Was It about More Than Baseball?

I briefly divert from more serious topics. But even this post is not as frivolous as it may at first sound.

Let me begin by saying that the Deep State has always utilized spectator sports to distract the masses—they have been, to men, what television soap operas were to women: never-ending sagas. Even on those rare occasions when a city’s team won a championship, shortly after the parade and celebrations were over, fans would begin worrying about next year’s season. I myself wasted enough of my life glued to TV playoff games, agonizing over whether the “good guys” would win.

I hail from Boston, whose fans are nearly as legendary as its teams. For all the great franchises the city has known, including the Celtics and Patriots, it is probably the Red Sox who are most embedded in Boston’s consciousness—so much that their fans are called “Red Sox Nation.”

Baseball, “the national pastime,” it must be noted, is a Freemasonic sport. The diamond is the square and compass. The three bases are the three Blue Lodge degrees. To “score” means you pass the third degree. Many of the game’s early greats, including Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Grover Cleveland Alexander and Rogers Hornsby, were Masons. So was Stephen Carlton Clark, founder of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

For 86 years—1918 to 2004—Boston suffered under what was known as “the Curse of the Bambino.” After winning four world championships in a span of seven seasons, the team sold the legendary Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. The latter also acquired four future Hall-of-Fame pitchers from the Red Sox, and even their manager Ed Barrow, and replaced the Red Sox as baseball’s preeminent team, a status that became more or less permanent.

1948—the year of our focus—hadn’t looked much different. The Yankees were defending World Champions, but at season’s end were in a fierce battle for first with Boston and Cleveland. After two straight wins against the Senators in Washington, the Red Sox returned home to Fenway Park to play the season’s final two games in a weekend series—October 2 and 3—against the hated Yankees, with whom they were tied for second, one game behind the Indians. It was do-or-die.

The Red Sox rose to the occasion, crushing the Yankees 5 to 1 and 10 to 5, knocking New York out of the race. Meanwhile, the Indians lost their final game of the season to Detroit 7 to 1. The result was—for the first time in American League history—a tie for first.

According to league rules, the tie would be resolved by a one-game playoff to be played the next day, the location decided by coin toss. The Red Sox won the toss; the game would be at Fenway Park. Momentum was clearly in Boston’s favor. And fans were ecstatic because the Boston Braves had won the National League pennant for the first time since the 1914 “Miracle Braves.” A Red Sox victory would mean Boston would enjoy a “subway” World Series.

What pitchers would start the decisive game? Cleveland manager Lou Boudreau—who was also the Indians’ shortstop—went with his best pitcher, rookie Gene Bearden, who would finish the season with a won-lost record of 20 and 7, and a league-best earned run average (ERA) of 2.43. Bearden was operating on only one day’s rest, but Boudreau was going by a tried-and-true principle: when the chips are down, and the season’s on the line, you forget the rulebook, and go with your ace.

Who would Boston start? The choice was obvious. The best pitcher Red Sox manager Joe McCarthy had was also a rookie, Mel Parnell, who still holds the club’s all-time record for career wins by a leftie. In 1948, Parnell had a team-best earned run average of 3.14 and was 15 and 8. He was dominant in Fenway Park with a blazing 2.21 ERA, and had “owned” Cleveland hitters there, yielding just five earned runs in 26 innings. Also, he had three day’s rest. Parnell assumed he would pitch the playoff game and went to bed early the night before. But when he arrived at Fenway Park, McCarthy informed Parnell that he had “changed his mind.”

McCarthy had other capable starters. EllIs Kinder was also well-rested, and a better pitcher than his 10-7 record suggested. The following year, 1949, he was voted Sporting News Pitcher of the Year—the equivalent of today’s Cy Young Award—posting a record of 23-6. Parnell was voted second with a mark of 25-7. One could contend—albeit it very arguably—that McCarthy not only had Boston’s two best pitchers, but the league’s two best pitchers rested and ready to go.

McCarthy also had Jack Kramer, who at 18-5 owned the league’s best winning percentage in 1948, and whose clutch one-run performance had knocked the Yankees out of contention on October 2. And there was curveballer Joe Dobson, who had been the team’s ace in 1947, and had finished the 1948 season 16-10, starting the final game against New York. Of course, Kramer and Dobson were not well-rested.

McCarthy’s fifth starter, Mickey Harris, had been an all-star in 1946, but sore arm problems had plagued him since. Only 7-10 in 1948, he was not a candidate to start the big game.

