As the Boston Red Sox head to Japan to play the first two games of its 2008 regular season schedule in Tokyo against the Oakland Athletics, it is interesting to note that, as well as having had Japanese players like Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima play for Boston, there have been several non-Japanese players with past Red Sox teams that have also logged time with a Far East baseball club.. Perhaps the most well-known of these players is former outfielder and recent Red Sox Hall of Fame inductee Mike Greenwell, who signed on to play with the Hanshin Tigers in 1997 after twelve seasons with Boston. However, “the Gator” unexpectedly left the team during spring training while claiming an undiagnosed back injury, abruptly flew back to the United States, then returned to Japan and rejoined the team in late April. He finally played his first Japanese professional game in early May but, after fracturing his foot with a foul tip, announced his official retirement from baseball after batting .231 in just seven games with the club.[1]

Outfielder Reggie Smith was another former Red Sox great who later played in Japan, though his move to Japan came ten years after he departed Boston. After playing his final season in the majors with the San Francisco Giants in 1982, Smith was lured to Japan to play for the Yomiuri Giants; however, his personality and demeanor immediately clashed with the expectations of the Japanese fans and the media with regards to the norm for a baseball player. After injuring his knee early in the 1983 season, he was dubbed “Million-Dollar Bench-Warmer” by the Japanese media as he sat for two months nursing the injury; he also earned another less-honorable nickname, the “Giant Human Fan,” for striking out too often. Despite this, in just 263 at-bats, he managed a batting average of .285 with 28 home runs, a .409 on-base percentage, and a .609 slugging percentage.[2]

One other more-recent Boston player who donned spikes in the Land of the Rising Sun was Gabe Kapler who, lured by a lucrative contract offer, departed the Red Sox a month after the team won the World Series in 2004 and joined the Yomiuri club. However, after batting just .153 (17-for-111) with three home runs and six RBI in 38 games with the Giants, the team put the veteran outfielder on waivers and Kapler returned to the Red Sox in June of 2005. In addition, other non-Japanese players who have worn both a Boston uniform as well as one for a Japanese club include: John Wasdin, who played for the Red Sox between 1997 and 2000, then signed for one season with Yomiuri in 2002; Larry Parrish, who played a half-season with the Sox in 1988, then played a season each with the Yakult Swallows (1989) and Hanshin (1990); Kip Gross, who played five seasons in Japan for the Nippon Ham Fighters (1994-1998), then returned to the United States to play for Boston for one season (1999); and Benny Agbayani, who also played 13 games for Boston in 2002 and has played the last four seasons for the Chiba Lotte Marines (2004-2007).

[1] Mike Greenwell - BR Bullpen
[2] Reggie Smith - BR Bullpen

Tags: Boston Red Sox, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hideki Okajima, Mike Greenwell, Reggie Smith

Stuffy McInnis enjoyed a long baseball career in the early part of the 20th century; between 1909 and 1927, the Gloucester, Massachusetts native played for six teams, including the Boston Red Sox between 1918 and 1921, and was part of five World Series champions. At the plate, he finished with a .307 batting average, batting over .300 12 times in 19 seasons, and his 2,405 career hits places him just inside the top 100 all-time through the 2007 season. He also finished third all-time in sacrifice hits for a career with 383, one of only 11 players in MLB history with at least 300, and fanned only 189 times in 6,667 at-bats between 1913 and 1927, a rate of 35.3 at-bats per strikeout, ninth all-time. With Boston, McInnis batted .296 with 594 hits and only 49 strikeouts in 2,006 at-bats.

McInnis was also known a great defensive player. He originally broke in as a shortstop, but ultimately moved to first base after a few seasons. In a time known as the “dead-ball” era, first base was a key defensive position and McInnis became part of Connie Mack’s “$100,000 infield” with the Philadelphia Athletics; teaming with second baseman Eddie Collins, third baseman Frank Baker and shortstop Jack Barry between 1911 and 1914, the team won World Series titles in 1911 and 1914 and an American League pennant in 1913. In 1921, his fourth and final season with Boston, McInnis set a record for his position with only one error in 1,651 chances, good for a .999 fielding percentage. He also went a stretch of 163 games between 31 May 1921 and 02 June 1922 without making an error, the first 119 games as a Boston player while spending the latter season with the Cleveland Indians.

Those records stood until 2007 when current Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis managed to go the entire year without making a single error in 1080 chances, the only player in the league to end the regular season with a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage. Youkilis also broke McInnis’s consecutive errorless games streak by a Red Sox first baseman when he lodged his 120th mistake-free contest on 25 June 2007. It should be noted that the streak continues; entering the 2008 season, he has now played 190 straight error-free games at first, a new American League record and three shy of the major league record set by former Gold Glove winner Steve Garvey.

