In 1911, decades before coast-to-coast travel became a fact of life in major league baseball, the Boston Red Sox embarked on the most ambitious spring training trip ever taken. After a full slate of games throughout California, the team decamped from Redondo Beach and made its way east, stopping in 10 states and the Arizona Territory, and playing in places such as Pueblo, Yuma, Wichita, and Lincoln--traveling exclusively by railroad. By the time the team finished up its preseason schedule, beating Harvard on their first day back in Boston, the Red Sox had played a staggering 63 games.
2019 SABR Baseball Research Award Few people have influenced a team as much as did Tom Yawkey (1903–76) as owner of the Boston Red Sox. After purchasing the Red Sox for $1.2 million in 1932, Yawkey poured millions into building a better team and making the franchise relevant again. Although the Red Sox never won a World Series under Yawkey’s ownership, there were still many highlights. Lefty Grove won his three hundredth game; Jimmie Foxx hit fifty home runs; Ted Williams batted .406 in 1941, and both Williams and Carl Yastrzemski won Triple Crowns. Yawkey was viewed by fans as a genial autocrat who ran his ball club like a hobby more than a business and who spoiled his players. He was perhaps too trusting, relying on flawed cronies rather than the most competent executives to run his ballclub. One of his more unfortunate legacies was the accusation that he was a racist, since the Red Sox were the last Major League team to integrate, and his inaction in this regard haunted both him and the team for decades. As one of the last great patriarchal owners in baseball, he was the first person elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame who hadn’t been a player, manager, or general manager. Bill Nowlin takes a close look at Yawkey’s life as a sportsman and as one of the leading philanthropists in New England and South Carolina. He also addresses Yawkey’s leadership style and issues of racism during his tenure with the Red Sox.
Every Major League team has a history-but this is the franchise of Ted Williams. Every Major League team has players they call "heroes"-but with Williams you can drop the emphasis: he's a true hero, an American icon, and a baseball legend. This is the franchise of Joe Cronin, Jimmy Collins, Tom Yawkey, and no fewer than 36 Hall of Fame players who spent a portion of their careers with the Red Sox. From Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Harry Hooper and Tris Speaker, to Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice, Wade Boggs and Pedro Martinez ... this is a franchise so rich in history that it is inextricably linked to the history of the game itself. Add to that list the members of the Red Sox Hall of Fame-names like Bill Lee, Jim Lonborg, Fred Lynn, Jerry Remy, Bruce Hurst, Mike Greenwell, Mo Vaughn, Curt Schilling, Roger Clemens and Nomar Garciaparra-and you quickly realize why it is impossible to tell the story of baseball's history without the Red Sox. This is a book of Red Sox history and trivia. With ten chapters and 201 trivia questions, it is a celebration of the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Red Sox Hall of Fame legends who gave us some of the greatest moments in franchise history. Whether you are a novice or a long-time member of Red Sox Nation ... enjoy the trivia, and have fun reminiscing.
The Boston Red Sox have blown hot and cold over the decades. These lists of Top 5s and 10s cover both the highs and lows of a team that has endured a long history of both joy and sorrow. They won the first World Series ever played and then five more penna
In the 111-year-history of the Boston Red Sox, fans have been treated to countless firsts— the first manager of the franchise (Jimmy Collins), the first American League MVP to play for the Sox (Tris Speaker), the first 20-game winner (Bill Dineen), the first to hit 500 home runs (Ted Williams), and the first Red Sox pitcher to win the Cy Young Award (Roger Clemens). The list goes on.In Boston Red Sox Firsts, veteran Red Sox historian Bill Nowlin presents the stories behind the firsts in Red Sox history in question-and-answer format. More than a mere trivia book, Nowlin’s collection includes substantive answers to the question of “who was the first…?” on a variety of topics, many of which will surprise even seasoned fans of the Sox.
As a young student in Russia, Alexander Berkman claims to have heard the bomb explode which killed Tsar Alexander II in 1881. He emigrated to America and, inspired by the Haymarket martyrs, became active in Jewish anarchist circles. When Henry Clay Frick of Carnegie Steel sent in armed Pinkertons who killed strikers at Homestead Steel, Berkman traveled to Pittsburg and shot Frick in an assassination attempt of his own, hoping to inspire a workers' revolt. He spent 14 years in prison, then rejoined his comrade Emma Goldman and was active in the free speech movement, in setting up free schools, in the beginnings of the birth control movement, and in defensing numerous activists charged by prosecutors. He and Goldman organized against military conscription during World War II and were deported to Russia, arriving shortly after the Revolution. There, as anarchists, they also ran afoul of the Communist Party authorities who were intent on consolidating political power. They had to leave Russia as well, and then to leave Germany, finally landing in exile in France. Throughout, Berkman was a skilled organizer and both edited and wrote numerous publications. His life, his work, and his ideas are explored in this book. Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman are prominent figures in any consideration of American anarchism. From roughly 1892 to 1919 they were at the forefront of the American anarchist movement and deeply involved in the international movement for yet another decade and a half. Since their deportation to Bolshevik Russia in 1919, there has been a dearth of explicitly anarchist writing and organization in the United States which earned any sizable or responsive audience. Neither Goldman nor Berkman were original political theorists of the first order, but both dealt with the great questions of political thought, and they can be said to have advanced anarchist theory in the light of the first modern socialist revolution. Although virtually inseparable as comrades in thought, action and life, there were differences of opinion between them. This book focuses specifically on Berkman.
