“Smoky” Joe Wood, Cy Young, and of Course Babe Ruth. Ruth Not Only
YD7535.1397-1448 5/24/05 8:32 AM Page 1415
Sports and Recreation
Speaker, “Smoky” Joe Wood, Cy Young, and spurred a resurgence of interest in baseball.The Fenway. Directed by Epstein, the youngest of course Babe Ruth. Ruth not only became game-winning home run in the th inning of general manager in the history of baseball, and baseball’s greatest hitter, but while playing for game six by the Vermont native Carlton Fisk veteran executive Larry Lucchino, the Sox the Red Sox he was one of his era’s best pitch- remains perhaps the single greatest moment in combined the benefits of an exorbitant payroll ers as well. But in owner Harry Frazee, a Red Sox history, but then Cincinnati came with a quantitative, statistics-based approach New York theater producer, began selling off back to win the deciding seventh game. to player selection and a new emphasis on one player after another, including Ruth, to fi- Such a rich history created a unique base of pitching and defense. The team has joined the nance a series of Broadway plays. After he fans who are knowledgeable, skeptical, and in- trend of signing an increasing number of play- made the deal for Ruth, Frazee said of the tensely loyal. The Boston media, like the fans, ers from Latin America and Asia, and fans Yankees,“I do not mind saying I think they are have a reputation for being competitive, cyni- have embraced new stars like Garciaparra, taking a gamble.” cal, intelligent, and sometimes cruel. The Red Martinez, and Ortiz as local heroes. When In the s, furnished with Ruth and other Sox play on baseball’s oldest field, Fenway Epstein and Lucchino allowed the legendary former Red Sox stars, the Yankees reenergized Park, celebrated for its character and intimacy Martinez, a former Cy Young award winner, to and modernized the game, becoming the that make fans feel like participants. John Up- defect to the Mets following the World Series dominant sports team of the century.The Red dike described Fenway as “a lyric little band- victory, it was a sign that the team had dropped Sox, conversely, slumped for years, finishing box of a ballpark. Everything is painted green its tradition of keeping aging stars, just as it last in the league six years in a row and nine and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the in- had broken the habit of building teams around years out of through , when they lost side of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter big, slow sluggers. With a new ownership and games and ended up games out of first. egg. It was built in and rebuilt in , and management style, the Red Sox began to write They finally emerged in the mid-s under offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compro- a new ending to a suddenly old story. new owner Tom Yawkey, whose free spending mise between Man’s Euclidean determina- Bruce Chadwick and David M. Spindel, The Boston attracted a solid group of stars, including Jim- tions and Nature’s beguiling irregularities.” Red Sox: Memories and Mementos of New England’s mie Foxx, Joe Cronin, and Ted Williams, a There is little parking at Fenway. Its old Team (); David Halberstam, “The Fan Divided,” brilliant hitter who characterized the potential wooden seats are cramped, and many are be- Boston Globe, October , ; Halberstam, The Sum- and the pain of the Red Sox for years. hind poles. “Comfort is not the index people mer of ’49 (); Donald Hall, Fathers Playing Catch Williams’s relations with the press and fans use to measure a day at Fenway,” writes with Sons ( ); Dan Shaughnessy, At Fenway: Dis- were often stormy, but he remained the team’s columnist Mike Barnicle. From the street it patches from Red Sox Nation ( ); Shaughnessy, Curse of the Bambino (); Mike Sowell, One Pitch best player and a wonderfully gifted batter— looks like a brick warehouse; only inside does Away:The Players’ Stories of the 1986 League Champi- still the last man to hit better than . for a it reveal itself as a ballpark. What strikes a fan onships and World Series ( ); John Updike, “Hub season, in . first upon emerging from the narrow, crowded Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” in Assorted Prose (); Up- Williams’s Sox were among the game’s best tunnels beneath Fenway, out into the open ex- dike, “Rapt by the Radio,” Boston Globe, October , teams in the late s—with Bobby Doerr, panse of grass and sky, is the looming presence . Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and pitchers of the Green Monster, the -foot-high wall Louis Mazzari Mel Parnell and Ellis Kinder—but a series of in left field, only feet from home plate— cruel losses led to a decline that persisted the shortest distance in the big leagues—dar- Boxing Boxing, one of the world’s oldest through the s and beyond. From ing right-handed hitters to try to poke one and most violent sports, has been a part of through they finished far from first place, over. That tantalizing wall—with its prom- New England culture since the early th cen- including the season when they were ise of easy success running so counter to the tury. Introduced into New England in the late games back; for the seven seasons beginning in New England temperament—proved Boston’s s as bare-knuckle prizefighting, boxing’s , the best they could manage was sixth in downfall for decades. Year after year, the Sox popularity expanded throughout the region the league.Through the s and s, when built teams loaded with right-handed power during the s, particularly in Boston, where baseball was integrating and hiring players hitters, expected to tattoo the wall, at the ex- scores of recently arrived Irish immigrants had from the Negro Leagues, the Red Sox held the pense of the game’s other fundamentals— settled. In , Massachusetts passed legisla- color line; they were the last team to have an pitching, speed, and defense. In recent years, tion prohibiting bare-knuckle prizefighting, African American on the roster, and they were to increase revenues from the smallest ballpark imposing severe prison sentences and steep similarly slow to sign Hispanic players later. in the majors, seats have been added on the fines on combatants, promoters, and other Ted Williams retired in , as the team field, along the right-field grandstands, and ring attendants. Despite these penalties, struggled, but his position in left field was taken most strikingly, atop the Green Monster. Boston permitted bare-knuckle prizefighting over by Carl Yastrzemski, and in the Sox In the Yawkey family trust announced exhibitions in theaters, saloons, and show broke through again when Yaz won the Triple that it would sell the club after years of halls. Boston’s Irish American males highly Crown—a baseball feat that has not been ownership, spurring more spending on star esteemed the manly prowess expressed by achieved since—and led the Sox to the Ameri- players and culminating in a huge contract for prizefighting. The sport, moreover, provided can League pennant. Their Impossible Dream slugger Manny Ramirez. In January a Irish American men, many of whom were de- season was capped with a trip to the World Se- group led by futures investor John Henry and nied access to legitimate avenues of economic ries, but the hope was snuffed out in the end television producer Tom Werner bought the and social opportunities, alternate means to when the St. Louis Cardinals won it in seven Sox in a record-setting sale, which included material success. Later, in the th century, games. Yaz was the team’s captain through its New England’s cable television sports net- boxing would afford similar gains to other dis- succession of near misses in the s, with a work, ensuring that the team would remain advantaged ethnic and racial groups in New lineup that included stars like Fred Lynn and among the richest in baseball.The Sox payroll England, including Italians and African Jim Rice. The drama they provided, particu- became one of the game’s highest—behind Americans. larly in the series against the Cincinnati only the Yankees—and the team drew record In New Orleans legalized boxing un- Reds, perhaps the greatest World Series ever, numbers of fans, night after night, to sold-out der the Queensberry rules, which limited