Think the Red Sox Started the Jimmy Fund? Guess again. It was the Boston Braves!

Everybody knows that the favorite charity of the Red Sox is the Jimmy Fund, but few people realize that the Fenway Park crowd had absolutely no involvement with the charity’s beginnings.

That honor goes to Boston’s other major league baseball team, the Braves. 

Flashback to 1948: the most exciting season in baseball history. The Boston Braves won the National League Pennant with a record of 91 and 62.  The Boston Red Sox finished the regular season with 96 victories and only 58 losses. The New York Yankees only won 94 games so the Fenway nine should have been the American League Champs; but Cleveland, led by 19 game winner ‘Bullet’ Bob Feller also won 96 games.

The fans’ hopes of a subway series between Boston’s two Major League ball-clubs were dashed when the Red Sox lost the ‘winner take all’ playoff game 8 to 3 despite Bobby Doerr’s 27^th home run of the season.

What has all this to do with the start of the Jimmy Fund?  Plenty - all season long a 12 year old boy named Einar ‘Jimmy’ Gustafson had been tuning his radio to WNAC to listen to Jim Britt call the play by play for both teams, the Braves and the Sox.  At the time only home games were broadcast, so Britt did the Sox while the Braves were away and vice versa.

Also, starting that year (1948) some games were televised on WBZ TV, Channel Four.  Jim Britt also announced those broadcasts.

Young Jimmy liked both teams at first, but there was something about the Braves.  True the Red Sox had Ted Williams, the last four hundred hitter. 

But the Braves behind Spahn and Sain, managed to beat the odds and win their first pennant since the Miracle of 1914 when they went from eighth place in mid season to first place and won their only World Series in Boston.  The team would win only two more…..one when they were the Milwaukee Braves and one more as the Atlanta Braves. 

Between them, Johnny Sain and Warren Spahn won 39 games. As for the rest of the pitching staff, all of Boston said, “Use Spahn and Sain and then pray for rain!”

Warren Spahn of the Boston Braves had 363 wins - the most of any left hander in the nearly 150 years of pro baseball.

More than anything Jimmy wanted to go to the ballpark to see his favorite team in action.

There was no chance of this because he was undergoing pioneer treatments for his cancer, under the direction of Doctor Sidney Farber (founder of the Dana-Farber Institute)

Enter Ralph Edwards, host of the wildly popular radio (and later TV) show “Truth or Consequences”.  On May 22, 1948 Ralph broadcast his show live from Jimmy’s hospital room in Boston.

Edwards spoke to Jimmy before the national radio audience of perhaps 20 million listeners.  As the 12 year old spoke with the host of the show, one after another the entire Braves team crowded into Jimmy’s room. 

“What would you like Jim?” asked Ralph Edwards.

“Since I can’t go to the ball park to watch them play, I’d really love to have a television set so I could see the Braves from my hospital bed.”

Ralph Edwards concluded the show with a plea to listeners to help Jimmy get his wish and to help Doctor Farber with his research on the new ‘chemotherapy’ treatments.

Ralph, Jimmy, and the Braves spoke, and the people listened and responded with not only enough donations to get Jimmy a television set; but they also poured in more than $200,000 to start the “Jimmy Fund”.

The Boston Braves adopted Jimmy and his fund and helped it grow bigger every year.  The Braves drew 1.5 million fans in 1948 but it was their last hurrah.  In less than a decade they would move on to Milwaukee and later Atlanta….but before he left, owner Lou Perini made a call to Tom Yawkey, owner of the Red Sox and asked him to adopt the Jimmy Fund.

Yawkey happily agreed to do so and today, about seven decades later, the Jimmy Fund can lay claim to helping save many thousands of lives as well as advancing cancer research.

What about the original Jimmy?  He had a rare form of cancer with a very low cure rate in the 1940s.  But he survived and lived quietly running his own trucking company.  He was out of the spotlight for many years. But in 1998 Jimmy threw out the first pitch at a Red Sox game to a standing ovation.

Longtime Jimmy Fund supporter Ted Williams was at the game that day and met ‘Jimmy’ for the first time.

“I’m your biggest fan” were the words spoken by one of the men.  No, it was not Jimmy speaking to Ted Williams.  It was the hall of famer himself, talking to the person who was the inspiration of the Jimmy fund.

Ted Williams - the last 400 hitter

Later at the Dana Farber Institute, Ted Williams spoke about his recent fund raising activities and said that meeting ‘Jimmy was by far the biggest thrill of my trip.”

To make a donation to the Jimmy Fund, visit the website:

http://www.jimmyfund.org/ways-to-give/