Though numbers have been retired by teams since 1939, when the New York Yankees retired Lou Gehrig’s number 4, it wasn’t until the 1970s that teams began to commonly retire uniform numbers of past players. There are no general guidelines written to determine whether or not a player’s number should be retired, so each team is left to decide its own policy for honoring past performers. In Boston, the only two requirements that must be met by a former player are as follows: (1) a minimum of ten years with the organization, and (2) election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Originally, there was also a third requirement: a player had to finish his career with the Red Sox. However, this requirement was waived in order to allow Carlton Fisk, who had finished the latter half of his storied career with the Chicago White Sox, to be so honored.

Of the thousands of players that have donned a Boston uniform in the 108-year history of the team, only 29 players meet the minimum ten-year requirement and, of these players, only seven have been elected to the Hall of Fame. Five of these players already have their numbers retired by the team: Bobby Doerr (1), Joe Cronin (4), Carl Yastrzemski (8), Ted Williams (9), and Fisk (27).[1] The other two players eligible are outfielder Harry Hooper and third baseman Wade Boggs. Hooper’s absence is explained by the fact that he played for Boston between 1909 and 1920 at a time when the Red Sox did not issue uniform numbers; in fact, it wasn’t until 1931 that the Sox assigned uniform numbers, two years after the Yankees became the first to do so. Boggs’ absence is not as clear, as he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005, one year after being inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame. No announcement has been made to this point as to when the Sox would retire his uniform number (26).

There are two other likely future candidates. The first is former outfielder Jim Rice (14), who fell just short of election into the Hall of Fame in January on his 14th ballot; he will have one more opportunity to gain induction next year and chances are very good that 2009 will finally be his year. It is possible that, were this to happen, that both Rice and Boggs would be honored together sometime during next season. The other is former pitcher Roger Clemens (21), who appeared to be a lock for Hall of Fame induction on his first ballot until recent allegations of drug use to enhance performance on the field soiled his candidacy. Should he remain retired, he would first be eligible for election in 2013, the earliest that the Red Sox would consider adding his number to the honor roll.

[1] The number 42 has also been retired by Boston as well as the rest of Major League Baseball in recognition of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American major league baseball player of the modern baseball era.

As Red Sox players gather in Fort Myers to begin spring training and prepare to defend the team’s 2007 World Series championship, it is a far cry from the very first Boston team pre-season. American League president Ban Johnson had only awarded a franchise in his upstart league to Boston in early January 1901 to Charles Somers and the season was slated to start just over three months later in Baltimore. Looking to directly compete against the well-established National League in Boston, franchise Somers and Johnson spent the first two months of the club’s existence putting together a team and signed Jimmy Collins, who had played for the Boston NL franchise only last season, to manage the club and play third base. Johnson also managed to lure Collins’ teammate, outfielder Chick Stahl, and another big-name National League star, Cy Young, into the fold.

With a roster in place, the team left South Station in Boston on 28 March and headed south to begin practice at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville; by coincidence, the “Americans” were on the same train carrying the “Nationals” from Boston, who continued on to their training facility in Norfolk. Unlike major league players today that spend a good percentage of the off-season working out in order to enter camp in near-peak physical form, the stars of yesteryear needed every moment of spring training to prepare for the long season and this remained true for many decades. For Boston’s first training camp, the standards of the day were followed; mornings were spent by the players taking practice at the plate and in the field, while the afternoons were devoted to long hikes in full uniform to build endurance. After less than a week of conditioning, the new club squared off in an exhibition against the squad from the local university on 05 April and soundly defeated the collegians by a score of 13-0. Unfortunately, the game was followed by a week of rain that made practice near impossible, as there were no field houses or indoor batting cages at the team’s convenience. The team managed only a few more practices before finally breaking camp and heading back north to Baltimore, where they would play the first game in franchise history on 26 April 1901 and lose, 10-6.

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

Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis strung together 135 errorless games and 1,094 errorless innings at first base during the 2007 regular season for a fielding percentage of 1.000, a feat of perfection that has been duplicated only once before in major league history. He has also played 190 consecutive errorless games in the regular season at first base, three shy of Steve Garvey’s major league record, and has easily surpassed the old Red Sox record (120 games by Stuffy McInnis) and American League record (178 games by Mike Hegan). For his efforts, American League managers and coaches last week honored the four-year veteran his first Rawlings Gold Glove award, one year after making the full-time switch from the third base position where he was raised as a professional player. He is the first Red Sox player to earn the honor since teammate Jason Varitek won the honor at the catcher’s position in 2005 and only the second Red Sox first baseman to be recognized, the other being George Scott, who won it three times between 1967 and 1971.

