Mel Parnell obit

Mel Parnell, N.O. native and former Red Sox pitcher, dies at 89

 

He was not on the list.

Mel Parnell, the New Orleans native who went on to a star career in Major League Baseball as a starting pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, died Tuesday. He was 89.

Parnell spent his entire 10-year career with Boston, from 1947 to 1956. He was 17 years old, fresh out of S.J. Peters High School in New Orleans, when he signed with the Red Sox.

The southpaw became known as the winningest left-hander in Red Sox history, with a 123-75 record and a 3.50 ERA. His career win total ranks fourth in team history, behind only Cy Young, Roger Clemens and Tim Wakefield.

In 1949, Parnell led the league in wins as his Red Sox battled down to the wire for the American League pennant. They faced their nemesis, the New York Yankees, who would go on to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in that year’s World Series.

Most famously, he pitched a no-hitter in 1956, his final season, with a 4-0 victory against the Chicago White Sox at Fenway Park. It was the first no-hitter by a Red Sox pitcher in 33 years.

“This is something a pitcher dreams of,” Parnell told The Times-Picayune in 2002. “You never expect it to happen.”

“On that particular day, I had a very good screwball. My slider was working good. That gave me pitches that I could work in and out on hitters. I pretty much was able to get the ball right where I wanted it with each pitch, and things fell in line for me,” Parnell said.

Parnell was a two-time All-Star selection and the AL starting pitcher for the 1949 All-Star team.

He was elected to the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame in 1997.

After his playing career ended, because of a torn muscle in his pitching arm, Parnell managed the New Orleans Pelicans and a series of Red Sox farm clubs.

Parnell was also a member of the Red Sox broadcasting team in the 1960s. After his playing career, Parnell managed the New Orleans Pelicans of the Class AA Southern Association in 1959 and a series of Red Sox farm clubs from 1961 to 1963.

Parnell was a member of Boston's radio and television announcing crew from 1965 to 1968 and the Chicago White Sox' TV crew in 1969. He called the last out of the final regular season game of the 1967 Red Sox "Impossible Dream" season on WHDH-TV:

"Little soft pop-up...Petrocelli will take it...he does! The ball game is over! The Red Sox win it! And what a mob on this field! They're coming out of the stands from all over!"

Parnell was mentioned in the 1981 Terry Cashman song "Talkin' Baseball".

Parnell was a better than average hitting pitcher, posting a .198 batting average (132-for-668) with 52 runs, 1 home run, 50 RBI and 29 bases on balls. Defensively, he was better than average, recording a .971 fielding percentage which was 13 points higher than the league average at his position.

Parnell enjoyed his best season in 1949 when he went 25–7, leading the league in wins, complete games (27) and innings (295+1⁄3), and finished second with a 2.77 ERA. He was the starting pitcher for the American League in that year's All-Star Game and was selected again in 1951.

After two 18-win seasons in 1950 and 1951, and a 12–12 record in 1952, Parnell went 21–8 in 1953 with a 3.06 ERA and a career-high 136 strikeouts. On July 14, 1956, he no-hit the Chicago White Sox, 4–0, at Fenway Park. The no-hitter was the first for a Red Sox pitcher since Howard Ehmke in 1923, though this would prove the final highlight of Parnell's career, which would come to a premature end after the 1956 season, due to a torn muscle in his pitching arm. It would take 52 years until another Red Sox lefty would throw a no-hitter, a feat accomplished by Jon Lester in 2008.

Parnell still holds the Red Sox career mark for left-handed pitchers in games started, innings and victories.

Parnell once said the southpaw's enemy at Fenway Park was the smallness of the foul territory, not the wall. It's been said that following a victory in Fenway Park during which Johnny Pesky hit the deciding home run near the right field foul pole, Parnell named it the "Pesky Pole" or Pesky's Pole. Research, however, shows that Pesky hit just one home run in a game pitched by Parnell, a two-run shot in the first inning of a game against Detroit played on June 11, 1950. The game was eventually won by the visiting Tigers in the 14th inning on a three-run shot by Tigers right fielder Vic Wertz, as Parnell earned a no-decision that day.