Ed Morris

In 1928, “Big Ed” Morris’s first full season in the major leagues, the hard-throwing right-hander was one of the top pitchers in the game. That year he won 19 games for a woeful Boston Red Sox squad that finished last in the American League, 43½ games behind the pennant-winning New York Yankees. Amazingly, Morris completed 20 of 29 starts and also recorded five saves to finish among the top eight American League pitchers in both of the two widely divergent categories. A bright future seemed to be in store for the colorful hurler. But four years later he was dead at age 32, the victim of a fatal stabbing on the eve of his departure for the Red Sox spring training camp.

Walter Edward Morris was born December 7, 1899, in Foshee, Alabama, a small unincorporated rural community close to the Florida line near the end of the panhandle. The nearest city of significant size is Pensacola, Florida about 40 miles to the south. Ed was the first child born to Ella Morris and he had one sister. The Morris family settled in Foshee when Ella Morris was a small girl and relatives still live in the area. According to family recollections, Ella operated a boarding house for local sawmill workers in Foshee. Ed’s father, who was known as Captain Fuller, was one of the owners of the mill.1

Ed Morris grew to be a physically imposing man and came to be called “Big Ed.” According to official baseball records, he stood 6 feet 2 inches tall and tipped the scales at 185 pounds, an impressive size for that time. Native American blood coursed through his veins. According to records of the Perdido Bay Tribe of the Southeastern Lower Muscogee Creek Indians, his maternal great grandfather was three-quarters Indian and his grandmother was full-blood Indian.2 He was an outdoorsman who loved to hunt and was considered a crack shot with a gun.3

During his playing career Morris built a home off U.S. 31 in Flomaton, Alabama, a railroad junction about five miles south of Foshee. The name Flomaton is a contraction of Florida – Alabama – town, reflecting its location on the border between the two states. Ed lived there with his wife Beryl and their two sons, Edward and Mortimer, at the time of his death.4

Before embarking on a career in Organized Baseball, Morris played sandlot and semipro ball in the border area and also served in the Marine Reserves.5 He was pitching for the town team in Century, Florida when he was discovered and signed by the Bradenton Growers of the Class-D Florida State League.6 Apparently Ed also did some pitching for Palmer College, a small private institution in nearby Defuniak Springs, Florida that closed during the Great Depression. Various sources credit him with attending and even graduating from Palmer, but in a 2007 New York Daily News article David Krajicek writes that Ed was on campus for months before the faculty realized that he was not enrolled in a single class. When informed that he was expected to pursue an education as well as pitch, Big Ed reportedly huffed, “I’m here to throw a baseball, not to learn nothin’,” and went home.7

This version of Big Ed’s career as a scholar/athlete fits with Krajicek’s further assertion: “Even before becoming a star, Big Ed Morris was becoming a legendary baseball bumpkin, with backwoods callowness that made teammates slap their knees.”

An example of young Morris’s naivety is the story of his first experience with a Pullman car after joining Chattanooga. When he heard the team would be traveling by rail Ed complained about the difficulty of trying to rest his big frame in coach seats. “You have to draw up in a knot and your arm gets so twisted you can’t pitch for days,” he moaned.

When a teammate tried to assure him that the Pullman cars had comfortable berths, Big Ed was dubious and decided to check it out for himself. While the rest of the players headed for the dining car upon boarding, he made a beeline for the Pullman section where the seats were of course in the upright position. Within minutes the big pitcher was in the dining car berating the teammate who had misled him.

“You lied to me,” he roared. “I wouldn’t ’a got on this train if you hadn’t lied to me… I been all through that sleeping car and there ain’t a darn bed in it.”8

Personally Morris has been characterized as occasionally overbearing and cocky by his own family in addition to being labeled an eccentric and a “hard-boiled guy” by The Sporting News.9 He was also known to over-indulge when it came to alcohol. Florida historian Jerry Fischer, who researched Morris’ life, observed, “Big Ed Morris had one big problem. He liked to drink.”10 Apparently he was no stranger to a good rumble either. In fact, the fatal stabbing may not have been the first time he’d felt the blade of a knife. According to an unconfirmed report, he was stabbed in 1928 by fellow Red Sox hurler Merle Settlemire, a little left-hander who’d also been a teammate the previous year in the minors.11

An example of Big Ed’s cockiness was his response when Boston Globe writer Ford Sawyer’s asked for his thoughts on facing the New York Yankees’ powerful Murderer’s Row for the first time.