To everyone’s astonishment, McCarthy did not hand the ball to any of his five starters. Instead he gave it to a mediocre relief pitcher now at the end of his career—36-year-old Denny Galehouse. Galehouse had a career winning percentage below .500 and had never been a dominating pitcher. In his best season, he had gone 12 and 10. He been in the Red Sox rotation for part of the 1948 season, but performed so poorly that he had to be relegated to the bullpen. In the past two weeks, he had only made two relief appearances and both times was hit hard, with a miserable earned run average of 8.10—quite a contrast to Cleveland’s starter Bearden, who was “hot,” having thrown two consecutive shutouts. And the last time Galehouse had faced the Indians (an August 25 start in Fenway Park), he had been driven from the mound in the second inning, as Cleveland crushed the Red Sox 9-0.

It could not even be argued that Galehouse’s arm was well-rested. The previous day, during Boston’s 10-5 win over the Yankees, he had spent six innings warming up in the bullpen, though never called on to pitch.

With the season on the line, and Cleveland using their best pitcher, why wasn’t Boston? When Indians player-manager Lou Boudreau saw Galehouse warming up, he thought it was a ruse—that McCarthy must have had the lefthander Parnell warming up secretly, so that the Indians would go with the wrong lineup.

But to Boudreau’s delight, it was no joke. He greeted Galehouse with a home run in the first inning. After Indians third baseman Ken Keltner crushed a three-run homer with nobody out in the fourth, Galehouse was driven from the mound, and the Indians never looked back, winning the game easily 8-3.

They went on to win the World Series, and then something unusual happened. Hollywood made a movie glorifying the team, The Kid from Cleveland. The movie’s plot is about a juvenile delinquent (as well as delinquents in general), who reforms after the Indians make him their assistant bat boy. The movie featured not only manager Lou Boudreau, but numerous Indians players, owner Bill Veeck, general manager Hank Greenberg, “good will ambassador” Tris Speaker, and several real-life Cleveland sports writers. Although Hollywood has made many sports films, it was rare to get this “up close and personal” with an entire franchise.

But back in Boston, tempers flared. For more than a month, all through the season’s home stretch, manager Joe McCarthy didn’t have enough confidence in Galehouse to let him start even once. Why, then, did he spurn his entire starting rotation, and select Galehouse for the year’s most important game?

Red Sox backup catcher Matt Batts said: “When McCarthy picked him to start that game, the whole club was upset about it. The whole 25 ballplayers. . . . ’’¹  “We just couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t logical at the time. We had Parnell ready to go, and Kinder was ready. I would say 100% of the players were against it.”

Publicly, McCarthy justified his decision not to start the left-handed Parnell by saying the wind was blowing out to left field, which would enable Cleveland’s right-handed lineup to take advantage of Fenway Park’s close left field fence (“the Green Monster”). This didn’t hold water, however; throughout the 1948 season—and his career—the left field fence didn’t bother Parnell, who had dominated the Indians at Fenway. And Cleveland starter Gene Bearden was also a lefty—the “wind blowing to left” and left-field wall clearly didn’t worry Cleveland manager Boudreau.

For Denny Galehouse, this would be the final start of his career. The following season, 1949, while Kinder and Parnell were voted the two best pitchers in the league, Galehouse made a total of two relief appearances, posted a miserable ERA of 13.25, and was released by the Red Sox. He never pitched in the majors again.

Although this incident occurred before I was born, I would periodically read about it in Boston newspapers, whose sportswriters agonized, trying to make sense of McCarthy’s decision, which has been ranked as one of the greatest managerial blunders of all time. Some said it was because Galehouse had pitched well in the 1944 World Series, proving that he was a “money pitcher.” But that was water long under the bridge. Others pointed out that Galehouse had pitched a two-hitter in long relief against the Indians earlier in the 1948 season—but that had been negated by the Indians crushing him later. In the end, it was usually written off as “the Curse of the Bambino.”

I believe the mystery has a solution, but it cannot be figured out by looking at baseball strategy—rather, it comes from the reality that baseball is part of a larger geopolitical picture.

The following paragraphs concern race relations, which is a volatile subject, especially today. Before proceeding, let me make it clear that I AM UNEQUIVOCALLY OPPOSED TO RACISM IN ANY FORM. I believe that all people are created in the image of God, that all races and ethnicities should be treated with dignity and respect, and that no one should be judged by the color of their skin. What I oppose is the oligarchs at the top, who seek to advance their agenda and remake the world by pitting race against race, fomenting violence, and destroying indigenous cultures.

