With the Red Sox ready to break camp today after the club’s final spring training game in Fort Myers against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Boston has its Opening Day roster set after Terry Francona and his staff made the final cuts on Tuesday. After today, the Sox will play two more games in Philadelphia at Citizens Bank Park against the Phillies before starting the regular season on Monday afternoon in Kansas City against the Royals; veteran Curt Schilling, entering his 20th season with Major League Baseball and the final year of his current contract with Boston, will get the ball to open the season for the second consecutive year.

After a six-game road trip to open the season, the team will play its first home game on Tuesday, 10 April against the Seattle Mariners; expected to start for the Red Sox that afternoon is Japanese import Daisuke Matsuzaka, whom Boston paid over $100 million to acquire his services from the Seibu Lions of the Japanese Central League. Already, the possibility that he will throw his first pitch at Fenway Park facing Ichiro Suzuki, another well-known Japanese-born ball player, has people from the far reaches of the globe anticipating the moment.

Boston fans will also see some new faces in the field. With the departure of Trot Nixon to Cleveland as a free agent, J.D. Drew will take his spot in right field, even wearing the same uniform number (7) as the former Dirt Dog. Drew, a nine-year MLB veteran, has a career batting average of .286 and stroked 20 home runs while driving home 100 runs last season with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Also new to the club is shortstop Julio Lugo, Drew’s teammate late last season with the Dodgers who is expected to provide more pop at his position. The Sox also have some new faces in the bullpen, including Brendan Donnelly, Hideki Okajima, Joel Pineiro, and J.C. Romero.

Of course, there will be many familiar faces, including team MVP David Ortiz, who last season hit a club-record 54 home runs, breaking Jimmie Foxx’s long-standing record with the franchise. Other fan favorites returning this season include Manny Ramirez, Jason Varitek, Josh Beckett, and Tim Wakefield as the team looks to rebound this season after missing the post-season in 2006 and three years after winning the World Series in 2004.

The active roster to start the season is as follows:

Starting Rotation

• RHP Curt Schilling
• RHP Josh Beckett
• RHP Daisuke Matsuzaka
• RHP Tim Wakefield
• RHP Julian Tavarez

Bullpen

• RHP Brendan Donnelly
• LHP Javier Lopez
• LHP Hideki Okajima
• RHP Jonathan Papelbon (CL)
• RHP Joel Pineiro
• LHP J.C. Romero
• RHP Kyle Snyder

Catchers

• C Jason Varitek
• C Doug Mirabelli

Infielders

• SS/2B Alex Cora
• 1B Eric Hinske
• 3B Mike Lowell
• SS Julio Lugo
• DH/1B David Ortiz
• 2B Dustin Pedroia
• 1B Kevin Youkilis

Outfielders

• CF Coco Crisp
• RF J.D. Drew
• RF/CF Wily Mo Pena
• LF Manny Ramirez

Starting the year on the disabled list will be pitchers Mike Timlin and Matt Clement. Timlin is expected back sometime in April while Clement is expected to miss most of the 2007 season.

The year was 1967. The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, one of rock’s most acclaimed albums. Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The musical Hair premieres Off-Broadway while Dustin Hoffman was stirring up trouble with an older woman in The Graduate. In sports, future Red Sox infielder John Valentin is born while former Red Sox slugger Jimmie Foxx dies at the age of 59. Meanwhile, the team itself is in the midst of trying to end years of frustration for baseball fans in Boston; through the end of the 1966 season, the club had suffered eight consecutive losing seasons and had not made a single trip to the post-season since 1946, when players like Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, and Johnny Pesky gave the locals a reason to watch baseball at Fenway Park.

Forty years later, the Boston Red Sox are one of the most popular clubs in all of major league baseball, selling out over 300 consecutive home games since 2003 and having played to near-capacity crowds for several years before the streak began. While the Boston nine share this city with several other sports franchises, including a New England Patriots team that won three Super Bowls this decade, Red Sox baseball is a topic of conversation nearly year-round here and all across Red Sox Nation. Some point to the “miraculous” 1967 season as the catalyst for this fascination, as a young club went from cellar dwellers to pennant winners, overcoming the odd makers and skeptics, and making it perhaps one of the most exciting summers in team history.