“Frankly, I didn’t think very much about it,” he replied. “I didn’t allow my thoughts to dwell on Ruth, Gehrig and the rest of them. I told myself that it was just a tough ball club that I wanted to beat; that they were out there trying to whip me and I was trying to hang it on them.”12

For the record, the brash rookie did “hang it on” the Bronx Bombers the first time he started against them.

Various descriptions of Morris’s pitching style and work ethic in The Sporting News called him a fierce competitor, a fireballer, a workhorse, and an iron man. The publication even paid him the ultimate compliment, referring to him as a “throw-back to the old days when pitchers thought of nothing but service.”13

Despite his strong arm, Morris labored in the minor leagues for eight years before finding success with Boston. He developed a reputation for wildness both on and off the mound – a pitcher with more talent than motivation. Famed New York sportswriter John Kieran opined, “He was a queer fellow altogether, the big lumbering right-hander from Alabama. He should have been one of the great pitchers of this baseball era, but he could never get up enough energy to bother about it.”14

Big Ed began his professional career in 1920 with Bradenton and moved up to the Chattanooga Lookouts of the Class-A Southern Association the next year.15 He compiled a 9-21 won-lost record and a 4.48 earned run average (ERA) in 1921 followed by a 5-19 record with a 4.85 ERA for Chattanooga in 1922. Despite these unimpressive numbers, he got a trial with the Chicago Cubs of the National League during the 1922 campaign, posting an ERA of 8.25 with no decisions in 12 innings of relief duty. One of his first big league appearances came in what might have been the sloppiest game in big-league baseball history. On August 25, the Cubs defeated the Philadelphia Phillies by a score of 26 to 23 despite yielding 14 runs in the last two innings. In total 21 of the 49 runs scored by both teams combined were unearned. Entering the game with two outs in the eighth inning, Morris contributed to the mess by allowing four earned runs on four hits and a walk.

Back with Chattanooga in 1923, Morris won 10 games against 11 losses with a team-leading 3.40 ERA. He split the 1924 season between Chattanooga and the Nashville Volunteers, also of the Southern Association, going 9-11 with an unsightly 5.58 ERA. A postseason scouting report on Big Ed said that he had “plenty of speed but was slow mastering a change of pace.”16

In the spring of 1925, Morris got a trial with the Cincinnati Reds, but was returned to Nashville before the season began amid complaints that the Volunteers had attempted to dump a sore-armed hurler on the Reds. In a letter to Reds president Garry Herrmann dated April 16, 1925, Morris wrote, “I wish to go on record to state that my arm at the present time is feeling better than it has felt for three years… My arm was not exactly right during my stay with the Cincinnati Club in spring training (this season) at Orlando, Florida, but a sore arm or weak arm during spring training generally happens to a large percentage of pitchers… The condition I am in at present,” he continued, “I feel confident I could have made good with the Cincinnati Club had I been given a little longer time to show my ability.”17

The 1925 season would be a turning point in Morris’s career. He became the ace of the Nashville staff, winning 17 games while losing 11 times and posting a 4.52 ERA, an improvement he attributed to a modification to his wardrobe. After several years in professional baseball, Morris discovered that his uniform shirt was too tight around his muscular right shoulder, impeding his delivery. So he ripped the seams of his right sleeve to allow more freedom of movement. “What a difference it made with my pitching,” he said. “I could put the ball where I wanted to.”18

Still with Nashville in 1926, Morris was 16-13 with a 4.53 ERA. The next year, 1927, he pitched for the Mobile Bears, still in the Southern Association but much closer to home. With Mobile he lowered his ERA to 3.96 in 298 innings of work and his 15 victories against 17 losses made him the club’s big winner.

In 1928 Morris got another big-league chance, this time with the struggling Red Sox who’d finished last in the American League in five of the previous six seasons. The 28-year-old rookie recorded his first victory on May 3 with an impressive four-hitter over the powerful Philadelphia Athletics. According to The Sporting News, the scouting report was “that he had a fastball that was a corker and that he had the strength of an iron man and was game and a fighting son-of-a-gun”19

Ed Morris’ 1928 campaign would be the best of career by far. Though he didn’t join the starting rotation until May, he sported a 17-11 won-lost mark with an excellent 3.13 earned run average after an August 25 victory over the St. Louis Browns. It was only the Sox’ 124th game of the year, so he seemed a cinch to join the elite 20-game-winners circle with more than a month to go in the season. But he mysteriously lost his effectiveness and dropped his next four starts before winning his final one of the year. He also made five relief appearances in the final weeks of the campaign, winning one game in that role to finish a game short of 20 wins. During this time his ERA jumped 40 points to a final mark of 3.53.

