17 December 2007 - On this day 100 years ago, the Red Sox’ team name becomes official in an announcement by club owner John I. Taylor. Before that, the team had no true identity other than that of being the American League representative in Boston; in fact, most teams of that era did not have true names other than what creative sportswriters deemed necessary to make good copy. Though Bill Nowlin has shown that the name most often used by columnists was either the “Bostons” or the “Americans” (and not the Pilgrims, as some historic references have falsely reported), the truth was that there was no official nickname used by the team.

So how was Red Sox chosen by Taylor? Following the 1907 season, the National League representative in Boston, managed by Fred Tenney, had switched from wearing red stockings to white on the belief by Tenney that the red dye would cause infection if a player was spiked in the course of action on the ball field. Taylor took note of this and decided to switch his team from wearing uniforms trimmed in pale blue to bright, fire-engine red, though it should be noted that the “Nationals” had worn a dark, deep red. He also took an old nickname that had been used for the NL club, the Red Stockings, and shortened it to simply Red Sox. To emphasize the name, on the center of the jersey, he had a large red sock shown with the name Boston in white letters. That design just lasted one season and the uniforms switched back to read as they had in 1907, with just the name Boston on the front of the jersey, but the name stuck with fans and the media long enough to become synonymous with the identity of the team.

Babe Ruth can easily be credited as baseball’s first true power hitter; after socking 29 home runs in 1919 with the Boston Red Sox to best the single-season record for baseball that had stood for 34 years, he shattered his own mark the next season with 54 home runs for his new team, the New York Yankees. His influence turned the focus of the game from speed to power that is still prevalent today. So, how is a power hitter like Ruth measured? Beyond hitting home runs, one of the original statistical yardsticks used to do this was slugging percentage, which measures the average number of total bases per at-bat; the theory was that players that hit for power, like Ruth, would tend to hit more doubles, triples, and home runs. Later, baseball analysts began to combined a player’s slugging percentage with his on-base percentage, which measures a players ability to get on base, to create a statistic known as OPS, or “on-base plus slugging,” to measure a player’s overall offensive production. One other gauge of a player’s power abilities, though used infrequently, is the number of at-bats between home runs; the lower this number, the more frequently a player circles the bases.

Using these three statistical categories to gauge the worth of a player in terms of power, we can perform a simple, straightforward analysis to assess the top power hitters in Red Sox franchise history. To assist us, we turn to Baseball-Reference.com[1] and review the career batting leaders in each category, based on players who made a minimum of 2000 plate appearances in a Boston uniform through the 2007 season. To qualify, a player must appear in the top ten of any one of the three categories. He is then ranked by a score determined from adding his position in each category together; the lower the score, the higher the rank. While this may not be the most accurate gauge of who ranks where, it does give us insight into who may be the top sluggers in franchise history.

In ascending order, the top ten players are as follows:

Rank  Player             PA     SLG   OPS   AB/HR   Score
----  -----------------  ----   ---   ---   -----   -----
1     Ted Williams       9791   1     1     3       5
2     David Ortiz        3244   2     3     1       6
3     Jimmie Foxx        3934   3     2     3       8
4     Manny Ramirez      4257   4     4     2       10
5     Mo Vaughn          4452   6     5     5       16
6     Nomar Garciaparra  4345   5     6     11      22
7     Vern Stephens      2872   9     11    8       28
8     Jim Rice           9058   8     12    10      30
9     Fred Lynn          3513   7     7     17      31
10    Brian Daubach      2033   10    21    9       40

Just missing the cut was Tony Conigliaro, who finished one point behind Daubach. Not surprisingly, none of these players played in the “Dead Ball” era; former Boston outfielder Tris Speaker was ranked highest among players who played in the first part of the 20th century, finishing eighth in OPS and 13th in SLG but out of the top 50 in terms of AB/HR.

[1] Boston Red Sox Batting Leaders - Baseball-Reference.com

His team may not have won the World Series in 1967, but rookie manager Dick Williams did the “Impossible” and quickly turned a Red Sox club that had suffered eight straight losing seasons into pennant winners for the first time in 21 years. Some would argue that it was the spark that turned the franchise around into the success that it is today. Williams’ career would include stops in Boston as well as Oakland, California, Montreal, San Diego, and Seattle, where he combined for two pennants, two World Series titles, and a .520 career winning percentage. For that, the Veterans Committee at the Baseball Hall of Fame on Monday elected Williams to join the likes of former Red Sox player-manager Joe Cronin as well as other famous baseball managers like Sparky Anderson and Connie Mack as part of the Hall of Fame Class of 2008, set to be inducted next July in Cooperstown, NY.

Williams, who had proved himself as manager at Boston Triple-A affiliate Toronto by winning consecutive Governors’ Cups in 1965 and 1966, took over a Boston club that had won just 72 games in 1966, finishing next-to-last ahead of a befallen New York Yankees club, and predicted: “We’ll win more games than we’ll lose.” Stocked with both raw young talent and veteran players, neither with whom he played favorites, the team won 92 games and the 1967 American League Pennant on the last day of the season as left fielder Carl Yastrzemski won the batting Triple Crown and Jim Lonborg posted a career-best 22 wins. Five years later, Williams won the first of two consecutive World Series titles with the Oakland Athletics and tasted success again in 1984 with San Diego winning its first National League pennant.

In 2006, Williams was elected to the Red Sox Hall of Fame and had twice previously been given consideration by the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee for induction, most recently this past February. However, after failing to elect any candidates since 2001, the Hall of Fame Board of Directors voted to restructure the Committee on Baseball Veterans and its procedures for electing long-retired players, managers, umpires, and executives. Candidates are now considered by a 16-member electorate of Hall of Fame members, current and former executives, and veteran media members. Williams was named on 13 of 16 ballots and will be enshrined along with another former manager, Billy Southworth, and former baseball executives Barney Dreyfuss, Bowie Kuhn, and Walter O’Malley.