30 April 1901 - Following three losses to begin the season, Boston wins its first game in franchise history, besting the Athletics 8-6 in at Columbia Park in Philadelphia. Still years away from being named the Red Sox by owner John I. Taylor, the team had dropped its first two game in club history in Baltimore to the Orioles, then lost the opener in Philadelphia against the Athletics. The next day, Boston watched the home team jump to a quick 6-1 lead against Cy Young, the ace of the team’s pitching staff, but the veteran right hander managed to settle down and keep the Athletics off the scoreboard for the rest of the game. Meanwhile, the visitors slowly chipped away at the lead, but still trailed 6-4 entering the ninth; with two out and outfielder Chick Stahl standing on first, Boston’s last hope rested on the shoulders of first baseman Buck Freeman.

In 1901, baseball was not about home runs. Instead, the best teams were those who could bunt, execute the hit-and-run, and steal bases; this was known then as “inside baseball.” Freeman had these abilities but was also capable of hitting for power, one of the few sluggers in baseball’s dead-ball era. Two years earlier, he had stroked 25 home runs for the Washington Senators of the National League, only two shy of the then-record of 27, and that total would not be surpassed until Babe Ruth would hit 29 with the Red Sox in 1919.

With the team facing a fourth straight defeat to open its inagural season, Freeman found a pitch he liked and surprised the home crowd by sending it long and far over the fence in right field, the first home run hit in team history, to even the score at six. With the score still tied after nine complete, Boston and Philadelphia moved to a tenth inning, marking the first contest in American League history to reach extra frames. The visitors wasted no time putting runs on the board as outfielder Charlie Hemphill singled home one run and Stahl pushed across an insurance run with a sacrifice fly to make it 8-6; Young then returned to the mound in the bottom of the frame to secure not only win number 286 in his career but Boston’s first victory in franchise history.

In team history, the Red Sox have seen 26 different pitchers win at least 20 games in a season at least once in a Boston uniform. The pitcher who holds the franchise record for the most victories in one season is Smoky Joe Wood, who won 34 games in 1912 for the eventual World Series champions; he was one of three pitchers on the 1912 staff, along with Buck O’Brien and Hugh Bedient, to reach the 20-win threshold, as the latter two each won exactly 20 games on a team that set the franchise record for wins in a season (105). Only one other pitcher in team history, Cy Young, won better than 30 games in a season; he accomplished this feat twice, once in Boston’s inagural season of 1901 (33) and then again in 1902 (32). Young also holds the record for the most seasons of 20 or more wins with the Red Sox, having accomplished the feat six times in the eight years that he was part of the starting rotation. After him, there are three pitchers with three seasons of 20 or more wins: Bill Dinneen (1902-1904), Luis Tiant (1973, 1974, 1976), and Roger Clemens (1986, 1987, 1990). Other multiple winners include Babe Ruth, Carl Mays, Boo Ferriss, Jesse Tannehill, Mel Parnell, Wood, Tex Hughson, and Wes Ferrell.

In total, there have been 46 instances where a pitcher won 20 games or more in a season for the Red Sox. Nine times, the starting rotation for Boston has had multiple 20-game winners. Between 1902 and 1904, Dinneen and Young won at least 20 games in each season for the Red Sox and, with Boston pitchers Tom Hughes (20 wins in 1903) and Tannehill (21 wins in 1904) also reaching that plateau, fans were witness to eight instances in three straight seasons that a Sox pitcher accomplished this feat. The most recent instance in which two players on the Red Sox pitching staff won at least 20 games in a single season happened just five years ago in 2002, when Derek Lowe (21) and Pedro Martinez (20) both managed the feat; before that, you have to go back to 1949 to find multiple 20-game winners on the Red Sox pitching staff for one season: Mell Parnell (25) and Ellis Kinder (23). Curiously, there have been ten Boston pitchers in franchise history to fall just one win short of the mark for a single season; of those ten, both Martinez and Howard Ehmke did reach the mark in another season for the Sox. Martinez fell one win shy his first season with the club in 1998 but won 23 the next year, while Ehmke won 19 in 1924, one year after winning 20.

