On August 22, 1952, the Red Sox sold the contract of a 35-year-old swingman to their arch rivals. “He was no help to us,” said Lou Boudreau, Boston’s manager, bitterly. “I gave him plenty of chances to start and relieve and he didn’t come through.”
In the midst of a pennant race, the mighty Yankees were adding a past-his-prime hurler to help eat some innings. If Boudreau, a future Hall of Famer, was correct in his analysis, the Yankees were hoping to draw blood from a stone. They’d end up getting
some of the best pitching of Ray Scarborough’s career.
Ray Wilson Scarborough
Born: July 23, 1917 (Mount Gilead, NC)
Died: July 1, 1982 (Mount Olive, NC)
Yankees Tenure: 1952-53
Ray Scarborough grew up in North Carolina, the son of Oscar, a general store operator and cotton broker, and Bina. He graduated from Wake Forest University in 1942 and began work as a science teacher. But his right arm was promising enough that he also played for semipro teams in the area. Joe Engel, the legendary scout who also inked deals with Hall of Famers Joe Cronin and Goose Goslin, saw enough to sign Scarborough to play in the Senators’ system.
After winning 21 games and setting a league record with 220 strikeouts at Class-B Selma in 1941, he began the following season at Class-A Chattanooga before getting the call to the bigs on June 26, 1942. The 24-year-old made 12 relief appearances for Washington before drawing his first start in the second game of a doubleheader on September 3. Scarborough held the White Sox off the board and went the distance, earning a shutout victory and a spot in the rotation the rest of the way. Shirley Povich, the legendary sportswriter who spent 65 years at the Washington Post, reported that the rookie had “pitched a beaut.”
Scarborough pitched to a 2.83 ERA in 86 innings in 1943 before reporting for duty with the Navy. He spent all of 1944 and ‘45 in the service, returning for the 1946 season. Scarborough had a career year in 1948, winning 15 games for the 97-loss Senators while recording a 154 ERA+.
That breakout campaign made him a hot commodity around the league, as no less than five teams attempted to poach him via a trade with the lowly Senators. Among them was the Red Sox, who’d finished a game back of Cleveland for the pennant in 1948 following a one-game tiebreaker playoff. Scarborough had held Boston to two runs in a complete-game victory on September 28th, an outing widely blamed for their ouster.
Scarborough stayed in Washington for the ‘49 season and, while he had a bit of a down year, he once again played spoiler, pitching a one-run complete game to beat the Red Sox 2-1 a year to the day after he’d last doomed them. Boston finished one game shy of the pennant once again, this time behind the Yankees. “It wasn’t the Yanks, it was Ray Scarborough,” wrote Ted Williams years later. “Scarborough was just one of those pitchers that baffled us.”
In 1950, it looked like the Red Sox might finally get their white whale. “Both Red Sox, Yankees Vie for Washington’s Ray Scarborough: Veteran Probably Could Win Pennant for Either,” read one comically optimistic headline from a Boston sportswriter. Instead, he ended up flipped to the White Sox, where he struggled, posting a 5.30 ERA in 27 appearances. That December, the Red Sox finally swung a trade to acquire their longtime foe.
As Boudreau lamented, Scarborough’s time with Boston was not nearly as productive as his time pitching against them. After his ERA surpassed 5.00 in a year and a half there, the Red Sox cut bait, putting him on waivers and selling his contract to the Yankees. At 35, he pitched like a man reborn for Casey Stengel. Splitting time between the rotation and bullpen, he pitched to a 2.91 ERA in nine appearances down the stretch. He earned the victory in five of the Yankees’ final 28 games, playing a key role as they edged Cleveland for the pennant by two games.
When asked about this sudden turnaround, the veteran was magnanimous. “I never realized Yogi Berra was such a smart catcher,” he offered by way of explanation. The man who’d wallowed on bad Washington teams most of his career even got the chance to pitch in the World Series, allowing one run in an inning of work in the opener as the Yankees beat the Dodgers in a seven-game classic, securing their fourth consecutive title.
Scarborough stuck around in the Bronx for the 1953 campaign, pitching reasonably well (3.29 ERA in 54.2 innings) before getting released to make way for younger talent as the Yankees won yet another championship. His 3.15 ERA as a Yankee — albeit in a much smaller sample than his seven years in Washington — would be his best mark with any team. After a brief stint with the Tigers, he retired at the age of 36.
After his retirement, Scarborough returned home to Mount Olive, NC, running an oil and supply company while staying involved with the game of baseball. He had stints with multiple organizations over the years, serving as both a coach and a scout.
Ray Scarborough died of a heart attack on July 1, 1982, three weeks before his 65th birthday. His impact on the Yankees organization runs far deeper than his brief tenure with the team. Between his excellent run down the stretch in 1952 and his confounding of the Red Sox in 1949, he was a significant force in securing two Yankees pennants — something many far more decorated players cannot say.
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