Beginning next Monday, FenwayFanatics.com presents 1967 @ 40, a series of articles this season that will center on that “Impossible Dream” realized by both the club and its fans. We’ll recall the course of the season from Opening Day to the last out on the last day of the season at Fenway Park. We’ll also look back at some of the central figures on the club, from manager Dick Williams and general manager Dick O’Connell to key clubhouse figures like Triple Crown winner Carl Yastrzemski and Cy Young honoree Jim Lonborg. The series will then conclude with an assessment of Boston’s formidable opponent from the 1967 Fall Classic, the St. Louis Cardinals, and a recap of the World Series itself as the Red Sox took the Redbirds to seven games, looking for the club’s first world championship in nearly 50 years.

With just over a week to go in spring training, manager Terry Francona and Jonathan Papelbon came together following Boston’s 4-4 tie with Philadelphia Thursday afternoon, in which he threw three innings of relief and allowed one run on two hits while striking out three, and announced that the third-year player will return to close games for the Red Sox this season, the second year in a row that the young right-hander will be expected to take the ball with a late-inning lead. The announcement came as a surprise for many who had expected him to join the starting rotation this season due to concerns after a late-season injury forced the Red Sox to shut him down in early September of last year. However, with no clear choice among the candidates that were in contention for the job this spring, including Joel Pineiro, Brendan Donnelly, and Julian Tavarez, among others, Papelbon apparently approached Francona earlier this week and told him that he willing to take on the role again this season, and the sudden move appears to have finally answered a burning question that has haunted the team all winter and for much of the spring.

Drafted by Boston in 2003, Papelbon drew comparisons to a young Roger Clemens and the team eyed him as the future of the club’s rotation. However, when former closer Keith Foukle failed to impress Red Sox coaches last spring as he attempted to make a comeback from an injury-plagued 2005 campaign, Papelbon was named the team’s closer to begin his first full season in the majors and recorded his first save on 05 April at Texas. By the end of the first month of the season, he had set a major league record for April with ten saves in ten chances and saved his first 20 games while posting an ERA of just 0.21. With 26 saves in 29 chances before the All-Star break, he was selected to represent the American League at the 2006 All-Star game in Pittsburgh, and recorded another nine saves before a shoulder subluxation sidelined him from early September until the end of the season. Even so, his 2006 season was one of the most dominant ever for a rookie pitcher. He posted a WHIP of 0.84, struck out 75 batters in 68 innings, and held opposing batters to a measly .167 batting average.

As had been the case before last season, Boston had every intention to insert him into the starting rotation this year, and the biggest reason in the early going was that the team wanted to avoid putting too much stress on Papelbon’s young shoulder, wanting instead to give him the knowledge that he would be in a set routine of pitching every fifth game. With that changed, the door has now opened for Tavarez, who had openly made his case for a starting job in February after pitchers and catchers reported to Fort Myers, to become the fifth starter behind a rotation that includes veterans Curt Schilling, Tim Wakefield, and Josh Beckett, as well as newcomer Daisuke Matsuzaka. Tavarez, who spent most of last season as a middle reliever, made six starts in September and went 3-0 with a 4.01 ERA, including a complete-game effort against the Toronto Blue Jays on 22 September in which he threw 99 pitchers and allowed just one run on seven hits and a walk.

Aside from the “controversy” surrounding Manny Ramirez’s annual late arrival to spring training, the biggest question in Fort Myers this pre-season remains as to who will take the mound in the ninth inning when the game is on the line this season. For Boston, there are four probable candidates that remain: Joel Pineiro, Brendan Donnelly, Manny Delcarmen, and J.C. Romero. Hideki Okajima, who played last season in Japan for the Nippon Ham Fighters and has experience as a closer in the past, has already been tabbed as a middle reliever, as has Julian Tavarez. Mike Timlin had been given limited consideration, having held the position as recently as 2005 when Keith Foulke went on the DL at mid-season, but he has been sidelined almost the entire spring with a strained left oblique; he threw only as recently as last Friday and has yet to see game action as he tries to get ready for his 17th major league season.