Dick Williams was nothing more than a role player for most of his 13 seasons in the professional ranks, including his last two seasons as a member of the Red Sox in 1963 and 1964, but Dick O’Connell, then an assistant general manager with the club, recognized his potential as a coach and assigned him a role as a player-coach with Boston’s AAA farm club, the Seattle Rainiers, after the 1964 season. However, circumstances led to the Red Sox relocating the affiliate to Toronto and manager Edo Vanni refusing to move with the team, so Williams quickly leapfrogged into the role as manager of the new baseball Maple Leafs. Presented with the opportunity to succeed where his playing career had failed, the young 36-year-old manager guided his team to consecutive Governors’ Cups as champions of the International League. Subsequently, with O’Connell now in charge of the parent club, Williams was offered a contract to take over for a team that, unlike the Maple Leafs, had floundered for the past two seasons, not to mention for the past eight years.

Williams immediately grabbed the attention of his club at spring training in 1967, announcing that Carl Yastrzemski was being stripped of his title as captain and ordering the immortal Ted Williams, in camp as a roving batting instructor, to pack his bags and go home; in other words, he made it clear from day one that there was only one person in command of the ship and that he was resting the success of his young club entirely on his shoulders. With his no-nonsense attitude, Williams was quick to bench players that he felt were not making the effort that they should, be they rookie or veteran ballplayers, and he was quick to tear players apart privately and in public.

His style was unorthodox for a franchise that had become used to coddling star players, recklessly abusing youngsters, and caring little about the results on the field but, with time, Williams got what he wanted from veterans like Yastrzemski as well as some of the younger players like first baseman George Scott and pitcher Jim Lonborg. He also urged O’Connell to make trades for players that he felt would help the club now, like Jerry Adair and Gary Bell. Soon, his efforts translated to success on the field, as the club stayed around .500 for the first half of the season, then took off and won 51 of its remaining 80 games after the All-Star break. Above all, a team that many had felt was destined for another finish in the American League cellar instead celebrated its first American League pennant in over 30 years at the end of the season.

Having managed under a one-year contract for the 1967, Williams was quickly signed to a new three-year deal after the season; however, the magic of 1967 was short-lived and his clubhouse tactics soon backfired against him. Though the second-year manager guided the team to its second winning record in as many seasons, the team finished 17 games behind the pennant-winning Detroit Tigers, disappointing to those who now expected the team to steadily improve, including a revived fan base. What had worked so well for the team one year had failed them the next as the numbers of nearly every key member of the 1967 club slid. Williams also found that he could only push players so far, especially Yastrzemski, who was a favorite of owner Tom Yawkey. 1969 did not fair much better for him and his club and, under pressure from Yawkey, O’Connell was forced to fire Williams with just a handful of games left in the season.

Williams, however, was far from done with managing in baseball. In 1971, Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley hired him to manage his club and the young manager responded by leading his new team to a division title. Over the next two seasons, with players like starting pitchers Catfish Hunter, who won 20-plus games in each season, Vida Blue, and Ken Holtzman along with offensive threat Reggie Jackson, Oakland won consecutive World Series titles, besting the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Mets in 1972 and 1973, respectively. However, due to another falling out with an owner, Williams resigned after three seasons in Oakland. He would then go on to manage in California, Montreal, San Diego, and Seattle before calling it a career after the 1988 season at age 59, winning another pennant with the Padres in 1984 and becoming only the fourth manager at that time to win pennants in both the American and National leagues. In 2006, Williams was elected to the Red Sox Hall of Fame and he has twice been given consideration by the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee but failed to get elected, most recently this past February as he received better than just one-third of the vote.

With two outs in the third inning of tonight’s game versus the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox stroked four consecutive home runs for the first time in franchise history. Manny Ramirez started the fireworks with a shot over the Green Monster at Fenway Park, his second of the season, and J.D. Drew followed with his second round-tripper to the right-field bleachers. Mike Lowell then socked his second of the year, again over the Green Monster, and Jason Varitek completed the feat with a shot into the Monster Seats, his second of the season and of the series with Boston’s American League East rival. All four home runs came off of Yankees rookie pitcher Chase Wright and turned a 3-0 New York advantage into a 4-3 Boston lead.