Ever since the infamously publicized 2015 “Baby Aylan” incident, migrants from Africa and the Middle East have besieged Europe. These migrants have been, overwhelmingly, single males of military recruiting age. The result has been an unprecedented assault on Europe’s white Christian culture. This is actually fulfillment of the century-old Kalergi Plan.

The attack doesn’t just come at the bottom from street assaults and church fires; it comes top-down from the oligarchy-backed politicians—like Angela Merkel—and the mainstream media. Here (center) is winner of the 2017 Miss Helsinki beauty contest, Sephora Ikabala. Finns who objected, because she was neither Finnish nor seemingly as attractive as her competitors, were slammed as “racists.”

Increasingly, Europeans are finding their history distorted with blacks replacing notable whites. In the most recent example, black actress Jodie Turner Smith has been hired to portray Henry the Eighth’s wife Anne Boleyn.

There seems to be no limit on the changing of history to suit political correctness. We’ve also seen this happen in America, where following the George Floyd ‘I can’t breathe” incident, innumerable historical statues were defaced or destroyed as representing “white supremacy,” and even paintings removed from the U.S. Capitol Building if they portrayed someone affiliated with the Confederacy. History‘s deletion is central to building the “New World Order.”

Throughout 2020’s warm months, mainstream media, while ignoring black-on-black crime, played up white-on-black killings (Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, etc.) in a manner calculated to provoke nationwide violence. Antifa and Black Lives Matter have clearly been weaponized by George Soros and others at the top, who want to see an end to stability and traditional civilization, if not an all-out race war.

This plan, like Kalergi’s, is an ancient one. Myron Fagan was a distinguished Jewish Broadway playwright and director; he served as public relations director for Charles Evan Hughes, the Republican candidate who opposed Woodrow Wilson in the 1916 Presidential election. Fagan later became an outspoken opponent of globalism, and an early exposer of the New World Order, summarizing the situation in a 1967 recording called “The Illuminati and the Council on Foreign Relations”; transcript here).

For our purposes, here are relevant excerpts:

Actually; Jacob [Rothschild agent Jacob Schiff] came here to carry out four specific assignments [one of which was to] create minority-group strife throughout the nation; particularly between the whites and blacks. 

By the pogrom-driven Jewish refugees entering into America, Schiff was creating a ready-made minority group for that purpose. But the Jewish people, as a whole, made fearful by the pogroms, could not be depended upon to create the violence necessary to destroy the unity of the American people.

But right within America, there was an already made-to-order, although as yet, a sleeping minority group, the Negroes, who could be sparked into so-called demonstrations, rioting, looting, murder, and every other type of lawlessness—all that was necessary was to incite and arouse them. Together, those two minority groups, properly maneuvered, could be used to create exactly the strife in America the Illuminati would need to accomplish their objective. . . .

Around 1910, one Israel Zangwill wrote a play entitled The Melting Pot. It was sheer propaganda to incite the Negroes and Jews because the play purportedly visualized how the American people were discriminating against, and persecuting, Jews and Negroes. At that time nobody seemed to realize that it was a propaganda play. It was that cleverly-written. The propaganda was well wrapped-up in the truly great entertainment in the play and it was a big Broadway hit.

Now in those years, the legendary Diamond Jim Brady used to throw a banquet at the famous Delmonico Restaurant in New York after the opening performance of a popular play. He threw such a party for the cast of The Melting Pot, its author, producer, and chosen Broadway celebrities. By then I’d already made a personal mark on the Broadway Theater and was invited to that party. There I met George Bernard Shaw and a Jewish writer named Israel Cohen. Zangwill, Shaw, and Cohen were the ones who created the Fabian Society in England and had worked closely with a Frankfurt Jew named Mordecai who had changed his name to Karl Marx [he was not the more famous Karl Marx]; but remember, at that time both Marxism and Communism were just emerging and nobody paid much attention to either, and nobody suspected the propaganda in the writings of those three really brilliant writers.