It is also clear that Boston has no intention of moving Jonathan Papelbon back into the fireman’s role, despite having saved 35 games for the Red Sox last season before a shoulder subluxation end his season in early September of last season. Though many feel that Papelbon might be cast back in that role if Boston is unsuccessful in finding a suitable successor, the team believe that the routine of pitching every five days will strengthen his arm and limit the chances of another injury with an eye on the future success of the franchise. So far this spring, he is 0-1 with a 2.08 ERA in three appearances and made his first start Saturday afternoon on a limited pitch count, giving up two runs on five hits, one walk, and five strikeouts in 3-2/3 innings of work.

So then who will likely walk out of camp with the same role that Papelbon held in 2006? Pineiro was the early favorite going into camp and had what appeared on paper like two good appearances last week, not yielding a single run and striking out four. In fact, the only pitcher of the four to yield a run was Romero, who gave up a solo shot to Neil Walker of the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, digging down below the surface, one statistic that should catch a pitching coach’s eye is a pitcher’s WHIP, or walks plus hits allowed per innings pitched. The better pitchers tend to hover around 1.00, while coaches like to see a number less than one from a closer, because every walk and hit allowed translates to base runners, and no one wants to have a pinch runner standing on first or second in a one-run game, no matter the number of outs (think Dave Roberts, Red Sox and Yankees fans). Consider, too, that Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman, two of the best closers in the history of the game, have career WHIP of 1.040 and 1.045, respectively.

Last season, Papelbon’s WHIP was an astonishing 0.78, which meant that for every four innings that he pitched, he allowed just three base runners. Taking this into account, let’s look again at the candidates. Pineiro, in the same two appearances last week, gave up three hits and one walk in 2-2/3 innings of work for a WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitch) of 1.72; over seven appearances the spring, he stands at 1.85. Donnelly, again given strong consideration, managed a WHIP of 1.50 last week, just below his average this spring of 1.80, also in seven appearances. Delcarmen, the dark horse candidate who will more likely work out of the bullpen this year as a short reliever, registered a WHIP of just 0.50 last week, and his average now stands at 1.50 in six appearances this spring.

So your leading candidate, surprise, is Romero, who has two saves to his credit in eight years with the Minnesota Twins and most recently the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. In his two starts last week, the only base runner he allowed was when Walker circled the bases; otherwise, he posted a WHIP of 0.50. What is even more encouraging is that, in six appearances and 6-2/3 innings of work, his WHIP is a convincing 0.90. His ERA is also a remarkable 1.35; the home run is the only earned run that he has given up this spring, while Pineiro has given up four and Donnelly and Delcarmen have each given up five. Of course, a pitcher’s WHIP is just one statistic of many that the coaches will need to go through before the team makes its final decision; it should also be noted that having a bad spring does not necessarily translate into a bad summer. However, given what is known about being successful when the game is on the line and that these four-plus weeks of Grapefruit League action will be the sole measuring stick, that single statistic might be very telling as to who may be called on with a one or two-run lead in the ninth inning for the Red Sox in 2007.

A short time ago, we took a quick look back at Japanese ballplayers that have played for the Boston Red Sox. With today being St. Patrick’s Day and the team breaking out the green uniforms for its game at Fort Myers this afternoon, it made us wonder about how much of an Irish influence there has been on the franchise in team history. Of course, Boston has always had a rather large population of Irish descent and it would not be surprising to find that there have been several players with Irish heritage to wear a Red Sox cap, but we were curious as to how many Boston players were native to the Emerald Isle.

As it turns out, according to Baseball-Reference.com, there has been exactly one player born in the Land of Saints and Scholars: the legendary flycatcher Jimmy Walsh. Well, actually, not quite that legendary, as he played just the better part of six seasons with three American League teams and was barely a blip on the radar in Red Sox history. Born in Kallila, Ireland, he began his career in 1912 with the Philadelphia Athletics following a trade from the Baltimore Orioles of the International League. He was picked up by the New York Yankees to begin the 1914 season, but was then traded back to Philadelphia at mid-season; just over two years later, in early September, he found himself traded once again, this time to the Boston Red Sox. After a brief appearance with the club in 1916, Walsh returned to play the entire 1917 season in Boston, but that would mark the end of a rather unremarkable career in which he batted just .232.