From the MLB.com release :

The Red Sox became the fifth team in Major League history to hit four home runs in a row. The [Los Angeles] Dodgers did it last September 18th in a key pennant-race game against the Padres to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth inning at Dodger Stadium. Drew, with the Dodgers last year, was also involved in that quartet…. It marked the 10th time in Red Sox history that they’ve hit four home runs in one inning, tying a club record.

Tonight at 5:00 PM, Jeff Moon from FenwayFanatics.com will be part of discussion panel appearing live with Dave Devlin, host of Up On The Monster Radio. The radio show, which will be broadcast on BlogTalkRadio, is an extension of the Up On The Monster web site and message board and dedicated to bringing a point of view on the Boston Red Sox from the fan’s perspective. Also on the program will be Jonathan Singer from SoxProspects.com and Up On The Monster’s own Trotsky. Tonight’s show will include a look back on the most recent series with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Toronto Blue Jays, and the current series with the New York Yankees as well as a preview of tonight’s finale, which will be broadcast nationally on ESPN, and the week ahead, with games schedule against Toronto and New York as well as Boston’s first series with Baltimore.

The goal is to involve the views of the membership of Up On The Monster as well as those from guests of other Red Sox sites, blogs, and message boards, like FenwayFanatics.com, as different points of view are what make for great conversation. In addition to tonight’s broadcast, future shows are schedule for Sunday nights at 9:00 PM on BlogTalkRadio.

19 April 1902 - One hundred five years ago today, the Boston American League franchise took the field at Huntington Avenue Grounds against the Baltimore Orioles (who would later become the New York Yankees) and rallied from three runs down in the ninth to win 7-6 in the first-ever Patriots’ Day home game in team history. The holiday in itself is observed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in honor of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War, fought on that date in 1775; since 1969, Patriots’ Day has been observed on the third Monday in April. The Red Sox have made it a tradition to play a game at Fenway Park on that date every year since 1960, not including scheduled off-days in 1965 and 1967 and games missed due to the players’ strike in 1995,[1] with the start time usually scheduled to coincide with that of the Boston Marathon, giving ticket holders a chance to watch the race at Kenmore Square following the game.

In 1902, however, the holiday was observed as it was every year until 1969 on 19 April; as it fell on a Saturday, Boston decided to take advantage of this opportunity and received permission from the league to open its season four days ahead of every other club in the American League. Records at Retrosheet show that Cy Young, who led the league in wins (33), ERA (1.62), and strikeouts (158) in 1901, was given the ball by manager Jimmy Collins to start the game for Boston, opposed by Tom Hughes, though it does not show who eventually won the game for the home team nor who scored the game-winning run. The following year, the team began the tradition of making the contest a morning baseball game; with a 10:00 AM start time, Boston defeated the Philadelphia Athletics, 9-4.[2]

[1],[2] Patriots’ Day and the Red Sox. Red Sox Connection, retrieved on 18 April 2007.

16 April 1945 - Sixty-two years ago today, four months before V-J Day would mark the end of World War II, a tryout took place at Fenway Park that included three African-American players: Marvin Williams, Sam Jethroe, and Jackie Robinson. At the time, not one team in any major league sport had a minority player on its roster, though pressure was mounting from the press and civil rights groups, who pointed out the fact that young African-Americans were helping the United States and Allied Forces win the war overseas but were not being given the opportunity to prove their worth on the diamond. Unfortunately, there was little chance that the Red Sox front office and ownership were going to be pioneers in righting this wrong. At the conclusion of the practice, promises were made but not one of the three players ever received so much as a form letter; it would be another 14 years before Boston would become the last major league team to integrate, finally bringing a sad chapter in the history of baseball and the franchise to a close.

Today, outfielder Coco Crisp is only one African-American playing for the Red Sox but, if you review the active roster for Boston, Robinson’s impact has brought about diversity and integration in a new way. Of 25 players, the roster also includes two Japanese pitchers, four Puerto Ricans, and five from the Dominican Republic, making it one of the most diverse rosters in major league baseball. That impact is also being felt across baseball; on Opening Day, 15 countries were represented by players on active rosters, making for roughly thirty percent of players at the major league level and with many more being developed in the minor league system.[1] Ironically, after peaking at nearly thirty percent in the middle of the 1970s and ten years after Robinson’s number 42 was officially retired by Major League Baseball, African-Americans now make up only about eight percent of MLB rosters.[2] However, baseball has already started efforts to reverse that trend, with the hope that its annual Jackie Robinson Day, celebrated every 15 April since 2004, will help in those efforts.

