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 pennants in the next fifteen years. Famously, from 1918 until the magical year of 2004, the Sox endured eighty-six seasons without a championship, although they lost pennants and world championships on the last possible day more times than fans...

As if Ted Williams's numbers needed any help, recent research reveals that 110 of his 521 career home runs—more than 20%—were game-winners. "The Kid" Blasts a Winner, by Red Sox guru Bill Nowlin, tells the story of every one of them. Williams's first game-winner came just 10 games into his career, a mammoth blast, likely the longest ball ever hit at Briggs Stadium. His last came more than 21 years later, the 520th of his career, a 2-run shot that carried the Red Sox to a 2-1 win against th...

Longtime diehard Red Sox fans did just that—DIE HARD—almost too many times to count over the decades until they finally won the World Series in 2004 after an incredible postseason run.Red Sox scholar Bill Nowlin, a fan for nearly 50 years when Boston finally triumphed, endured many of those heartbreaks, and once the shock of the win wore off, Bill found that the essence of his relationship with his team had changed forever.Twenty years have now passed since The Curse was br...

Become a Red Sox expert with these tough questions!The Incredible Boston Red Sox Trivia Book tests and expands your knowledge on your favorite baseball team—covering players’ careers from their rookie season, the All-Star Game, to Cooperstown and beyond! In this collection of 300 questions, seasoned baseball writer and Red Sox historian Bill Nowlin tests your level of expertise on all things BoSox. Some of the many questions that Nowlin poses include:...

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 ...

So You Think You’re a Boston Red Sox Fan? tests and expands your knowledge of Red Sox baseball. Rather than merely posing questions and providing answers, you’ll get details behind each-stories that bring to life players and coaches, games and seasons.This book is divided into multiple parts, with progressively more difficult questions in each new section. Along the way, you’ll learn more about the great Red Sox players and coaches of the past and present, from Ted William...

2019 SABR Baseball Research AwardFew 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 bat...

The Federal League formed in 1913 as an "outlaw league" in six cities across the Midwest. In 1914 it added two teams and declared itself a major league. The league's owners "stole" players from the two existing major leagues and put teams in some of the same cities. Both the American and National Leagues struck back. After the 1915 season, with several Federal League teams struggling financially, the two more-established leagues bought out several teams. This caused the collapse of the Fed...

The Newark Eagles won only one Negro National League pennant during the franchise's 15-year tenure in the Garden State, but the 1946 squad that ran away with the NNL and then triumphed over the Kansas City Monarchs in a seven-game World Series was a team for the ages. World War II had ended, and numerous players who had served in the military returned to resume their playing careers with the Eagles. The returning veterans composed a veritable "Who's Who in the Negro Leagues" and included L...

The Fall 2020 edition of SABR's Baseball Research Journal (Volume 49, issue 2), runs the gamut of research, from the nineteenth century to events that took place in 2020. The article that anchors this issue of the journal, appearing last, is Richard Hershberger's account of the "First Baseball War," in which the nineteenth-century clash between leagues contributed to the creation of the reserve system that suppressed free agency until the late twentieth, while Mary Hums and her team docume...

Sweet ’60: The 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates is the joint product of 44 authors and editors from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) who have pooled their efforts to create a portrait of the 1960 team which pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the last 60 years.Game Seven of the 1960 World Series between the Pirates and the Yankees swung back and forth. Heading into the bottom of the eighth inning at Forbes Field, the Yankees had outscored the Pirates, 53-21, and held a ...

Teddy Ballgame or the Great Bambino? Nomar or Jeter? Clemens or Clemens?For more than 115 years, the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees have been battling it out on the diamond, playing each other over 2,000 times. This heated rivalry has stood the test of time, as one team’s triumph usually means the other’s dismay. While the teams battle on the field, the fans and cities take the rivalry just as seriously.But who’s the best? Which team’s players have the edge? Which team...