Members of the Red Sox who played on other professional sports teams

It’s fairly well-known that Sox pitcher Gene Conley also played pro sports as a center for the Boston Celtics of the NBA, Bill Russell’s backup. Make that the World Champion Boston Celtics. Conley was on the 1959, 1960, and 1961 champion teams. Because he’d also been on the 1957 World Champion Braves, Conley remains the only professional sports player on champion teams in two sports. He also won the 1955 All-Star Game (in baseball). Conley had played for the Boston Braves before the team relocated to Milwaukee, thus making him also the only pro to play for three professional teams from the same city -- Braves, Red Sox, Celtics.

On April 27, 1963, for at least a moment in the fourth inning, two NBA players (Gene Conley of the Celtics and Dave DeBusschere of the New York Knicks) each pitched for their respective Sox (Conley for the Red, and DeBusschere for the White). It was a 9-5 game, and Boston won it. Conley was half of the December 1960 trade that still stands as “the biggest trade in history” -- the Red Sox traded 6’6 1/2” pitcher Frank Sullivan to acquire the 6’8” or 6’9” Conley.

There were many Red Sox players who were multi-sport athletes in high school or college. Some, like Jackie Jensen and Harry Agganis (a first-round pick of the Cleveland Browns in the 1952 draft), played football. Johnny Pesky skated with the Boston Bruins and there were murmurs of a contract offer -- before the Red Sox told him not to be found scrimmaging on the ice.

Infielder John Reder’s obituary from the Fall River Herald News states that he “was also considered one of the top professional soccer players in the country and was named a soccer All-American.” Reder played first base and third base for the Red Sox in 1932. In the world of soccer, he had been a goalie for the New York Marksmen (1929-30) and for the New York Yankees (!), who were also called the New Bedford Whalers, in 1931. Reder of the Red Sox batted .135 in 37 at-bats, with one double and three RBIs. He was born in Lublin, Poland.

Sam Dente also played some professional soccer, with the Kearny Americans in the American Soccer League.

In the offseasons, Cliff Brady had played for the Scullin Steel Football Club of St. Louis and, as it happened, in March 1922 the team was up to play in the national championship competition against Todds Ship Yard of Brooklyn. The Boston Herald explained, “Brady is a star forward on the Scullin team and has received permission from George Stallings to return to St. Louis for that game. Stallings evidently figures that it will be a good chance for Brady to get all the boots out of his system before returning to baseball.”   Scullin won, 3-2, in St. Louis on March 19, starting the game in heavy rain but in front of 9,000 fans. Todds leapt out to a 2-0 lead, but Brady scored one goal just before the end of the first half. Elmer Schwartz kicked in the tying and winning goals. Brady was thus a national champion for the only time in his sports career.

It’s with pro football, though, that the greatest overlap occurred. A full six Sox also played in the NFL:

1921: Jack Perrin played for the Red Sox for two days in 1921, but appeared in four games. The outfielders played in back-to-back doubleheaders on July 11 and July 12, batting .231 (3 for 13, all singles; he also struck out three times) with one RBI. He was the Big Ten All-Star left fielder for Michigan that year, but he only got one chance in the field for the Red Sox. He recorded a putout. It was his only time in major league baseball -- but five years later, he got into six NFL games as a blocking back with the 1926 Hartford Blues. He kicked one field goal and also kicked for three extra points.

On April 20, 1923 Dick Reichle hit his one and only major league homer off Waite Hoyt, a two-run bounce home run to left field, part of a three-run first inning for the Red Sox. Babe Ruth’s double with the bases loaded in the ninth gave the Yankees the win. Reichle appeared in 122 games that year, but the next time he played major league ball it was in the NFL -- as an offensive end for the 1923 Milwaukee Badgers.

Hoge Workman had his major league debut with the Red Sox on June 27, 1924. Workman walked one Yankee and surrendered three hits in 1 1/3 innings and then was lifted for a pinch-hitter. He threw 18 innings in 11 appearances in 1924, but by year’s end was playing in the National Football League for the Cleveland Bulldogs. His 11 MLB games were overshadowed by his 19 NFL games. Workman’s best work was for Cleveland, where he threw nine touchdown passes in nine games in 1924. He put in time as a quarterback, end, fullback, and halfback. After six years out of major league sports, he resurfaced for nine more games with the 1931 Cleveland Indians NFL team, and the following year he played in one game for the New York Giants, gaining one yard in one attempt.

