The legend of Dave ‘Boo’ Ferriss

The most famous baseball player in Delta State history never wore a Statesman uniform. He wore a Red Sox one, won 25 games in a season, and then came home to Mississippi and built the program from nothing.

David Meadow “Boo” Ferriss was born Dec. 5, 1921, in Shaw, Mississippi, a small Delta town in Bolivar County. He went to Mississippi State — signed by the Boston Red Sox after his junior year in Starkville — and broke into professional baseball in 1942 with Greensboro of the Piedmont League.

Then the war intervened. Ferriss served in the Army Air Corps in 1943 and 1944, and came back to a Boston club that would define the first act of his life.

The Fenway years

Ferriss debuted as a 23-year-old on April 29, 1945, and did it with a two-hit shutout. He won his first eight starts without allowing a single run across 22 consecutive innings. By season’s end he was 21-10 with a 2.96 ERA, and finished fourth in the American League MVP voting. He was named Rookie of the Year.

Those rookie numbers still stand in the franchise record book: 21 wins, five shutouts and 26 complete games are all Red Sox rookie records to this day.

Then came 1946, and the season that made him a Boston name. Ferriss went 25-6 with a 3.25 ERA — a .806 winning percentage that led the American League — with 26 complete games and six shutouts. He won 13 straight games at Fenway Park, still a Major League record for consecutive home wins. He was an All-Star. And he pitched the Red Sox to their first pennant in 28 years.

In the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Ferriss threw a six-hit, 4-0 shutout in Game 3, giving Boston a 2-1 series lead. He then started the decisive Game 7, which the Red Sox lost 4-3.

Across his first two seasons, he tied the American League record with 46 wins.

Then it ended. Ferriss’s arm gave out — the story goes that he woke up one morning unable to lift it. He went 12-11 the following season, and his career was finished before his 30th birthday. Six seasons in Boston, 65-30 record, 3.64 ERA, 880 innings, 296 strikeouts across 144 appearances, the last of them in 1950.

Coming home

He didn’t leave the game. Ferriss stayed in the Red Sox organization as pitching coach from 1955 to 1959, working with Boston’s staff for five seasons.

In 1960 he returned to Mississippi to become head baseball coach and athletic director at Delta State University — and this is where his legacy actually lives, because there wasn’t much to take over.

“He built that program from the ground level,” Delta State’s own history puts it. The program had barely existed. Ferriss made it respectable, then made it a contender.

He left briefly to serve as athletic director at Mississippi State from 1967 to 1968, returned to Delta State as director of public relations in 1969, and resumed his head coaching duties in 1970. He coached until 1988.

The record

Ferriss compiled a 639-387-8 record — all of it at Delta State, across 26 seasons. At the time he retired, it ranked among the all-time national leaders at the NCAA Division II level. His teams won four Gulf South Conference championships and three NCAA regional titles, and reached the Division II College World Series three times — 1977, 1978 and 1982 — finishing runner-up in 1978 and 1982 and third in 1977.

His 1988 team, his last, was ranked ninth nationally in the Collegiate Baseball poll.

The coaching tree he started held: since Ferriss took over the program in 1960, only four men have coached the Statesmen. Mike Kinnison — a former team manager turned All-American shortstop under Ferriss — took over and in 2004 led Delta State to its first NCAA Division II national championship, beating Grand Valley State 12-8. That title sits on the foundation Ferriss poured.

The honors

Ferriss was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 1964 (the hall’s own list gives 1961 or 1962 in some records; its inductee page reads 1964), the Mississippi State Sports Hall of Fame in 1970, the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1988, and the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2002.

He spent 46 years in baseball at the collegiate and professional levels. On campus, Delta State’s athletics complex carries his name — the Harvey-Ferriss dedication honors both him and another Delta State figure.

His wife, Miriam, said it simply after he died: “Boston was really a place in his heart.”

But he chose Cleveland. He retired here, stayed here, and became — in the university’s words — the school’s most avid fan and chief fundraiser long after he stopped filling out a lineup card.

Dave “Boo” Ferriss died Nov. 24, 2016 — Thanksgiving Day — at his home in Cleveland. He was 94.

The 639 wins are the number people cite. The number that matters more is the one that came before the first pitch of any Delta State game: when Ferriss took the job in 1960, there was barely a program to take.