[1], [2] All the world’s on baseball’s stage. MLB.com, 13 April 2007.

With a new, no-nonsense manager at the helm and several youngsters in the clubhouse having flown under the radar for a year or two at the major league level while building confidence in their abilities, the 1967 opened with hope but few expectations of grandeur for a club that had suffered for as many years as Boston. After a one-day delay due to cold temperatures and high winds, the Red Sox opened the 1967 season at home with a 5-4 win over the Chicago White Sox, with 24-year-old Jim Lonborg getting credited with the win and Rico Petrocelli driving home four runs with two singles and a home run. However, due in some part to the chillly conditions once again and in others ways to the notion that the club was going through another period of rebuilding its image, only 8,324 brave souls were witness to the team’s debut at Fenway Park that afternoon. The next day, attendance dipped to only 3,607 for the second and final game of the weather-shortened series and, true to the form that Boston fans had come to expect, a five-run top of the ninth by Chicago off Hank Fischer, all unearned, led to a 8-5 loss and a 1-1 start to the season. Two games in and already it appeared as though the odds were not in favor of the young ball club.

Manager Dick Williams and his team then opened its expected week-long road series in New York, with 21-year-old rookie pitcher Billy Rohr given the ball in the opener of a three-game weekend series against future Hall of Fame pitcher Whitey Ford that also marked the home opener for the Yankees. The very first batter of the game, Reggie Smith, hit a solo shot to left to give Boston a quick 1-0 lead. Rohr then went out and surprised everyone by retiring the first ten batters he faced before he issued a walk to Yankees right fielder Bill Robinson in the fourth. Before long, the rookie had gone seven strong and, despite having issued four free passes to first, had still not yielded a hit. In the Boston half of the eighth, Red Sox third baseman Joe Foy hit the team’s second home run of the day off Ford, a two-run shot to give the visitors a more comfortable 3-0 lead with Rohr just six outs away from a no-hitter.

Perhaps the sudden reality of the situation in the dugout shook Boston momentarily in the bottom half of the frame; after Rohr got the legenday Mickey Mantle to fly out to right field, first baseman George Scott misplayed a ground ball for an error and Rohr followed with a walk to give the Yankees men on first and second and only one out. However, Rohr managed to induce a ground ball double play to short to end the threat. In the final frame, now with three outs remaining, Rohr started the inning facing outfielder Tom Tresh, who appeared to nail the first pitch he saw for a sure home run to left field. However, Carl Yastrzemski tracked the ball near perfect and made an acrobatic, leaping catch for out number one. New York center fielder Joe Pepitone then lifted a lazy fly ball to right for the second out. That left only Elston Howard to face, who worked a 2-2 count and then appeared to get frozen on an apparent third strike; however, home plate umpire Carl Drummond called it a ball. The very next pitch was then delivered on Howard’s bat to right field, a clean single to break up the no-hit bid. Rohr would then retire the next batter to preserve the one-hit shut out and the Yankee faithful gave Rohr a standing ovation.

The afterglow of Rohr’s gem was short-lived, however. Boston would drop the next two in New York, including a 7-6, 18-inning affair in the series finale, and then, in a rain-shortened series in Chicago, lose the only game played to drop to 2-4. With the Red Sox back at Fenway for its second series with New York on the young season, fans filled most of Fenway to watch Rohr make his next start, a 6-1 complete game effort to give him a perfect 2-0 record. Boston would take two-of-three from the Yankees to improve to 4-5, and four wins in five games the following week gave the Red Sox an 8-6 record to close out the month of April. It also meant that Boston was just a game behind first-place Detroit in the American League standings, though it meant little given that eight of the league’s ten teams were within 2-1/2 games of first place. In addition, Red Sox fans were still not giving much attention to the team at home; the final game of the month would draw a near-capactiy crowd of nearly 31,500 fans, the day after an 11-10, 15-inning marathon won by the Sox, but the team had averaged less than half-capacity over its first eight games at Fenway Park. At this point, beyond the awe of Rohr’s near-no-hit performance, there had been very little to give fans any idea that 1967 would be that much different than recent history had shown.