Charlie Berry might have played football against either Perrin or Reichle, or both. It was a busy year for the MLB/NFL nexus. In 1925-26, he played in 20 games as an offensive end for the NFL’s Pottsville Maroons, 10 games in 1925, and nine in 1926; he scored nine touchdowns -- four receiving, four rushing, and one off a fumble. Berry also kicked three field goals and 29 extra points during his gridiron career. In baseball, Berry was a catcher for the Red Sox for several years, from 1928-32, and played in 709 major league games for the Athletics, Red Sox, and White Sox, from 1925 through 1938, batting .269. Babe Ruth might have known better than to have tried to bowl over Berry, attempting to score on a sac fly on April 22, 1931. Later in the same inning, after he’d taken his place in the field, Ruth strained a ligament and ended up being carried off the field. Cause and effect? Perhaps not. Berry’s post-playing days saw him a two-sport man as well: he was an American League umpire from 1942 through 1962, and also served as a referee in the NFL for 24 seasons.

Bill McWilliams got into two games and had two at-bats for the 1931 Red Sox (see his story elsewhere in this book). He never got a hit. He got into five NFL games in 1934 as a wingback and halfback for the Detroit Lions, where he recorded 16 yards rushing in six attempts.

Carroll Hardy played for the Sox from 1960 through 1962. He’d been a halfback, appearing in 10 games for the 1955 San Francisco 49ers, recording 37 yards rushing on 15 attempts, with 12 receptions for 388 yards, an average of 28.2 yards per reception, scoring four touchdowns. With Boston, Hardy is best known as the only man to pinch-hit for Ted Williams. He also pinch-hit for both Carl Yastrzemski and Roger Maris (with Cleveland). After baseball, Carroll Hardy served a stint as director of player personnel and assistant general manager for the Denver Broncos, spending 20 years in the Broncos front office.

After John Burkett finished 15 seasons of major league baseball, he finally achieved his first sports ambition -- to become a pro bowler. Burkett told the Reno Gazette-Journal that he’d worked at a bowling alley for $1.50 per hour during high school. “I wanted to turn pro out of high school. Baseball just kind of came along. I was drafted in the sixth round (out of high school) and they gave me 13 grand and I thought I was rich and wouldn’t have to work. I gave baseball a shot thinking I could always come back to bowling later if it didn’t work out.” It was bowling that didn’t work ouy, but he finished 32^nd in the 2000 Brunswick Pro Source Don Carter Classic, while still pitching, winning $1,040. In 18 games he averaged 217.28. After his final season, 2003, he tried to go pro full time, but in January 2004 he fell short of making the first cut at the American Bowling Congress Masters.

Golf? Ken Harrelson broke his leg in spring training 1970 and missed almost the entire season. In mid-1971, he decided to take up pro golf. He told biographer Alex Edelman, “I just lost my desire to play baseball. I was still a competitor…but I didn’t want to play baseball anymore.” Harrelson sadly announced that he would quit the game he had loved for so long to pursue a professional golfing career. That pursuit ended badly, and Harrelson turned back to baseball once more in 1975, coming back to Boston -- this time as an announcer.” Harrelson spent three years on the Tour, even competing in the British Open. He found that golf was much tougher than baseball. “In baseball, you react to the pitcher,” he said. “In golf, it’s just you. The mental part is what gets you.” (www.golfschool.com)

Researcher Brian McKenna found two Red Sox players appearing in National Basketball League games, Ernie Andres (1939-43 for Oshkosh) and Lou Boudreau (playing briefly for the NBL’s Hammond, Indiana Ciesar All-Americans prior to World War II). In his autobiography, Boudreau wrote, “I was pretty good, though I wasn’t very tall, and I probably could have continued to play in that league for a few years.” But the Cleveland Indians asked him to concentrate on baseball and give up the hoops. Other pro basketballers before World War II who have Red Sox connections are: Bucky Harris, Bucky Walters, and Negro Leagues and Red Sox farmhand Piper Davis. Wayne McElreavy points to a 1929 Washington Post article which shows that future Basketball Hall of Famer Bennie Borgmann was on the Red Sox roster of the day, although he never played for the team.

