Dull debate ended early enough to see Red Sox make history

The best thing about the debate between Ned Lamont and Bob Stefanowski was its conclusion — early enough to allow us serious students of history to see the Boston Red Sox win their 100th game of the season. That hasn’t happened since 1946.

I saw that 1946 team play in Yankee Stadium when I was 13 years old and have therefore determined it is more fitting and proper for me to devote this column to the relative merits of the 1946 and 2018 Red Sox instead of the relative demerits of the 2018 Republican and Democratic candidates for governor. We’ll all be better for it.

The Red Sox would win 104 games in 1946 and the American League pennant by 12 games over the Detroit Tigers and 17 ahead of the Yankees.  

I don’t remember who won the game I saw that summer of ’46 but the Yankees were also strong, with Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Keller and Tommy Heinrich in the outfield, Phil Rizzutto, Joe Gordon and Snuffy Stirnweiss in the infield and pitchers like Spud Chandler, Tommy Byrne and Joe Page. 

I can still remember most of the Red Sox lineup that day:  Ted Williams and Dom DiMaggio in the outfield — I can’t remember the right fielder — and Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky, Rudy York and Pinky Higgins in the infield. I don’t remember the catcher but Tex Hughson was the starting pitcher. Not bad after 72 years, considering I was a Brooklyn Dodger fan then.  

We had far fewer major league teams in 1946 — eight in each league — and if you lived in the Greater New York area, you knew and argued about all the home teams, Yankees, Dodgers and Giants. (In ’46, the Giants finished last in the National League but the Dodgers tied for first place with the St. Louis Cardinals and the teams had the first post-season, three–game playoff before St. Louis won the pennant.)

But today’s discourse is about those two Red Sox teams, 72 years apart.  The 1946 star was, of course, Williams. Back in baseball after four years as a Navy pilot, he batted .342, hit 38 homers and batted in 123 runs. The other two power hitters were York, with 17 homers and 119 RBIs and Doerr, who batted in 119 runs with 17 homers. Pesky, who hit .335 and Dom DiMaggio, at .316, were the only other .300 hitters and surprisingly, at least to me, only Williams and Doerr eventually made it to the Hall of Fame.

The pitchers were strong.  Ferris won 25 games and lost only 6 while Hughson was 20-11 and Harris, 17-9.

But as good as they were, the ’46 Sox don’t quite match this season’s 100-game winners. Williams has two strong competitors on the current Sox. As of the day of the debate and 100th victory, Mookie Betts was hitting .340 with 29 homers and J.D. Martinez, the designated hitter, a position unheard of in 1946, was batting .331 and ahead of Williams with 40 homers.

The 2018 outfield is probably stronger defensively as well. Andrew Benintendi, hitting .291 with 16 homers, plays a better left field than Williams. Betts is an outstanding right fielder and few center fielders in the team’s history have outplayed Jackie Bradley, Jr., whose fielding more than makes up for his relatively light hitting — .231 with 12 homers.

Pitching has changed enough in 72 years to make comparisons more difficult. The 20th-century Sox and their contemporaries took pride in pitching complete games — a skill nearing complete extinction. None of the current team’s four best starters will win 20 games and when one of them pitches through seven innings, it’s considered stellar. Relief pitching is therefore more important and a reliever’s number of saves is considered far more telling than a starter’s pitch count. The star closing pitcher on the 2018 Sox, Craig Kimbrel, reached 35 saves in the 1-0, 100th win.

The rest of the story remains to be told. The Sox have to survive league playoff games before even reaching the World Series. The 1946 Series, like all of the others between 1918 and 2004, didn’t go very well for Boston. The Sox won three games but the Cardinals won four.

The Sox also have to win 106 to surpass the 1912 team’s record 105 victories. That team — playing in the new Fenway Park — beat the New York Giants in the World Series after ending the season 14 games ahead of the Washington Senators and 55 ahead of the last place New York Highlanders, as the Yankees were then known.

Fifty-five games ahead of New York. Those were the days.

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at rahles1@outlook.com.