09 April 1912 - Ninety-five years ago today, Fenway Park hosts its first-ever baseball contest with the Boston Red Sox defeating the Harvard Crimson 2-0 in an exhibition contest amid snow flurries and near-freezing temperatures. Over the past eleven seasons, the Boston franchise had played each and every one of its home games at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, which had been hastily built between March and April of 1901 after the city had been awarded a franchise in the newly-minted American League. The original capacity of that park was 11,500 people and, as was typical of early ballparks built in urban settings, Huntington had some rather odd dimensions. To the left field foul pole, it was 350 feet; to left center, it was 440 feet. The right field foul pole was a mere 280 feet away, but to center field, a ball had to travel an impossible 530 feet to clear the fences. Oddly enough, when renovations were made in 1908, the center field fence was moved 635 feet from home plate![1]

In June of 1911, then-Red Sox owner John I Taylor announced plans to build a new ballpark in the Fenway section of Boston on a plot owned by the Fenway Realty company, of which the Taylors were substantial stockholders. The announcement came at a time when baseball was experiencing a building boom of new ballparks like Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Comisky Park in Chicago, and the Polo Grounds in New York. Ground was broken in September that same year on land that as recently as the late nineteenth century had been nothing more than a swampy saltwater marsh and the Red Sox played their last game at the old ballpark on 07 October, an 8-1 win over the Washington Senators.

The new ballpark was designed by Osborn Engineering with a capacity of 35,000 seats and construction was overseen by James McLaughlin; in total, the new ballpark cost $650,000 to build.[2] Following the exhibition win, Boston’s initial opener was suppose to take place on 18 April against New York, but steady rains for two straight days delayed the first regular season until 20 April, with the Red Sox defeating the Highlanders 7-6 in 11 innings. Under player-manager Jack Stahl, Boston would go on to win 105 games in 1912 and the World Series championship, besting the New York Giants four games to three.

[1], [2] Ballparks by Munsey and Suppes.

06 April 1971 – Lou Merloni, a former utility infielder for the Boston Red Sox, is born in the backyard of his future employer in Framingham, MA. Considered one of the original members of the “Dirt Dogs” in recognition of his hard-nosed style of play, the former Providence College player signed with the Red Sox in 1993 after being selected in the tenth round of that year’s draft, the same draft in which former Boston Red Sox player Trot Nixon was selected in the first round. After making his way through Boston’s farm system, he finally made his major league debut in May of 1998, appearing in 39 games and batting .281; over his career with the Sox, he appeared in 273 games and batted .269 with nine home runs and 78 RBI. He also appeared in the 1999 post-season with Boston and batted .333 in six plate appearances in Boston’s Division Series win over the Cleveland Indians, scoring one run and driving in another.

Unfortunately for Merloni, who split his time almost equally between second, third, and short with the Red Sox, he often found himself being optioned to Boston’s Triple-A Pawtucket, RI affiliate during his first few seasons with the team and made several hour-long trips between the two New England cities; one Boston writer would later refer to that pilgrimage, which is almost a straight shot on Interstate Route 95, as the “Lou Merloni shuttle.”[1] Still, the Fenway faithful were always happy to see him in the home team lineup, with the crowds calling out his name in one long, drawn-out chorus.

Twice, his tenure with Boston was interrupted with stints for other clubs. Following the 1999 season, the Yokohama Bays Stars of the Japan Central League purchased Merloni from Boston; however, after just a few months in the Far East, he re-signed with the Sox as a free agent midway through the 2000 season. Then, in March of 2003, Merloni was signed off waivers by San Diego but played in just 65 games before getting traded back to the Red Sox near the waiver deadline in August. Since leaving Boston via free agency after that season, Merloni has played twice for Cleveland in 2004 and 2006 with a stop in Los Angeles for the Angels in 2005 but, since 2005, has appeared in just 14 games at the major league level. At present, he is assigned to the Oakland Athletics’ minor league camp.

[1] Youkilis is ready to start the Show. Boston.com, 16 February 2006.