Al Kellett faced all of two batters as a member of the 1924 Red Sox, walking them both, but he played several seasons in the American Professional Basketball League – including a team in Boston, the 1934/35 Boston Trojans. Kellett was a high-scoring center in his day, and also played for the Philadelphia Warriors, the Chicago Bruins, and a couple of other pro teams of the 1920s and 1930s.

In the winters of 1967 and 1968, Ferguson Jenkins kept in shape playing for a while with the Harlem Globetrotters. They were always in a league of their own.

Jimmy Piersall was not only signed by the Red Sox right out of high school, but drafted by the Boston Celtics as well.

Harry Agganis was another player with two-sport potential. Billy Consolo roomed with Agganis the year before Harry’s Red Sox debut. Consolo recalls the Cleveland Browns calling him up. They told him, “Otto Graham has retired and you’re our number one draft choice. You don’t want to play baseball.” Consolo says, “I heard all those conversations, man. He could have been a professional football player, quarterback for the Cleveland Browns.” But Agganis did want to play baseball and was off to a strong start before his tragic death.

There were two Sox players with two-sport potential on the 1929 team: Bill Barrett and Ed Morris. In the off-season, both applied for licenses to box professionally -- hoping to cash in on some of the money that White Sox infielder Art Shires was earning in the ring. A match at the Boston Garden, pitting Barrett or Morris against Shires was contemplated. Commissioner Landis stepped in and announced that “any ball player engaging in the so-called manly art of boxing would be considered retired from baseball.” That was that, other than the Benevolent Association of Boxers retaliating by banning boxers from playing professional baseball.

A two-sport man signed by Boston but who never made the team. There are bound to be a few of them. Perhaps the first was reflected in this brief note in the April 10, 1901 edition of the Washington Post: “The Boston American League team has signed Dr. Harley Parker, the Chicago billiard expert and ball player.” Billiards was another sport that tracks play by innings. Parker had appeared in 18 games for the Chicago Colts (precursor to the Cubs) in 1893, 1895, and 1896, pitching in 17 of them. He was 4-2 in 1895 but fell to 1-5 in 1896. He did play in one major league game in 1901, but it was for Cincinnati on June 21. He pitched eight innings and gave up 21 runs, 14 of them earned. Apparently, Boston made the right choice not throwing him out there on the mound. Later in the year, Parker wound up pitching for Buffalo. He later umpired 28 AL games in 1911, but none involved the Red Sox. Parker was active in billiards tournaments for at least the next couple of decades.

In 1941, former Red Sox farm director Billy Evans (1936-40) was the general manager of the NFL’s Cleveland Rams. But maybe we’re getting too far afield here.

Worst to first ... to worst? And then to first again?

OK, it's a stretch to think the Red Sox are likely contenders for another World Championship in 2015. But they could well contend.  Stranger things have happened.

And I haven't given up on this season yet. I wouldn't do that until they are mathematically eliminated.  I think most of us recall great finishes such as the Rockies had in 2007, when they were 15-1 from September 16 on.  They were in fourth place when their streak began.

(Then they swept the NLDS and the NLCS - only to run into the Red Sox, and get swept by Boston.)

That aside, it's kind of interesting to notice the Red Sox pattern of ups and downs in recent years - If the Sox fail to make the postseason this year, it will be five times in 11 years they have failed to do so:

2006, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2014

But they won the World Series three times (and I don't even need to write out the years - everyone reading this post can recite them from recent memory.)

dismantling the 2014 Red Sox, with an eye toward a stronger team in the years to come

Jake Peavy is the first to depart.

It takes courage to start dismantling any Red Sox team these days, when the team is expected to remain competitive throughout.  But GM Ben Cherington is starting to put a new plan into effect, acting decisively (as he did back with the Carl Crawford/Adrian Gonzales/Josh Beckett/Nick Punto trade at the end of August 2012).

How'd that work out?

Well, it's not like quid pro quo but we can note that the Red Sox won the World Series the very next year.

