Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

Player #160C: Richard B. "Rick" Ferrell. Catcher for the Washington Senators in 1937-1941, 1944-1945, and 1947. 1,692 hits 28 home runs in 18 MLB seasons. He had a career OBP of .378. 8-time All-Star. Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame. In 1984, was inducted to the MLB Hall of Fame. He debuted with the St. Louis Browns in 1929-1933. His best season may have been 1932 for the Browns as he posted a .406 OBP with 67 runs scored and 65 RBIs in 514 plate appearances. He held the record for most MLB games caught for 40 years until unseated by Carlton Fiske in 1988. First catcher to receive from staff of four K-ball pitchers for the Senators in 1944. He joined the Detroit Tigers as a coach in 1950, became general manager and vice president in 1959, and continued with the Tigers until 1992. During his tenure as a Tigers executive, they won the 1968 and 1984 World Series and AL Eastern Division titles in 1972 and 1987.

Back to Rick's SABR biography: . . . A strong contact hitter, the catcher developed a pattern of hitting in the .300’s during the season until September, when due to exhaustion and the wool uniforms in the summer heat, his batting average would invariably drop. Yet he still hit over .300 five times during his career. . . .

The following June 10, 1937, as Rick was batting a strong .308, he and Wes were unexpectedly traded together with Mel Almada to the Washington Senators for pitcher Bobo Newsom and outfielder Ben Chapman. (Washington’s Cal Griffith would only make the deal if Rick was included.) Totaling a .302 batting average from 1933-37 with Boston, Rick had broken Red Sox catcher’s records in batting, home runs, doubles, and runs-batted-in.

With the Senators, Rick and Wes again formed a battery under manager Bucky Harris and both were selected for the 1937 AL All-Star team. In a season of double-injuries, Rick hit a mere .244 in 104 games, playing the season with a partially broken right hand while gripping the bat with his single, left hand at the plate. Playing through the pain, he never once asked to come out of the lineup. Wes went 14-19 for the season but was released in August 1938 (13-8). As his battery mate for five years, Rick had caught 141 of his starts, including nine shutouts.

In 1938, Rick topped all catchers at starting double plays with 15. Also in 1938, he first began successfully catching the Senators’ big knuckleball pitcher Emil “Dutch” Leonard, giving Leonard a new chance in the major leagues. By 1939, Leonard became a 20-game winner, success he attributed to having a catcher like Ferrell, who could handle the knuckleball pitch.

The Senators played at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, when Lou Gehrig retired from baseball with his “Luckiest Man” speech. Rick was standing three feet from the microphone and always clearly remembered that day. When Ted Williams once asked Ferrell how to pitch to Gehrig, Ferrell replied, “No one way. You’ve got to move the ball around, try to cross him up and outguess him…keep him off-stride.” . . . (We will finish this when Rick surfaces again.)