Ernie Shore

Who was Ernie Shore?

Ernest Grady Shore was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball for the Boston Red Sox during some of their best years in the 1910s.

He was born near East Bend, North Carolina. Shore graduated from Guilford College in 1913. Along with Babe Ruth, he was sold by the Baltimore Orioles to the Red Sox.

Shore's best year with the Red Sox was 1915, when he won 18, lost 8 and compiled a 1.64 earned run average. He was 3–1 in World Series action in 1915 and 1916. He missed the 1918 Red Sox World Championship season, having enlisted in the military in that war year.

His most famous game occurred on June 23, 1917, against the Washington Senators in the first game of a doubleheader at Fenway Park. Ruth started the game, walking the first batter, Ray Morgan. As newspaper accounts of the time relate, the short-fused Ruth then engaged in a heated argument with apparently equally short-fused home plate umpire Brick Owens. Owens tossed Ruth out of the game, and the even more enraged Ruth then slugged the umpire a glancing blow before being taken off the field; the catcher, Pinch Thomas, was also ejected. Shore was brought in to pitch, and came in with very few warmup pitches.