It will be interesting to see the rest of the moves that are made, before the trading deadline and throughout the rest of the year and the offseason.

Good column by Nick Cafardo in today's Globe about Jon Lester

Basically, he says the Red Sox have generally adhered to a new philosophy in the Cherington era - one that John Henry outlined earlier this year in Bloomberg Business Week, which said that almost all the overpaid players in baseball (overpaid by what they produce on the field) are over 30.  So you don't give out long-term deals to players who are 30 or over.

To me, the most telling line was in answer to the question Cafardo himself posed:

"Will the Red Sox make an exception on Lester?  If they do, you have to question whether they really have a philosophy."

Tibetan leader still rues Grady Little's failure to pull Pedro in 2003

Tibetan Leader, a Red Sox Fan, Knows the Value of Taking the Long View

JULY 18, 2014 New York Times

Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay has embraced the Dalai Lama’s so-called Middle Way, a policy intended to draw China into dialogue by softening Tibetan demands. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

The Saturday Profile

By ELLEN BARRY

DHARAMSALA, India — FROM his office in the hill station of Dharamsala, where Tibetan exiles have spent the past half-century waiting for the seismic changes that could restore Tibet’s independence, Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay was reminiscing, a bit wistfully, about a world he had left behind.

Specifically, he was reminiscing about the Boston Red Sox. These were not the vague remarks of someone faking expertise for diplomatic purposes. Rather, he was recalling the seventh game of the 2003 American League Championship Series, when the Red Sox manager took a disastrous gamble by allowing the team’s star pitcher, Pedro Martinez, to remain on the mound late in a deciding game against the New York Yankees.

Behind his desk, a magnificent life-size, silk-draped photograph of the Dalai Lama hangs from the wall, and outside his window, the Himalayas rise like a great wall into the mist.

Mr. Sangay, 46, recalled the agitation as he watched Boston’s lead slip away, perhaps the most calamitous in a history of heartbreaks for those who persisted in believing in the Red Sox. The suffering would all be washed away by the next season, but in 2003 no one knew that. “Normally, I am quite a patient guy,” Mr. Sangay said. “But he brought him back after 118 pitches.”

Mr. Sangay likes sports. He can explain why: You win, or you lose. Then you close the book on that episode and start over. This could not be more different from the mission that he took on in 2011, when he left a comfortable life at Harvard to begin a five-year term as sikyong, the leader of the Tibetans’ exile administration. This coincided with a momentous decision by the Dalai Lama, the exiles’ head of state since 1959, to devolve his political power to the new prime minister.

Since Mr. Sangay took over, it has been difficult to close the book on anything. China, which once gave lip service to negotiations on Tibet’s status, has refused to meet with him or his representatives. Western countries are increasingly squeamish about getting involved. With the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday a year away and no clear plan for succession, anxiety has settled like a pall over Dharamsala. Some activists criticize Mr. Sangay for being too rigid with China, others for watering down Tibetan demands in an attempt to bring Beijing to the table. Meanwhile, it is his job to inspire confidence when there is little sign of progress.

Considering all this, Mr. Sangay is surprisingly even-keeled. Asked why, he says he falls back on the Buddhist notion of impermanence. He also uses what he learned as a fan of the Red Sox, during the long years before the team’s luck turned.

“There is this unfulfilled desire, unfulfilled aspiration,” he said. “That keeps you going.”

TALL and imposing like many men from eastern Tibet, Mr. Sangay grew up in a refugee camp near Darjeeling, in eastern India, poor enough to wear sandals through the bitter winter.

He comes from a long line of fighters. His father was in charge of arms and ammunition for the Chushi Gangdruk militia, formed in the late 1950s to defend Tibet. One particular story accompanied Mr. Sangay’s birth: His mother suspected he was the reincarnation of her brother, who had been trained by the Central Intelligence Agency and airdropped at the Tibetan border, in one of the most secret programs of the Cold War. He never returned.