Despite his late season slump, Morris finished with the sixth-highest victory total in the American League. More impressively, he accounted for 33% of the Red Sox’ meager 57 wins, by far the highest percentage among the league’s hurlers. On the year, Big Ed started 29 games and relieved 18 times. His 47 total appearances, trailed only Washington Senators relief ace Firpo Marberry’s 48. But Marberry threw only 161 innings compared to the 257 2/3 frames Morris worked. In addition to wins, complete games, and saves, Morris also ended up in the American League top 10 in adjusted ERA, strikeouts, and fewest hits allowed per nine innings. A victim of poor offensive support, his teammates failed to score more than three runs in 11 of the 13 losses he suffered as a starter.

A late August Sporting News article, written prior to his slump, nominated Morris as a candidate for the American League Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) and he placed third behind Lefty Grove and Al Simmons of the Philadelphia Athletics in an Al Demaree Most Valuable Player fan poll conducted near the end of the campaign.20 In official American League MVP balloting conducted after the season he finished tied for 15th place, but he was the second-leading vote-getter among the league’s hurlers behind 23-game-winner Waite Hoyt of the Yankees. Although the Rookie of the Year Award hadn’t yet come into existence, Morris was arguably the top rookie in the American League in 1928. Cleveland Indians rookie second baseman Carl Lind hit .294 and tied Morris in MVP voting which generally favors position players. But Big Ed was definitely the top rookie hurler in the majors. He was selected as the right-handed pitcher on The Sporting News Rookie All-Star Team. The lefthander was Carl Hubbell, a future Hall of Famer who won 10 games for the New York Giants as a freshman.21

In 1929 Big Ed’s performance fell off and he began experiencing arm problems as the Red Sox again finished in the American League cellar. He captured his 13th victory in 24 decisions in Boston’s 118th game of the 1929 campaign, but won only one more game before his season came to an abrupt close after a tough 2-1 loss to the Detroit Tigers on September 12 – the Sox 139th game. For the year his 14 victories again led the staff, but he also lost 14 times and his ERA rose to 4.45, well above the league average. Furthermore, he yielded 227 hits in 208 innings and struck out only 73 while walking 95 batters.

In the off-season prior to the 1929 campaign, Sox management had become concerned over reports that their new ace was doing quite a bit of pitching down in the Panama Canal Zone. But Big Ed assured the brass that he was only down there as a coach and teacher.22 Yet, after the disappointing year, he attributed his decline to training too hard in preparation for the season.23

In preparation for the 1930 season, Big Ed briefly flirted with another off-season activity for keeping in shape – professional boxing. That fall, Chicago White Sox first-baseman “Art the Great” Shires decided to test his pugilistic skills in the ring after punching out his 42-year-old manager, Lena Blackburne, as well as the team’s traveling secretary earlier in the season.24 Shires enjoyed a few successful and lucrative matches, catching Morris’s attention. Along with teammate Bill Barrett, Big Ed applied for a boxing license. Unfortunately, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis short-circuited Morris’s heavyweight championship ambitions. A proposed match between Shires and Chicago Cubs star Hack Wilson was being bandied about when Landis decided that the “sweet science” really wasn’t a proper activity for professional baseball players under his dominion.25

Possibly due to the loss of projected boxing revenue, Morris was a salary holdout when the Red Sox 1930 spring training camp opened. The team had more than doubled his salary from $3,500 to $7,500 after his tremendous rookie campaign and Big Ed felt another nice pay increase was due despite a decrease in effectiveness as a sophomore. The Sox had relocated their preseason training camp to Pensacola, so Ed decided to drive down and watch an early workout and ended up signing for a modest $500 raise.26 Once in the fold, he was reported to be getting in shape carefully after working too hard the previous spring. But the lighter training regimen didn’t work. In the middle of spring training it was reported that he was suffering from a severe head cold and had been put under the care of specialists.27 He began the season in the bullpen capturing a quick victory in his first relief appearance (three scoreless innings against the Yankees) before suffering a pair of losses. He got his first start on May 6, yielding four runs in five innings in a loss to the White Sox. Big Ed seemed to be hitting his stride when he threw a brilliant two-hitter to beat the St. Louis Browns five days later, but he was ineffective in his next two starts.

