[Big Six]

Boston Globe, July 5, 1936

BRADY WINS 300TH GAME
Veteran Hurler Defeats Athletics; Keeps Red Sox In Lead

BOSTON—Last night at Fenway Park, Red Sox righthander Neal Brady became the tenth pitcher in the history of major league baseball to win 300 games, as he defeated the Philadelphia Athletics, 7-3.

Brady’s victory would have been important even without the fact that it enabled him to reach one of the National Pastime’s greatest milestones. The Red Sox and Athletics entered yesterday’s play tied for first place in the American League, and Brady’s virtuoso performance enabled the Red Sox to edge back into the lead.

The 39-year-old righthander had been working for No. 300 for quite some time. When he beat the Browns in St. Louis on June 11, Brady notched his tenth victory of the 1936 campaign, and the 299th of his career. He then pitched badly in two consecutive starts, allowing seven runs to the Yankees and eight to the Indians, before throwing seven strong innings at the Senators in a game the Red Sox won after Brady exited the game. The All-Star break intervened, and for the first time in nine years, Brady had some time off during the midsummer festival.

“I didn’t think I’d make the All-Star team,” Brady confessed. “I had ten wins, but my ERA is high, and a lot of pitchers in the American League are having very good seasons. I didn’t mind the rest. We have a pennant to win, and I want to remain fresh.”

Whether the longer rest made a difference or not, last night Brady looked like an ace once again. He pitched nine strong innings, holding the hard-hitting Philadelphias to six hits and three runs. Pinpoint control, Brady’s stock in trade throughout his Red Sox career, was in evidence once again, as Neal walked only one man, while he mustered the stuff he needed to strike out nine.

Brady’s battery-mate Ed Connolly, filling in for All-Star Josh Gibson, led the Red Sox’ offense, smacking a two-run triple in the third stanza and connecting for a solo home run in the eighth.

Larrupin’ Lou Gehrig, who has been Neal Brady’s teammate throughout his baseball career, drove in the first two runs of the game with a long home run. Gehrig and Brady came to the Red Sox together in 1923, part of the most famous trade in baseball history.

As Brady entertained a group of reporters at his locker, he publicly referred to his role in that trade for the first time. “You know, a lot of people thought of that trade as ‘Ruth-for-Gehrig.’ And sure, they’re both great players,” Brady said, nodding his head and smiling at his teammate, sitting nearby. “But there were three other players involved: Del Paddock, Ray Schalk, and me.”

Brady stopped and grinned again. “I’ve won a game or two since then, haven’t I?”

Indeed, Brady has garnered the vast majority of these 300 victories in Red Sox togs, and most of those after he reached the age of thirty.

He arrived in Boston with a career record of 63 wins and 65 losses, the mark of a journeyman who had labored for similarly mediocre Yankees teams. The Red Sox staff he joined in 1923 was led by three twenty-game winning aces: Hugh Bedient, George Dauss, and Art Nehf. The fourth starter was a Hall of Famer, Smokey Joe Wood, whose arm gave him trouble that season.

“There wasn’t room for me in that rotation,” Brady recalled. “I worked out of the bullpen for most of the next four years. I learned a lot, and I wouldn’t have become the pitcher I am if it wasn’t for that experience.”

By the time manager Bill Carrigan inserted Brady into the Sox rotation late in the 1926 season, the soft-spoken hurler from Kentucky was ready to shine. In his first full campaign as a Red Sox starter, Brady went 16-14 for the third-place club of 1927. His earned run average was a sparkling 2.97, however, and he had developed a surgeon’s touch with his fastball and hard curve.

1928 was, in Brady’s words, “a magical year. We went back to the World Series, and beat the Pirates. We had three guys with 20 wins on that staff, too: Joe Wood, Art Nehf, and me.” Brady led the staff with 25 wins, and he has won at least twenty in every season since.

That season was also the last for Pat O’Farrell as an active player. Now the Red Sox general manager, O’Farrell had nothing but praise for Brady as a teammate and as a man. “Neal is a great competitor, a great sportsman,” O’Farrell said. “I remember hitting against him when he was with the Yankees, and he was always a tough pitcher for me. I was happy to see him on our side.”

The Red Sox would certainly agree. The Boston club, for whom exactly half of the pitchers who have won 300 games in their careers have toiled at some point, have seen many great pitchers, but Neal Brady deserves a place on the list of their very best.

Several hours after the game ended at Fenway Park, fireworks illuminated the sky above the Charles River, a festival of sound and color honoring our nation's birth. On Independence Day, a man whose career has personified the All-American virtues of perseverance and the determination to make the most of his natural abilities reached a milestone that will guarantee his spot among baseball’s immortals.

If Neal Brady wants to think a few of those fireworks were for him, that’s just fine.