The only other individual to have donned a Red Sox uniform was Patsy Donovan, born in Queenstown, Ireland and who played 17 seasons, mostly in the National League, as one of baseball’s top outfielders between 1890 and 1907. His career numbers were much better than what Walsh accomplished: over 2000 hits, a .301 career batting average, and 518 stolen bases, having finished in the top 10 five times in his career and leading the league one year (1900) with 45 for the St. Louis Cardinals. He often served as a player-manager, taking on that role eight times in his career. However, his playing days were behind him when he accepted an offer to manage the Boston Red Sox in 1910. In two seasons at the helm, Donovan compiled a record of 159-147, but the team seemed to take a step backwards during his tenure as they finished fourth and fifth, respectively. As the Red Sox prepared to move from the Huntington Avenue Grounds into a brand-new venue named Fenway Park, Donovan was replaced by player-manager Jack Stahl; Stahl immediately turned the club around, not only winning a franchise single-season record 105 games but the club’s second World Series title.

As a final note: in total, according to Baseball-Reference.com, there have been exactly 40 players born in Ireland to play baseball for a professional major league club. As would be somewhat expected, most played in the nineteenth century, with only nine such players to have donned a uniform in the 20th century. In fact, the last Irish national to play for either an American or National League club was Joe Cleary, born in Cork, Ireland in 1918, who appeared in exactly one game as a relief pitcher for the Washington Senators (later the Minnesota Twins) in 1945. In just one-third of an inning pitched, he gave up seven runs on five hits and three walks, giving him a career ERA of 189.00, and the only out he managed came by way of a strikeout.

13 March 1938 - Ted Williams dons a Red Sox uniform for the first time in an exhibition game, playing right field and batting third in a 6-2 exhibition loss to Cincinnati in Sarasota, FL; Williams is hitless in four at-bats. Born in San Diego on 30 August 1918, the same day that Carl Mays wins two complete game efforts for the Red Sox on the way to Boston’s fourth World Series championship in seven seasons, Williams played high school baseball at Herbert Hoover High School. After graduation, the youngster turned pro and signed on to play for his hometown Padres of the Pacific Coast League; it soon became apparent that he was the real deal and scouts quickly got the word back to American and National League clubs. In the fall of 1937, then-Boston general manager Eddie Collins made the trip west to broker a deal with the Padres for the rights to Williams; the trip paid off not only with the Red Sox sending Dom Dallesandro, Al Niemiec, and cash to the Padres in exchange for the 19-year-old future Hall of Fame player, but Collins’s trip also landed another future Hall of Fame player, Bobby Doerr. After his spring training stint with the Sox in 1938, Williams was farmed out to Minneapolis of the American Association; a year later, he arrived in the majors for good, becoming one of the best hitters over the next two decades and perhaps the greatest ever, in his own words.

Since 1901, there have been 201 instances where a pitcher has lost 20 games or more in a single season. The most recent pitcher to suffer this dubious “honor” was Mike Maroth in 2003, who went 9-21 for the Detroit Tigers ballclub that lost 119 games, one loss shy of the modern record for most losses in a season by one club. Before that, you have to go back to Brian Kingman, who lost 20 games with the Oakland Athletics in 1980.

In the team’s 106-year history, the Boston Red Sox have had exactly ten 20-game losers. The last time it happened, in 1930, the team actually had two 20-game losers in the rotation: Milt Gaston, who led the team with 13 wins against 20 losses, and Jack Russell, who posted a record of 9-20. That club also lost 102 games, the fourth time in six seasons that the club had lost 100 games or more. Gaston and Russell were also two of five pitchers that had lost 20 games or more over the previous six seasons; Red Ruffing, a future Hall of Fame pitcher whose career would blosson after being traded to New York in 1930, lost 25 and 22 games in 1928 and 1929, respectively; Slim Harriss lost 21 games againt 14 wins in 1927; and Howard Ehmke went 9-20 in 1925.