At that banquet, Israel Cohen told me that he was then engaged in writing a book which was to be a follow-up on Zangwill’s The Melting Pot. The title of his book was to be A Racial Program for the 20th Century. At that time I was completely absorbed by my work as a playwright, and significant as that title was, its real objective never dawned on me, nor was I interested in reading the book. But it suddenly hit me with the force of a hydrogen bomb when I received a newspaper clipping of an item published by the Washington D.C. Evening Star in May 1957. That item was a verbatim reprint of the following excerpt in Israel Cohen’s book A Racial Program for the 20th Century and it read as I quote:

“We must realize that our party’s most powerful weapon is racial tension. By propounding into the consciousness of the dark races, that for centuries they have been oppressed by the whites, we can move them to the program of the communist party. In America, we will aim for subtle victory. While inflaming the Negro minority against the whites, we will instill in the whites a guilt complex for their exploitation of the Negroes. We will aid the Negroes to rise to prominence in every walk of life, in the professions, and in the world of sports and entertainment. With this prestige, the Negro will be able to intermarry with the whites and begin a process which will deliver America to our cause.”

This was, of course, the American version of the European Kalergi Plan. And let’s underscore the word “sports.”

In 1994, PBS featured a marathon (18.5 hours) taxpayer-funded series Baseball by filmmaker Ken Burns. Each evening would cover a different decade in baseball’s history. Being a fan at the time, I was looking forward to the documentary, especially a chance to see vintage footage of old-time ballplayers.

However, although much of the series was enjoyable, it quickly became apparent that Burns—a strong financial supporter of the Democratic Party³—was not only making fundamental errors of fact; he was using the documentary as a “social justice” platform, preaching relentlessly about racism, while teeming with his own biases. This became obvious early on, with his scathing attempts to portray legendary outfielder Ty Cobb as a villain and racist. These and other claims made in Burns’s series have been debunked by various writers, e.g., here.

When he got to the 1940s, Burns had 2 and ½ hours to work with, and he spent approximately half of it on a single topic: Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. This was about equal to the run time of the 1950 Hollywood movie The Jackie Robinson Story, which had starred Robinson himself. Now certainly Robinson entering the majors was a landmark event; it opened the door for many great black athletes who would follow, such as Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson. But did its significance really equal everything else that happened in baseball during the 1940s? The National League’s greatest player during that decade was Stan Musial, yet Burns never mentioned him, even once.

The following night, when Burns covered the 1950s, he continued to pay homage to Robinson. Stan Musial had begun his record-setting major league career six years before Robinson, and even won the National League batting title after Robinson retired in 1956, yet Burns still didn’t mention him. To Burns, Musial was a non-person.

When he got to the 1960s, I assumed he was done with Robinson, since the latter’s baseball career had ended. Instead, Burns departed altogether from baseball and started discussing the civil rights movement during that turbulent decade; he ran a segment celebrating Jackie Robinson’s contributions to it. And yes, Burns finally acknowledged Stan Musial’s existence—he noted that “the Man” had retired in 1963, and presented a retrospective on his career that lasted less than five minutes. In all, Musial received about five percent of the coverage Burns gave Robinson. Somehow, you just knew that if Musial had been black, it would have been a different story. Ken Burns underscored an irony that typifies modern liberalism—preaching against prejudice while exemplifying it.

What has this to do with Denny Galehouse and the 1948 playoff? I believe a great deal.

Robinson had broken the color barrier in 1947. The second most important figure in the Robinson saga was Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ general manager who signed him to his contract. This is popularly attributed to Rickey’s idealism and good business sense.

However, what goes unacknowledged is that Rickey was a celebrated Freemason. It is definitely not my intention to denigrate all Freemasons; most Blue Lodge members are not up to anything sinister; my own maternal grandfather, who died before I was born, was a Freemason.

But ranking Freemasons are often instrumental in engineering the culture. In 1962-63 the Freemason-dominated Supreme Court ruled that both prayer and reading the Bible in public schools were suddenly “unconstitutional.” (Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, Potter Stewart and Chief Justice Earl Warren were all members of the Craft, ensuring a 5-4 majority of men who apparently held their oath to the Brotherhood above their oath to the Constitution.) Elsewhere I have written about the role Freemasons played in orchestrating the 1775 Battle of Lexington, Mass. (my hometown, where the headquarters for Freemasonry’s Northern Jurisdiction is located).

Freemasons often receive material rewards, but in exchange they take oaths of absolute secrecy and obedience. Sooner or later, a Freemason may find—to borrow the phrase used in The Brotherhood of the Bell—that he must “pay his due bill.”

I’m going to make a suggestion which I cannot prove, since Freemasonic instructions are given in secret. I suggest that Branch Rickey was very probably under Freemasonic orders, originating from the American oligarchy’s highest levels, to transform the culture in accordance with the plan which Myron Fagan described.

