All-Time Indians: Ray Boone

The Indians of the 1940’s and 1950’s were extremely successful and filled with superstars and Hall of Famers and because of that, many good players can get overlooked. One such player was Ray Boone who signed with the team in 1942 and after missing three years while serving in World War II, made his Major League debut in the 1948 World Championship season.

Boone would only play six games as a September call-up in 1948 and after getting an RBI double in his second MLB at bat, would only get one more hit all year. In the World Series itself, he had just one at bat in which he struck out, but he was lucky enough to grab a ring in his first season as he would never return to the postseason.

Lou Boudreau was both the manager and starting short stop in 1949, but was reaching the end of his playing career and was smart enough to play Boone when the match-up was favorable or he needed a day off. Because of this, Boone got into 86 games that year, more than any other bench player, batting .252 with 26 RBI. This would be the real start to a 13 year MLB career and 737 career RBI.

In 1950, Boudreau took more of a bench manager role, playing in just 81 games and Boone took over the majority of the work at short, playing in 109. While he would have better seasons with other teams, at 26 years old, this would be his best full season as an Indian. As a team, the Indians finished in fourth in the American League with 92 wins (bad enough for this to be Boudreau’s last year as player/manager), but in that limited playing time, Boone had 14 doubles, seven home runs, knocked in 58, scored 53 and batted .301. Along with his capabilities as a high average hitter, he walked more than twice as many times as he struck out, a tendency that would continue through his time as an Indian, although his eye got worse in his later years.

Just when Boone should have been hitting his prime, he took a step back in 1951 as he was handed the reigns to short. His .300 average dropped to .233 and although he played in 151 games, his production numbers dropped as he had less RBI and less triples than the year before. This play allowed the extremely light hitting, defensive specialist Merl Combs to get into 49 games at short in 1952 while Boone played games at second and third for the first time in his Major League career (he was originally signed as a catcher before the war).

A large reason for the use of Combs was because of Boone’s defense. If he were to hit like he did in 1950, the Indians could have afforded to give up a few more runs due to his defense, but once he started struggling, those faults loomed larger. For his Indians career, his .949 fielding percent at short is the second worst in Indians history among players with at least 400 games played at the position, ahead of only Ray Chapman, who was known for his great range and was much more productive at the plate. More importantly, like Jhonny Peralta following Omar Vizquel more recently, Boone had nowhere near the range, speed or efficiency of Boudreau, who the fans adored at the time.

The 1953 season would be Boone’s last as an Indian. It would also be the best of his career, but not until he was long from Cleveland. After batting just .241 through his first 34 games, Boone looked to be done as a player. On June 15th, he was traded to the Tigers in a eight man deal that brought Art Houtteman, among others, to Cleveland and saw Steve Gromek and Al Aber go to Detroit. Most of these players were inconsequential (Houtteman and Aber did pitch well for their new teams), but Boone was the steal.

In his final 101 games he hit 22 home runs (his previous season high was 12), knocked in 93 and batted .312. Because he had played so poorly in Cleveland, this only lead to 26 home runs, 114 RBI and a .296 average through 135 games, but it was enough to earn him a few MVP votes and he finished eighth behind the Indians third baseman Al Rosen.

Boone would continue to play at this level for most of the next five seasons in Detroit including All-Star appearances in 1954 and 1956 and a 16th place MVP finish in 1955 when he lead the league in RBI with a career best 116. Despite playing the same number of years in Detroit as he did in Cleveland (6), he played in almost 200 more games and hit 71 more home runs while knocking in 258 more. Had the Indians seen even a glimmer of this late career resurgence, they certainly could have done without Houtteman, particularly considering the fact that the rotation consisted of three future Hall of Famers, Bob Feller, Bob Lemon and Early Wynn.

The Tigers may have had that vision for the future as they traded Boone at the perfect time in 1958 after using up all of his great seasons. In return for him and Bob Shaw, they returned from the White Sox Bill Fischer and the future Indian Tito Francona. Of course, Francona would spend just a year in Detroit before being traded to Cleveland for Larry Doby in 1959.

After playing almost exclusively at third base for Detroit, Boone only played first for Chicago and only for 69 games before he was traded to Kansas City. Within the next season, he would be released, claimed off waivers by Milwaukee, traded to the Red Sox and released, ending his playing career after 26 games in 1960. After his retirement from the field, Boone worked as a scout for the Red Sox and raised one of the greatest baseball families in American history. His son, Bob Boone, born while he still played in Cleveland in 1947, was a catcher and a four time All-Star, seven time Gold Glover. His other son, Rod Boone, was a college baseball star and a minor leaguer. After this, Bob’s children, Bret Boone and Aaron Boone both became All-Stars (the Boone family being the only MLB family with three generations of All-Stars) and each hit more than 100 home runs, just as their father and his father before him had, another Major League first. The most like his grandfather, Aaron went on to play for the Indians as well at third base from 2005 through 2006.

Ray himself was able to see the beginnings of his grandchildren’s Major League careers including their greatest seasons in 2001 (Bret) and 2003 (Aaron). He died shortly after from heart failure in 2004 at the age of 81.