Big Ed’s next start came almost two weeks later on June 4 and resulted in a 5 to 4, 10-inning complete-game triumph over Cleveland. He followed that effort up with a well-pitched 1-0 loss in Detroit on June 8 before missing another three weeks of action.

It was rumored that Morris injured his throwing arm in a fight with two Detroit cops during the 1930 season. Although an exact date is not known, this is a likely time frame for that to have occurred.28 In fact a Sporting News article published later that season mentioned rumors that were circulating that Big Ed was “riotously breaking training rules, especially in Detroit” – rumors that were denied by both Morris and Sox manager Heinie Wagner.29

Although Morris initially pitched well in his return, arm miseries again cropped up and continued to plague him until he was shut down for the year in mid-August. For the 1930 season, he pitched only 18 times (nine starts). His won-lost record was a disappointing 4-9 although his 4.13 ERA was better than the league standard of 4.65. Late in the season the Sporting News noted that Morris had been almost a zero so far due to a sore arm and ominously concluded, “Whether this handicap is the beginning of his end as a big league regular remains to be seen.”30 One positive aspect of the 1930 campaign was that Big Ed, never known for his work with the stick, hit .316 with a robust .526 slugging average.

The Red Sox again held spring training in Pensacola in 1931, and Big Ed showed up with his very own pitching prospect to bolster the Boston staff. Henry Adams, a 24-year-old lefty, was the current ace of the Century town team that Morris toiled for more than a decade earlier, so Ed brought him along to camp. The Sox reluctantly agreed to take a look at the phenom, but soon determined he wouldn’t be of much use to them. Unfortunately, the same could also be said for Morris.31

A few weeks into spring training, it was reported that Morris was rounding into shape slowly after having been “laid up with various ailments since he came into camp.”32 When the season began he found himself in the bullpen where he performed surprisingly well. He earned his first start of the season against the Yankees on April 25 and held the Bombers to four hits and two earned runs before leaving with the score tied and two outs in the eighth inning. He pitched a good game against the Senators in his next appearance a week later, holding them to a pair of runs in seven innings, although he again failed to get the decision. Though he still hadn’t cracked the victory column he had an excellent 2.01 earned run and was starting to look like the Big Ed Morris of old when a vicious batting practice line drive broke his toe.33 He returned to action after more than three weeks on the shelf to win three straight starts after an initial loss. A 7-1 complete-game victory over the Tigers on June 13, raised his won-lost record to 3-2, accompanied by a 2.12 earned run average.

Big Ed’s success was short-lived however. He was ineffective in his next four starts and was consigned back to the bullpen after yielding five runs to the Philadelphia A’s in one-third inning of work in the first game of a July 4 doubleheader.

This unfortunate start was likely to have occurred in the wake of yet another colorful Big Ed Morris escapade that is thought to have taken place during the 1931 season. According to the story, the veteran pitcher came across a temporarily unmanned elevator in the St. Louis hotel where the team was staying and proceeded to hi-jack the car. Upon returning to his post to find the car missing, the operator summoned a pair of house detectives who began chasing after Morris in another elevator. Big Ed would stop the car at every floor just long enough to bellow out a loud rebel yell. When the detectives finally caught up with him, they “wrestled him to the ground, wrenching his shoulder in the fracas.”34 Since the Red Sox were hosted by the Browns in St. Louis from June 26 thru 29, this might account for Morris’s ineffective July 4 start and his subsequent demotion to the bullpen.

Pitching mostly in relief with an occasional start the rest of the way, Morris finished the season with a 5-7 won-lost mark and mediocre 4.75 ERA. He fanned only 46 batters and walked 74 in 131 innings of work. After the season, The Sporting News reported that “injuries and failure to get into condition” were responsible for Morris’ disappointing campaign.35

As winter began giving way to spring in 1932, Big Ed was eagerly looking forward to the start of a new baseball season. The previous year, with little help from him, the Red Sox had risen to the dizzying heights of sixth place after six straight cellar finishes He was determined to make a big comeback and reclaim his spot at the top of the rotation. As the clubs prepared to head south for spring training, The Sporting News observed that “toward the latter part of the 1931 season Morris’ arm seemed to return to real condition and he expects to step forth as a winner from the opening bell this season.”36

In fact, Morris had finished the 1931 campaign on a high note despite a disappointing season overall. Late in the season he came in to stifle a White Sox rally with the score tied in the top of the eighth and held them in the ninth to earn the victory after the Red Sox forged ahead in the bottom of the eighth. He was rewarded with a start in the final days of the campaign and made good with a four-hit, complete-game 9-2 win over the St. Louis Browns in what would be the last professional baseball appearance of his life.