How does Galehouse fit in? Jackie Robinson first played for the Dodgers in 1947; they won the pennant that year, and nearly the World Series, losing to the Yankees in seven games.

That took care of the National League, but there was still the American League. In 1948, only one American League team had broken the color barrier: the Cleveland Indians. They had not one, but two black players: Satchel Paige and Larry Doby. No one, of course, would dispute that the two were outstanding players. However, I believe someone at the top of the hierarchy wanted a message sent loud and clear: If you have black players, you’ll be champions. Not only that, Hollywood will glorify your team and city with a movie.

The Kid from Cleveland was about a juvenile delinquent named Johnny who runs away from home because he hates his stepfather (who has replaced his real father, killed during the war). Johnny is nearly adopted by a Cleveland Indians broadcaster (portrayed fictitiously by actor George Brent). At the end of the movie, a judge is to decide where Johnny should live. The hearing is attended by the Indians’ real-life owner, Bill Veeck.

Veeck takes Johnny aside and tells him a story. He says that when Larry Doby, the Indians’ first black player, had his first major league at-bat, he struck out and felt miserable—that he’d let his people down. Then his teammate Joe Gordon struck out—apparently deliberately—to demonstrate solidarity with Doby. Although this story is said to be apocryphal, in the movie Doby and Gordon actually do act it out.

As a result of Veeck’s story, Johnny realizes he should love and respect his “outsider” stepfather, just as the Indians learned to love and respect the outsider Doby. That is how the movie, which can be watched here, ends. (Russ Tamblyn, who played Johnny, went on to win greater fame in yet another film about juvenile delinquents and race relations: West Side Story.)

Obviously, only a movie featuring the Cleveland Indians could have had this ending; Boston wouldn’t do.

I cannot find any evidence, from his limited biographical information, as to whether or not Red Sox manager Joe McCarthy was a Freemason. However, the Red Sox trademark “B” logo is embedded with 33s, the cardinal number of Freemasonry.

Whether McCarthy was a Freemason or not, I think it is clear that top-down pressure, whether by threats or rewards, was likely applied to him. They say that the surest way to “fix” a court case is to get to the judge. And the surest way to fix a baseball game is to get to the manager. Someone evidently told McCarthy that this was not going to be Boston’s year.

The Red Sox had played their hearts out to earn the tie for first place. Obviously, McCarthy couldn’t walk into the clubhouse and tell 25 players to go out and lose.

What he could do, however, was tell his ace Mel Parnell that he had “changed his mind,” and start the mediocre Galehouse instead, on the lame pretext that the wind was blowing to left field.

This didn’t guarantee a Cleveland victory, of course. There was always the possibility that Galehouse might rise to the occasion and pitch a great game, or that Boston’s strong lineup, led by Ted Williams, might hammer Indians starter Gene Bearden. But the Red Sox, demoralized with Galehouse starting, already had the smell of victory taken from them.

I cannot prove that this is the true explanation of the Galehouse mystery; but it is the one I believe most consistent with all the facts. From time to time, people have told me that sports outcomes are often rigged. I never had a strong opinion about that. After all, some things, like the bounce of a ball, just can’t be controlled. But I think it did happen in 1948—a year that also included, as I have written elsewhere, the rigging of Hollywood’s “Best Picture” Oscar.

Above: Red Sox manager Joe McCarthy congratulates Lou Boudreau after the 1948 tie-breaker. Although he looks tired, McCarthy’s smile reveals no dejection over the defeat. Of course, it’s hard to put too much interpretation on a snapshot from a single moment in time.

Incidentally, 1948 was the last world championship the Indians ever won. The oligarchs had no use for them after that; in the 1970s and 80s they wound up becoming something of a laughingstock who symbolized mediocrity, culminating with the 1989 Charlie Sheen comedy Major League (although they’ve certainly known better years since).

 

 

NOTES.

1. Gordon Edes, “Red October—Oct 5, 1948: The Curious Tale of Denny Galehouse,” Gordon Edes, October 7, 2018, https://medium.com/@gewrite/red-october-oct-5-1948-the-curious-tale-of-denny-galehouse-c5eeb224b56b.
2. Mike Lynch, “From the Archives: Remembering Denny Galehouse,” Seamheads, June 22, 2017, https://seamheads.com/blog/2017/06/22/remembering-denny-galehouse/.
3. “Ken Burns,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns.
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