Since the awards were first handed out in 1957, 16 Red Sox players have captured the honor a total of 36 times. The first year the awards were given, only one award was made for both leagues, and Frank Malzone won the inaugural honor at third base. Five Boston players have won the award multiple times, with former outfielder Dwight Evans holding the team record with eight Gold Gloves won between 1976 and 1985 and Carl Yastrzemski capturing seven in his 23 seasons with the club. Nine times, the Red Sox have had more than one honoree in the same season; twice they have had three. Yastrzemski, Scott, and outfielder Reggie Smith all won at their positions in 1968 and Evans, outfielder Fred Lynn, and shortstop Rick Burleson each capture the honor in 1979. The last time the Sox had more than one winner in a single season came in 1990, when pitcher Mike Boddicker, the only Boston player to ever win a Gold Glove as a pitcher, and outfielder Ellis Burks both won. Gold Gloves have been at a premium for Boston players since averaging better than one per season between 1957 and 1985; catcher Tony Pena in 1991 had been the last Red Sox player to capture the defensive honor before Varitek ended a 14-year drought in 2005, giving the team a total of just five awards in the last 22 seasons.

With the Boston Red Sox facing elimination from the American League Championship Series, down three games to one to the Cleveland Indians, Red Sox fans can take solace in the fact that Boston has a recent history of coming back to win when facing early deficits in playoff series. In 1999, the club faced quick elimination from post-season play when they fell behind two games to none in a best-of-five divisional series with the Indians, but the Sox bounced back with two wins at home and won the series finale 12-8 behind two home runs from Troy O’Leary and a memorable relief effort from Pedro Martinez. Four years later in 2003, Boston also fell behind the Oakland Athletics 2-0 in their divisional match-up, but two wins at Fenway Park sent the series back west for the finale, where a three-run home run by Manny Ramirez, seven strong innings from Martinez, and a save by Derek Lowe gave Boston a 4-3 win in the deciding game.

Boston is also one of ten teams in post-season history to climb back from a 3-1 series deficit to win the series.[1] In 1986, the Sox were one out away from losing to the California Angels in the American League Championship Series when Dave Henderson’s two-run home run to left field at Angel Stadium gave Boston a temporary one-run cushion; the Red Sox would eventually win the game 7-6 in extra innings to force the series back to the East Coast. There, perhaps still stunned by the turn of events in Game Five, the Angels easily crumbled under the sodium lights at Fenway Park as Boston won Game Six 10-4 and then took Game Seven 8-1 behind a strong effort by Roger Clemens and home runs by Dwight Evans and Jim Rice to win the pennant. Boston also accomplished the same feat 18 years later in one of the most memorable comebacks in league history. Against the New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series, the Red Sox found themselves down three games to none after getting trounced 19-8 in Game Three at Fenway Park, but Boston won two extra-inning affairs in Games Four and Five to send the series back to New York. After winning Game Six to force a winner-take-all finale, the Red Sox completed the first-ever comeback from a 3-0 post-season series deficit in Major League Baseball with an easy 10-3 win over a shell-shocked New York ball club, with former Boston outfielder Johnny Damon hitting two home runs and driving home six in the effort.

[1] Hanging by a thread. MLB.com, 17 October 2007.

On Saturday night, Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz, making just his second career major league start, became the 17th player and first rookie in franchise history to toss a no-hitter as he held the Baltimore Orioles to just three walks while striking out nine on 115 pitches in a 10-0 Boston win. It was the first no-hitter thrown by a Boston pitcher since Derek Lowe no-hit Tampa Bay at Fenway Park back in April 2002, one year after Hideo Nomo threw his second career no-hitter against the Orioles at Camden Yard in April 2001.

The 23-year-old rookie, drafted by the Red Sox in 2005 as compensation for the loss of Pedro Martinez to free agency, also became the third pitcher to throw a no-hitter in either his first or second major league start; his only other start came two weeks ago against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the first game of a day-night doubleheader at Fenway. Buchholz also became the 17th rookie in major league history to throw a no-hitter and the third pitcher to throw a no-hitter this season. It was also the first time that he had thrown more than seven innings in a start for the Boston organization this season; he had thrown seven complete twice with Double-A Portland and once with Triple-A Pawtucket.

