Denny Galehouse Marquee

Boston and Cleveland finished 1948 tied at 96-58, and Joe McCarthy chose Galehouse — 8-8 that season, thirty-six years old, a spot starter — over the rest of his staff for the playoff at Fenway Park. Cleveland scored four in the first four innings, won 8-3, and went on to win the World Series. The choice is still argued about in Boston.

Fifteen seasons gave him 109 wins against 118, a 3.97 earned run average, 2,004 innings, 100 complete games and 17 shutouts, most of it for clubs that finished in the second division. He won 11 for the 1947 Red Sox at thirty-five, his best year.

He had already had the other kind of October: he started and won the first game of the 1944 World Series for the St. Louis Browns, the only pennant that franchise ever won, a complete game the Browns won 2-1. He worked in an Ohio rubber plant in the off-seasons and scouted after he retired. He died in 1998, at eighty-seven.