, he was old for a rookie, but his arrival in the big leagues had been delayed by World War II, and the injury he sustained while serving in the U.S. Navy five years earlier. He was working in the engine room of the USS Helena in the Pacific when it was struck by three Japanese torpedoes. Bearden fell from a ladder on deck and sustained a fractured skull and crushed kneecap. He spent the better part of the next two years in the hospital and underwent surgeries that inserted metal plates in both his head and knee.
But staked to a lead when Boudreau homered off Galehouse in the first inning — one of two home runs Boudreau hit while going 4 for 4 — Bearden went the distance, allowing just one earned run, while throwing 135 pitches, despite working on one day’s rest. Galehouse was finished after giving up Ken Keltner’s three-run home run with none out in the fourth, and Boudreau took Kinder deep an inning later.
Final score: Indians 8, Red Sox 3.
“McCarthy made his choice, and it didn’t work out,’’ Parnell told author Peter Golenbock in Red Sox Nation. “After the ballgame he said to me, ‘I made a mistake. I’ll just have to live with it.’’’