The four other pitchers in Red Sox history to lose 20 games in a season were: “Sad Sam” Jones, in 1919, two years before he would win a career-high 23 games while still with Boston; Joe Harris, who won just two games while collecting 21 losses in 1906; the legendary Cy Young, who lost 21 games in 1906, the third time in his career that he had lost 20 games or more in a season; and Bill Dinneen, who matched his 21 losses with 21 wins in 1902. Dinnenn was also the only pitcher to lose 20 games for a Boston club that had a winning record.

On 07 April 2007 at 7:00 pm, an auction event will be held at the State Street Pavilion within Fenway Park to benefit Mini-Fenway Park, a half-sized replica of Boston’s fabled ballpark, backed by the Boston Red Sox and Major League Baseball. Providing top-quality baseball, softball, and tee ball programs for children ages four to 17, Mini-Fenway will sit on 12 acres of the Blue Hills Reservation in Quincy, just south of Boston directly off Interstate 93 at Exit 8. Join Boston Red Sox Legends as well as Wally the Green Monster at this one-of-a-kind charity event to help support Kids Replica Ballpark, Inc., a tax-exempt, non-profit organization licensed by the Boston Red Sox and Major League Baseball.

A ticket to the event entitles the bearer to reserved seating, open bar with beer, wine, and soda (as such, the event is open to those 21 years and older only), dinner buffet, and a deluxe gift bag. The event also includes entertainment and a live auction of the Massachusetts Special Fenway Park License Plates, which will begin at 8:30 PM. Low-number plates, from 1 to 99, and several special Red Sox numbers and years, including 406, Ted Williams’s batting average in 1941, and 1489, the original four numbers retired by the team, can be bid on at Red Sox.com up until 11:00 PM on the day of the event. All the proceeds go to the non-profit (c) (3) organization dedicating itself to providing outlets for kids to deepen their passion for baseball!

Fans can always purchase their own special-numbered Massachusetts Fenway Park License Plate, if available, at RedSox.com. For more information on mini-Fenway Park, please visit the Mini-Fenway Park overview page at RedSox.com. If you have any further questions, please contact Rick Iaccobucci at 617.471.3332 or visit the Mini-Fenway Park blog.

Growing up in the shadows of Boston, it’s not surprising that writer Robert Sullivan, who has been published in TIME, Sports Illustrated, and LIFE, among others, became a Red Sox fan. His first exposure to its mystical aura came in 1960, when his father took him and his older brother to Fenway Park, with the main purpose of being able to see the legendary Ted Williams play in what would be his last season. Years later, he continues to align his loyalty towards the Boston nine but he must do so behind enemy lines, since he lives in Westchester County, New York, or, as the back cover of the book reads: “…in the backyard and too often in the shadow of the Yankees.”

Our Red Sox: A Story of Family, Friends, and Fenway obviously touches a lot on Boston’s successful 2004 campaign, but the main focus of the book is what it has meant to Sullivan, his family, and his friends to live through the agony and ecstacy of wearing that spoked “B” on your cap and rooting for a team that year after year had you wondering: What if…. Sullivan first tells of his father who, like many others, had often stated: “I hope that they win it in my lifetime.” (For “Artie” Sullivan, that would not happen, unfortunately, but he would take his intense loyalty to Ted Williams, “a class guy,” to the end.) He speaks to his membership with the Benevolent Loyal Order of Honorable and Ancient Red Sox Diehard Sufferers (BLOHARDS) of New York, founded years before Red Sox Nation came to fruition, as he quietly roots for his team from afar. He also talks of doing everything that he can to pass on that love to his children, errant foul balls at a Lowell Spinners game, Lowell being the Single A affiliate of Boston, and the horrific sight of finding the unfamiliar sight of Yankee blue all around him in Westchester aside. Of course, the book would not be complete without speaking the suffering endured by Sox fans after witnessing the horrific end to the 2003 campaign at the hands of those very Yankees, setting up what would be a memorable 2004 season in which the collective weight of he and other Red Sox fans would be lifted.

In short, Sullivan’s book is a heart-warming tale that stretches across generations of star-crossed Red Sox fans, some who have waited exactly a lifetime to see Boston win that elusive championship; it’s a story that any baseball fan will enjoy, no matter whose cap you wear.