Red Sox hurlers were due to report for preseason training camp in Savannah, Georgia on March 2, 1932, so some of Ed’s friends planned a fish fry/peanut boil as a going-away party for him the day before he was scheduled to leave.

Though many of the particulars were unclear at the time and have become no less hazy with the passage of years, there seems to be general consensus on the following key points:

The party was held on or near a body of water on February 29, 1932, a Leap Day. Quantities of prohibition era alcohol were present. The guest of honor was stabbed twice in a scuffle with a Brewton service station operator named Joe White during the festivities. Morris ended up in the hospital in Century, Florida and died on Thursday, March 3 as a result of the stabbing.

One of the more popular local legends, as recounted in Red Sox Century, has the gravely wounded Morris jumping into the Perdido River and swimming across to avoid his attacker. Other variations of the fateful event identify the body of water in question as the Connecuh River or Escambia Creek.37

A less dramatic version has the injured Morris wading across a creek to his car and driving himself to the nearest hospital in Century, Florida.38

The party venue is also a subject of confusion with the site of the gathering variously identified as a tavern, a cabin, or a creek-side camp located in an area somewhere between Brewton, Alabama and an area known as Mosquito Flats in Florida just south of Century.39

The cause of the brawl and role of the combatants is also a matter of some conjecture. What seems a very plausible account has Morris urinating in the community pot of boiled peanuts, a stunt that the rest of the party didn’t really appreciate. Another version claims that argument occurred because White thought Morris had made a pass at White’s wife. In the differing versions Morris is variously portrayed as the instigator as well as an innocent bystander.40

Proponents of the legend that Morris swam across the river claim that infection caused by his immersion in murky river water led to his demise.41 His official death certificate states that he died from a “massive collapse of the lung and general pluritis (sic) of the left side, due to knife wounds of chest wall, one of which perforated.”42

Initially, doctors at Century Hospital had given Morris an even chance to recover.43 On March 2 it was reported that he was “holding his own and doing as well as could be expected” and should be able to leave the hospital in ten days to two weeks “unless complications develop.”44 But his condition worsened that night and he died early the next day, March 3, 1932.45 His funeral was held March 4 in Flomaton and he was interred at Hall’s Creek Baptist Church in the nearby Pine View Community.46

Soon after Morris died, White, who was originally released on bond, was re-arrested and charged with murder.47 He was sentenced to three years for manslaughter, but the conviction was subsequently overturned on appeal. It was reported that, “During the trial, Morris’ widow rose in open court before the jury and dramatically denounced as untrue a statement made by the defense counsel.”48 Apparently a retrial was never set and White never spent time in jail. 49

After Morris’ death, the story spread that the Red Sox had been on the verge of selling his contract to the New York Yankees for $100,000.50 Given Morris’ subpar performance the previous two seasons this is probably inaccurate, but it appears certain that the Sox had previously rejected offers from New York for his services. The Red Sox of the late 1920s may have had the best starting pitching of any cellar-dwelling club in history. In addition to Morris the rotation included Deacon Danny MacFayden, who would achieve significant success in Boston with both the Red Sox and Braves, and future Hall of Famer Red Ruffing. The New York Yankees openly coveted all three and eventually succeeding in acquiring Ruffing and later MacFayden, but Morris may well have been their first choice. It was rumored that the Yankees tried to obtain Morris after his spectacular 1928 campaign.51 Before the 1930 season it was reported that the Sox had again refused a substantial Yankees offer for the sturdy right-hander.52 But when questions surfaced about Morris’ health and character, the Yankees’ attention turned to Ruffing despite the fact that he’d won only 19 times while losing 47 games for the Sox the previous two preceding seasons compared to Morris’s 33-29 won-lost mark for that timeframe. In early May 1930, Ruffing was shipped to Yankees for $50,000 and Cedric Durst, a talented outfielder who hadn’t been able to crack the Yankee starting lineup. Backed by the powerful New York lineup, Ruffing was instantly transformed into a winner. From 1930 until he entered military service in 1942, Ruffing won 219 games in a Yankee uniform to capture the attention of Hall of Fame electors. If not for fate, Ed Morris might have been sporting those Yankee pinstripes.

Notes