From Fenway to Our Way
The Season the Red Sox Came to Avalon
You’ve obviously heard the tune “I Found My Love in Avalon,” the 1920 classic written and often performed by Al Jolson. Perhaps that’s where Red Sox right-hander Jack Kramer got the inspiration for his quote in 1949 when he told The Boston Globe, “I found my arm in Avalon – Avalon, New Jersey.”
That summer, the three-time All-Star pitcher and at least five other injured teammates spent some time rehabbing here – deep inside enemy territory, fewer than 75 miles from the homes of both the Philadelphia Athletics and Phillies.
They most likely would have traveled by train from Boston through New York City and then to Atlantic City, where they would need to transfer to a car or bus for the remainder of the trip to Avalon. It was neither an easy nor quick trip in the 1940s.
It wasn’t unusual at that time for physicians to speak of the rejuvenating properties of the salt air and water of the Jersey Shore. But that’s not what attracted these major leaguers to Avalon. No, they traveled to what was still a desolate seashore resort at the invitation of Richard Mattsson.
A caption from July 1949 in the Cape May County Times.
Teammates congratulate Jack Kramer after a 10-strikeout win in the 1944 World Series.
A native of Stockholm, Sweden, Mattsson emigrated to the United States as a young adult, arriving at Ellis Island in 1931. He’d eventually move with his wife Kerstin to a cottage on 54th Street in 1941. Known as Holiday Beach at the time, that part of the island was a maritime forest, still densely covered by trees and heavy brush. There were no paved streets, just high natural sand dunes. Residents of Avalon at that time would often have to travel on the beach to get to Stone Harbor. Ocean Highway, as it was referred to in the 1940s (known today as Third Avenue and Ocean Drive), was nothing but a dirt path that would flood at high tide, located about 100 feet from the Mattsson cottage.
According to the Red Sox, Mattsson was never an official team physician. Census records from the day list him as a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine. In city directories, he was also listed as a Swedish masseur. The Boston Globe described him as “a masseur with several medical degrees.” Later in life, his wife Kerstin would also become a licensed masseuse in Florida.
A Boston Globe news clip from Sept. 7, 1949 mentioning Avalon.
It’s not clear how Mattsson managed the connection with the Red Sox, but at least in June 1949 he established a rehab clinic for their players here on the Seven Mile Beach. Accommodations were arranged for the players at The Hub, a rooming house/hotel located on 21st Street that would become The Holiday Hotel in the 1950s. More suited as summer housing for teenage lifeguards, chances are that the accommodations weren’t up to the standards of major league players, but they apparently sufficed. The Hub’s most noteworthy amenity was that its “lunch counter” was open and served guests 24/7 –one of the few, or perhaps the only, 24-hour operation in town at the time.
Despite the less than luxurious housing accommodation, if the players physically progressed to the point of making it back to the diamond, Avalon boasted fine baseball facilities. As home to one of Cape May County’s traveling baseball squads in the 1920s through the ’40s, teams would often play in front of several hundred fans on a field at Avalon’s recreation complex, still located from 8th to 12th streets.
The most notable among Mattsson’s rehab patients that summer was Kramer. “Handsome Jack,” as he was known, pitched 12 years in the major leagues, the first eight with the primarily with the St. Louis Browns – the franchise that became the Baltimore Orioles in 1954 – but also with the Red Sox, New York Giants and Yankees. News reports during his career also refer to Kramer as the best dressed player in MLB.
His greatest singular achievement came with the Browns in Game 3 of the 1944 World Series, when he pitched a complete-game seven-hitter with 10 strikeouts to beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-2.
Kramer’s best season was 1948, his first year with the Red Sox. He’d finish the season 18-5 with the American League’s best winning percentage (.783) and would be in the conversation for the league MVP since this was before the institution of the Cy Young Award.
Unfortunately, the following spring, less than six months after eliminating the Yankees from the 1948 pennant race, Kramer injured his pitching shoulder in an exhibition game in Tampa, Fla. Kramer told The Boston Globe at the time about his next start: “I tried to warm up and my arm had no feeling. My spirits were about as low as they could be.”
The Boston Globe reported later that summer that this doctor in Avalon “got him on the road to recovery.” According to Kramer, “I spent five days with the doctor in a rooming house in Avalon. He found adhesions in the muscles of my shoulders. He got them loose by working his fingers in them.” Kramer went on to explain, “My arm was still a little weak. And I couldn’t do quite as much with my curveball, but my arm feels better. For the first time in six months, I have no pain!”
The Mattssons would sell their 54th Street cottage in 1951 and relocate to Clearwater, Fla. At least for one summer, big-leaguers came to our island to rehab and at least one All-Star pitcher found his arm “in Avalon – Avalon, New Jersey.” Who knew?
