Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox are a Major League Baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts. They are in the Eastern Division of the American League.
- Founded: 1893, as the Toledo, Ohio franchise in the minor Western League. Moved to Boston when that league became the American League in 1900.
- Formerly known as: Boston Americans (1901), Boston Somersets (1902), Boston Pilgrims (1903-1906).
- Current ownership: John Henry and Tom Werner, who paid $660 million and assumed $40 million in debt, in February 2002. The purchase includes Fenway Park and 80 percent of New England Sports Network. The purchase price set a record for a major league baseball franchise.
- Home ballpark: Fenway Park
- Uniform colors: Navy blue, Red, and White
- Logo design: Two hanging red socks
- Wild Card titles won (3): 1998, 1999, 2003
- Division championships won (5): 1975, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1995
- American League pennants won (10): 1903, 1904, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 1946, 1967, 1975, 1986
- World Series championships won (5): 1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918
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2 Postseason Series of note 3 Players of note 4 External links |
The 1912 and 1915 clubs featured an outfield considered to be among the finest in the game: Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper and Duffy Lewis.
The Red Sox were owned by Joseph Lannin from 1913 to 1916 and he signed Babe Ruth, commonly seen as the best player in baseball history. In 1919, the team's new owner, Harry Frazee, sold Ruth to the New York Yankees. Legend has it that he did so in order to finance his Broadway play "No, No Nanette," but in actual fact the play would not debut on Broadway until 1925. Rather, Frazee sold Ruth, and a host of other star players such as Sad Sam Jones and Carl Mays in order to pay off debts from the failures of other shows. Since the gutting of the championship team, the Red Sox have never won a World Series, and Red Sox fans often speak of the Curse of the Bambino -- a play on one of Ruth's nicknames.
Around 1930, a wealthy, shy young man named Tom Yawkey bought the Red Sox, and began pumping money into the team. The Red Sox went to the World Series in 1946, 1967 and 1975 but lost each time. The Yawkeys would own the Red Sox for a long time, and put a lot of care into the team. After Tom Yawkey died, his widow Jean ran the team.
Ted Williams began the era of the Red Sox called the Ted Sox.
Williams was one of the rare players who hit for power and high average; he is also the last player to hit over .400 for a full season. He did this in 1941.
1967 is remembered by Red Sox fans as the year of the "Impossible Dream." The team had finished the 1966 season in last place, but they found new life and a new star player named Carl Yastrzemski, who led the team to the World Series. They lost the series, breaking the hearts of their fans; but the events of 1967 are cherished by the team's historians. Yastrzemski went on to become a Hall of Fame member.
The 1986 Red Sox, led by a fireballing righthander from Texas, Roger Clemens, came within one strike of winning the World Series then lost Game 6 on a stunning series of events. This included first baseman Bill Buckner having the winning run score on a ball hit right to him, which he let go through his legs. Buckner endured years of taunts and harassment as a result of the error.
The Red Sox won the American League East in both 1988 and 1990, only to get swept 4-0 by the Oakland Athletics both times. In the strike-shortened 1995 season, they won the newly-realigned American League East, finishing 7 games ahead of the rival Yankees. Once again, they were swept, this time 3-0 by the Cleveland Indians, running their postseason losing streak to 13 games, dating back to the 1986 World Series.
In 1998 the Red Sox traded for Montreal Expos star pitcher Pedro Martinez, and signed him to a long-term contract. Martinez would have several spectacular seasons for the Red Sox. In 1998 they lost the Divisional Series to the Cleveland Indians, this time 3-1, after winning game 1 11-3 behind Martinez.
In 1999 they got revenge on the Indians, pulling off a miracle comeback, being down 2 games to 0. They won game 3, 9-3, behind the pitching of Ramon Martinez, Pedro's brother, and Derek Lowe. Game 4 was an incredible blowout, 23-7 for the Red Sox. Game 5 was a tense affair, with the the Indians taking a 5-2 lead after two innings, but Pedro Martinez came on in the fourth inning and pitched six innings of shutout ball to back the Red Sox to a 12-8 win, behind two home runs from Troy O'Leary. The Red Sox then met the hated New York Yankees and lost 4 games to 1. The sole win was a cathartic 13-1 demolition of former Red Sox Roger Clemens in Fenway Park.
When Dan Duquette was general manager, relations at the club tended towards the acrimonious. The fans and local media often turned on the players; general managers humiliated the manager; managers and players sniped at each other.
That era ended in 2002, when president and Yawkey trustee John Harrington sold the Red Sox to a consortium comprised of John Henry, Tom Werner, and Les Otten, with Larry Lucchino as president and CEO. Duquette was fired, and replaced for the 2002 season by Mike Port. During the 2002 off-season, the Red Sox hired Yale graduate Theo Epstein as general manager. At 28, he became the youngest GM in the history of the Major Leagues.
June 27, 2003, the Red Sox established a new Major League Baseball record by scoring 10 runs against the Florida Marlins before the Marlins could get an out in the first inning.
The 2003 post-season delivered the cruelest blow to the Red Sox since 1986. After losing the first two games of the ALDS to the Oakland Athletics, the team made a remarkable comeback to take the series 3 games to 2, setting up a grueling seven-game ALCS against (again) the Yankees. The series seemed evenly matched, with the lead being held first by the Red Sox, then by the Yankees. The Sox forced the series to a full seven games, with the seventh game (played on October 16) setting another major league record for the rivalry between the two teams: it marked the first time two major league teams have played more than 25 games against each other over the course of a single season. The Red Sox also set an ALCS record with 12 home runs in the series. Team spirit was high and Sox fans fervently believed that this would be the year they would finally beat the curse -- but their hopes were dashed yet again, as the Yankees came from behind to win the series with an 11th-inning home run in game seven.
(Until the final game of the pennant race, baseball fans had been hoping for a World Series that would have truly written a page in the history of the game: a showdown between the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs, one of only two major league teams to have played for a longer period of time without winning the World Series (the other is the Chicago White Sox). The Cubs had also made it to the pennant, and they also battled a full seven games; but as with the Red Sox, they lost their pennant race, and the 2003 World Series was played between the Yankees and the Florida Marlins.)
In 2003, the Red Sox led the majors with a .289 batting average, set a team record with 238 home runs, and set a new record with a slugging percentage of .491, breaking the .489 mark of the 1927 Yankees.
See also: Curse of the Bambino, Major League Baseball franchise post-season droughts
Franchise history
Early 20th century
The Boston Red Sox won the first World Series in 1903. In the following decade, the club won four World Series in a six-year span despite changing ownership several times.Williams and Yastrzemski
Curse of the Bambino?
Postseason Series of note
Players of note
Baseball Hall of Famers
Current stars
Not to be forgotten
Retired numbers
External links