Continue reading the main story

“When I was born in 1968, my mother, because of her closeness to her brother, she said, ‘Hey, maybe he is my brother, the freedom fighter,’ ” Mr. Sangay said. A sense of expectation developed, he added. “You parents say that, your relatives say that, your teacher says that: ‘Hey, Lobsang, you’re going to be someone special, you are going to be a great freedom fighter.’ ”

By the time he ran for the highest office in the exile government, known as the Central Tibetan Administration, Mr. Sangay had a smoother image, one that developed over 16 years at Harvard, first as a Fulbright scholar and later as a research fellow at Harvard Law School, his salary provided in large part by a private foundation. In a suit and tie, he could easily be mistaken for an investment banker, and he has an American politician’s knack for campaigning that, coupled with the reverence accorded to Harvard, has helped him leapfrog older and more established Dharamsala-based candidates.

The biggest change was that he dropped his insistence that Tibet gain independence, instead embracing the Dalai Lama’s so-called Middle Way. Introduced in 1987, the policy is intended to draw China into dialogue by softening Tibetan demands, calling for self-governance and “genuine autonomy” within China. Last year, Mr. Sangay told the Council on Foreign Relations that the goal was to see ethnic Tibetans installed as party secretary and in other important posts in the Tibetan autonomous region.

“We don’t question or challenge the present structure of the ruling party,” he said.

Some activists denounce Mr. Sangay for scaling back the movement’s demands. Jamyang Norbu, a prominent writer who recalled Mr. Sangay as a natural politician and a “good wheeler-dealer” when they became friends in the 1990s, dismissed the current policy as “a fruitless exercise.” He blamed the influence of Harvard, saying young Tibetans who spend time in the United States often develop an unrealistic reliance on “the old, old European tradition of diplomacy and negotiation.”

“The problem is that they see China through the eyes of the West,” said Mr. Norbu, who now lives in Tennessee. “The sheep doesn’t see things from the point of view of the wolf that is gobbling her.” With his bodyguards in dark suits and sunglasses, he said, Mr. Sangay is focused on burnishing his image at a moment when Tibetans are desperate for a way forward.

“We just can’t afford it; we are getting to the end of our tether,” he said. “The whole Tibetan world is falling apart so fast.”

IN Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama’s word remains sacrosanct, and Mr. Sangay seems untroubled by the criticism. In a recent interview, he was cheerful for another reason: His wife and 7-year-old daughter, who remained behind in Medford, Mass., when he began his term, were finally preparing to move to Dharamsala. He was buying his daughter a puppy.

As the leader of an unrecognized government, he earns 26,000 rupees a month, or about $430. He makes exhausting whistle-stop tours of exile communities, listening to petitions and complaints. Last week he paid a condolence visit to a Tibetan family that had lost a brother to a stampeding elephant. During trips outside India, he holds secretive meetings with government officials, often in hotel rooms or cafeterias to avoid attracting the attention of the Chinese.

In the presence of the Dalai Lama, his status seems to melt away. Addressing a crowd last year, the Dalai Lama affectionately mocked Mr. Sangay’s spoken Tibetan, saying it is “like a schoolboy talking,” and then laughed heartily. The prime minister, in the background, bowed his head. Asked about it, he smiled a little ruefully.

“It was a privilege,” he said. “It means he really knows me well. For him to say such a thing is obviously a bit embarrassing, but mainly, what a privilege, because he was saying, ‘I know this guy well.’ ” He added, “I worked very hard on my Tibetan.”

But the subtext is that it will not always be this way. The Dalai Lama has been evasive about how his spiritual successor, the 15th Dalai Lama, will be chosen, saying only that he will reveal his intentions in 2025, when he turns 90. The political transition, however, is in place. Asked what would happen if the Dalai Lama died unexpectedly, Mr. Sangay said, “The plan is the devolution of political authority.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Sangay offers evidence that Tibetans are opening their hearts to him. In his office hangs a thangka — a traditional painting that usually features Buddhist deities — that has been custom-made by an admirer in China to include his face. He sends out links to worshipful songs that have been written in his honor and posted on YouTube. Asked where he falls in the hierarchy of leaders, he described himself as “a secondary voice,” but added a postscript.

“I am a secondary voice,” he said, “who will someday be a primary voice.”

There is precedent for the Red Sox winning the World Series this year

There is precedent for the Red Sox winning the World Series this year.  The precedent dates back precisely 100 years.