If you're like some fans in New England (and beyond - for years there was a Red Sox fan group in Anchorage which even offered t-shirts reading "Far from Fenway"), you probably wake up every day thinking to yourself, "I wonder what happened at Fenway Park on this day in years gone by." OK, probably there aren't that many people who wonder that. But ever since Ed Walton's original book This Day in Boston Red Sox History, there have been a plethora of other such books for various teams. It was my honor to be able to update Ed's 1978 book with my own Day By Day with the Boston Red Sox, which Rounder Books published in 2006. That book ran to over 600 pages - and I've kept updating my file ever since, adding another six seasons since then. This book is more manageable since I've limited it only to events at Fenway Park. First of all, that removed the first 11 years of the franchise (1901-11) when the team played at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. Secondly, it moved almost precisely half the games of the succeeding 100 seasons - since they were road games. But there was a lot of great stuff that did happen at Fenway, and I hope this book will be enjoyable. There were moments of exultation, and moments of depression. Maybe more of the latter, but we're tough. We're Red Sox fans. We can take it. We're stronger for it.
A brand new edition of the 2004 book MR. RED SOX, bringing that book up to date. We lost Johnny Pesky in the second half of 2012, and this book takes us through the two World Championships he was able to enjoy, and his visit to the White House - including a seat in the Presidential limousine. The remarkable story of the most-loved Red Sox player of all times.
This book covers each and every one of Ted Williams' 521 home runs - but by no means stops there. It also looks at homers he hit in high school, in the minors, in exhibition games, and in All-Star Games. The book quotes Ted himself on hitting and presents comments and stories from many others about the homers Ted hit.There have been a handful of hitters who now have more homers than Ted - though he was the fourth to join the 500 HR Club. There have been very few with a higher lifetime batting average. There has been no one with a higher on-base percentage. Ted ranks at the top when one considers hitting for a combination of average and power.
On its 50th anniversary, the BoSox Club is one of the most successful and long-lasting fan clubs in baseball. The official booster club of the Boston Red Sox, here is the story of the BoSox Club, its founding, its activities over the years, and a look at all the other fan clubs around the majors.
This full book explores the family background of Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams -- considered by many to be the greatest hitter who ever lived. With the Anglo surname of Williams, most people had no idea that his maternal grandparents came to America from Mexico until Bill Nowlin followed up on one line in Williams' autobiography where Ted had written, "if I had had my mother's name, there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, the prejudices people had in Southern California." As Ben Bradlee Jr. wrote, "No reporter...dug into Ted Williams'] Mexican heritage until Bill Nowlin explored some of the Venzor family lineage in an article for the Boston Globe Magazine published in June of 2002, a month before Ted died." -- Ben Bradlee, Jr., The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted WilliamsThe year after Ted Williams died, Bill Nowlin helped organize celebrations of Williams' life at the San Diego Hall of Champions, the Boston Public Library, and the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. For the San Diego celebration, he invited members of Ted's extended family to attend and 33 of them assembled in Balboa Park outside the Hall of Champions. Interviews with family members, with confirmation from Ted himself, helped build some of the backstory of one of the greatest baseball players -- and of a truly remarkable American family.
Vinyl Ventures: My Fifty Years at Rounder Records is less a standard history and more an idiosyncratic memoir written by one of the three Rounder founders. Rounder Records was born in 1970, a “hobby that got out of control,” a fledgling record company more or less conceived when vinyl still reigned, while the Sixties were still in flower, and which began publishing on a shoestring budget of just over $1,000. Founded by three friends just out of college, the Boston-area company produced over 3,000 record albums, the most active company of the last half-century, specializing in roots music and its contemporary offshoots. Rounder won fifty-six Grammy Awards and documented a swath of music that in many cases might otherwise never have been presented to a broader public. It’s arguably a quintessentially American success story. This book focuses on the early years up to and just through when Rounder evolved to a second stage, with a generational change that has kept the label healthy and flourishing when so many other cultural enterprises from the era have folded or gone dark. It includes original photographs taken by the author or drawn from the Rounder Records archives. It’s the story of three people with no background in business who took an idea and, through hard work and passion, built something of lasting cultural significance.