Ironically, Boston actually had the opportunity on the last day of the 2006 season to witness a rookie throw a no-hitter in just his second start. Devern Hansack, making his Fenway debut one week after his major league debut in Toronto, went five innings against Baltimore and, despite one walk, had faced the minimum 15 batters while striking out six. Unfortunately, the game was called on account of severe weather after five complete with the Red Sox leading 9-0; due to rule changes made in 1991 by Major League Baseball’s Committee for Statistical Accuracy, Hansack’s effort was not recognized as an official “no-hitter” in the record books since he had thrown fewer than nine no-hit innings.

In team history, only Cy Young and Dutch Leonard have thrown more than one no-hitter for the Red Sox and Young is the only Boston pitcher to throw a perfect game, the first in American League history. Oddly enough, no-hitters have come in bunches for Boston; nine were tossed between Young’s perfect gem in 1904 and Leonard’s second no-no in 1918. After Howard Ehmke no-hit the Athletics in Philadelphia in 1923, no Red Sox pitcher managed another one until 1956 when Mel Parnell threw one at Fenway Park against Chicago. Six years later, Earl Wilson and Bill Monbouquette threw no-hitters within five weeks of each other in 1962 and Dave Morehead threw a no-no against the Indians at home in 1965; it would then be another 36 years before the next Red Sox no-hitter and 37 years before a Red Sox pitcher would toss one in front of the home crowd at Fenway.

As Boston continues to make its push to win the team’s first division title since 1995, a once-comfortable, double-digit lead has shrunk to five games through games played last night. While this may be a cause for concern to some Red Sox fans, records show that in franchise history, Boston has more often than not managed to stay the course and maintain this lead through the end of regular season play. Fifteen times, the Red Sox have held or shared the lead at the end of play on 22 August and gone on to win a division title or the pennant eleven times. The largest lead ever held at this date was a 13-1/2 game divisional lead in 1995, while Boston was tied for the lead in the American League pennant chase in 1967, two years before divisional play began.

Only three times has Boston failed to make the playoffs with a lead this late in the season, all within the remarkable span of five years. In 1974, the Red Sox held a 6-1/2 game lead over the second place Indians and a seven-game lead over the third-place Orioles, but a severe late-season slump put Boston in third-place at the end of the regular season, seven games behind Baltimore. Three years later, Boston held just a half-game lead over second-place New York. Despite going 26-15 over the remainder of the season, the Red Sox would tie for second with the Orioles as the Yankees went 28-11 over that same stretch to win the division by 2-1/2 games.

In 1978, the Sox owned a seven-game lead over the second-place Milwaukee Brewers and a 7-1/2 game lead over the third-place Yankees, but another collapse, marked by the infamous “Boston Massacre” in early September, dropped Boston as far as 3-1/2 games behind New York. An eight-game win streak to end the season put the two teams in a first-place tie, forcing a one-game playoff at Fenway Park. Unfortunately for Boston, thanks in part to light-hitting Bucky Dent’s three-run home run for New York, the visitors prevailed with a 5-4 win, leaving the Red Sox out of the playoff picture.

Only one other time has Boston held a lead at this point in the season and not gone on to win a division title or the pennant, but the Red Sox still made post-season play. In 2005, the club held a 3-1/2 game lead over second-place New York and the lead would get as high as four games on 10 September but, thanks in part to a late-season surge by the Yankees, the two teams would finish with identical 95-67 records. However, New York had won the season series between the two teams 10-9, with the Yankees needing just one win in a season-ending three-game series in Boston to ensure this, thereby giving the Bombers their ninth straight division title. However, the Red Sox would still end up in the post-season as the wild card team.

Former Red Sox pitcher Jack Wilson may not be a name familiar even to die-hard Fenway fanatics and his career hardly made a blip on the radar as a professional ballplayer. In nine big-league seasons, seven with the Red Sox between 1935 and 1941, the University of Portland, Oregon product was 68-72 with a 4.59 ERA and 590 strikeouts. His best season, arguably, came in 1937 when he went 16-10 with an ERA of 3.70 in 51 appearances, splitting time between the starting rotation and the bullpen as he also saved seven games at a time when this was not a recognized statistic.

He may be better remembered, however, for what he did with his bat rather than with his arm. In September of 1935, Boston trailed Washington 7-0 in the first game of a Labor Day doubleheader at Fenway Park before the team rallied to tie the score at 8-8 after eight innings. Wilson then capped the comeback with a game-winning solo home run to dead center field, his first-ever major league home run, as the home team won by a final of 9-8 in 11 innings. Nearly five years later, pitching in the second game of a June 1940 doubleheader at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Wilson helped his own cause with two home runs as the visitors collected five home runs and 20 total hits en route to a 14-5 rout of the White Sox. These would be the only three home runs out of 15 extra-base hits that Wilson, a .199 hitter, would manage in 413 career at-bats.