On July 17 and 18, 1914 - and for almost every day of the 1914 season to that point, the Boston Braves were in last place.  Eighth place, since there were no divisions and all the teams had to battle for the pennant without any hopes of winning via a wild card.

The Braves were 11 1/2 games out of first place on the morning of July 18, 1914.

The Red Sox will be 9 1/2 games out of first place on the morning of July 18, 2014.

The 1914 team was called the "Miracle Braves" for good reason.  They went from worst to first in 38 days, largely thanks to a stretch in which they won 22 games against three losses, beginning on the 18th.  They took first place on August 25.  They took it for good on September 5.

Could it happen again in Boston, exactly 100 years later?  Of course, it could.

You can read the full story of the 1914 Braves in a book written by SABR members and published by SABR. It is THE MIRACLE BRAVES OF 1914: BOSTON’S ORIGINAL WORST-TO-FIRST WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS edited by Bill Nowlin (SABR, 2014).  It's available on Amazon, among other places.  (It's free to all SABR members as an e-book, as are all SABR publications.  For non-members, it's reasonably priced.)

There is always hope (until there can't be.) 

Here is a good part of Bob Brady's foreword to the book:

Once a dominating franchise during baseball’s early days, the Braves had been in a serious state of decline for many years prior to 1914.  Some of that deterioration could be attributed to the birth of the American League in 1901 and the introduction of the Boston Americans (later the Red Sox) as a neighboring competitor.  Weakened by the junior circuit’s player raids, frequent changes in ownership, and an obsolete ballpark, the Braves struggled both on the field and at the gate.  Even their band of loyal followers, the Royal Rooters, had shifted their allegiance to the Red Sox.  The Braves’ new owner, James E. Gaffney, a New Yorker with ties to Tammany Hall, sought to reverse the team’s fortunes.  After residing in the National League’s basement for four consecutive seasons, Gaffney’s Braves surprisingly ascended to fifth place in 1913, led by the irascible George Stallings in his first year at the Tribe’s helm.  Gaffney also laid out plans to construct a state-of-the-art concrete and steel ballpark at the site of a former golf club a little over a mile away from Fenway Park to replace the Braves’ antiquated South End Grounds.  Still, expectations for the following season were modest: a return to the senior circuit’s first division – a feat not accomplished since 1902.

Mired in the National League cellar in mid-July, the ragtag ’14 Braves not only rose from eighth to first place in a little over two months, this legendary team played .781 baseball (50 wins, only 14 losses) from July 1 to season’s end and finished atop the National League standings an amazing 10½ games ahead of its nearest rival, John McGraw’s New York Giants.  Much of the credit belonged to the tough and often profane Stallings, who once described his team as comprising “one .300 hitter, the worst outfield that ever flirted with sudden death, three pitchers, and a good working combination around second base.”^[i] To capture the pennant in the face of his roster’s limitations, Stallings deftly refined the art of platooning to capitalize upon strengths and mitigate weaknesses.  The eminent baseball writer, historian, and statistician Bill James regards Stallings’ skillful maneuvering in 1914 as having an “almost revolutionary impact” on baseball managers.^[ii]  However, despite such adept leadership and a half-season of heroics, the Braves were given little chance of besting the mighty Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series.  Their fall classic sweep of the highly favored Mackmen was the final piece needed to forever brand this team the Miracle Braves.

The Tribe’s extraordinary achievement 100 years ago perennially gets dusted off by the media during the dog days of summer whenever a bottom-dwelling ballclub exhibits some signs of life.  An unexpected winning streak that ignites a spark of hope among a franchise’s heretofore frustrated followers often leads them to ask themselves: If the Miracle Braves could do it, why not us?  The front offices are challenged not to throw in the towel and begin rebuilding efforts while the team still retains the glimmer of a chance of replicating the Braves’ legendary 1914 climb to the top of the standings. 

---

^[i] John C. Skipper, A Biographical Dictionary of Major League Baseball Managers (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2003), 298.

^[ii] Bill James, The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers from 1870 to Today (New York: Scribner, 1997), 46.

not the best offseason for signing veteran players

Not the best offseason.  Sizemore - gone.  Capuano - gone.  Pierzynski - gone.

Mujica remains (with his 5.51 ERA in what's looking like another "year of the pitcher" in MLB.)