15 May 1999 - On this day nine years ago, Red Sox ownership, led by CEO John Harrington, announces plans to replace 87-year-old Fenway Park with a brand-new complex that features near-identical dimensions across Yawkey Way by 2003; however, plans never got off the ground and new ownership announced the abandonment of any such plan in 2005. The design was to have followed in the spirit of retro-style ballparks like Camden Yards in Baltimore and Jacobs Field in Cleveland, while the old ballpark would have seen new development built in place of what is now center field, the bleachers, and first-base side of the ballpark. However, plans also including turning part of the old Fenway Park into a baseball museum and park. The new plan would also have allowed construction of the new park to take place as the Red Sox played their final games in its historic ball yard.
Ownership claimed that with the current structure, the Red Sox would be unable to stay competitive as player salaries increased; the new stadium, which would be financed by the team, would include 10,000 more seats including luxury boxes and premium seats. All the team asked in return from the state was improvement to the local infrastructure, such as the building of parking garages and improved transportation. However, city, county, and state legislators balked at the idea and, after the sale of the team by the JR Yawkey ownership group in 2002, the idea was scraped as the new ownership, led by John Henry, Tom Werner, and Larry Lucchino, instead poured money into renovations, such as expanded concourses, added bathroom facilities and concessions, and innovations such as the Monster Seats and Conigliaro’s corner that have added close to 6,000 seats to bring the park’s present capacity to just under 40,000. In March of 2005, all plans for a new facility in the foreseeable future were abandoned as the club announced their commitment to remain at Fenway.
Image of New Fenway Park courtesy of Ballparks.com
Tags: Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park
01 April 1998 - On this day ten years ago, Pedro Martinez makes his debut with the Boston Red Sox, strikes out 11 batters, and allows only three hits in a 2-0 win over the Athletics in Oakland. Martinez, who had pitched the previous four seasons in Montreal, had signed as a free agent with Boston over the off-season in a deal that guaranteed six years and $72.7 million, with a club option for a seventh season at $17.5 million. The previous season, he had posted 17 wins in 31 starts with a 1.90 ERA and 305 strikeouts, easily winning the National League Cy Young award. With the game starting late on the West Coast at 10:40 PM ET, Martinez set down the first eleven batters he faced before giving up a line-drive single to left field to Ben Grieve. The only real threat came in the seventh when back-to-back singles followed by a sacrifice bunt put runners on second and third with one out; however, facing his last two batters of the night, Martinez struck out catcher A.J. Hinch and center fielder Jason McDonald to keep Oakland off the board. Darren Bragg provided the only run the Red Sox would need in the fifth with a sacrifice fly to right that scored Darren Lewis, and John Valentin added an insurance run in the seventh with a sac fly that plated Bragg.
Martinez would go on to finish second in the American League Cy Young vote that season behind former Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens, posting a 19-7 record with a 2.89 ERA and 251 strikeouts in 33 starts. The following year, he joined Randy Johnson as the first pitchers to win a Cy Young award in both leagues, the first of two consecutive awards for the ace. In seven seasons with Boston, Martinez would win 117 games against 37 losses, post a 2.52 ERA, and strike out 1683 batters in nearly 1400 innings of work. He would also be part of the club in 2004 that won Boston’s first World Series championship in 86 years, winning Game Three of the series against the St. Louis Cardinals with seven scoreless innings of work. Through 2007, his won-loss percentage of .760 puts him first in franchise history, his win total puts him tied for sixth, and his strikeout total puts him second behind Clemens, though just three ahead of current Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield.
Tags: Boston Red Sox, John Valentin, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens
17 March 1971 - On this day thirty-seven years ago, former Boston Red Sox third baseman and American League batting champion Bill Mueller is born in Maryland Heights, MO. Drafted by San Francisco in 1993, Mueller signed as a free agent with the Red Sox in January of 2003 and hit .326 over 146 games in his first season with Boston, good enough to win the AL batting title over teammate Manny Ramirez. The switch-hitting Mueller also became the first player in history to hit grand slams from both sides of the plate in one game on 29 July of that season in a 14-7 win over the Rangers in Texas, and he set career-highs with 45 doubles and 19 home runs.
The next season, Mueller missed significant time due to injury between mid-May and early July, limiting him to just 110 games, and his average dropped to .283; even so, he was part of some memorable moments in Boston’s championship run in 2004. In late July, his walk-off home run against the Yankees at Fenway Park ended a see-saw affair that witnessed Boston catcher Jason Varitek and New York third baseman Alex Rodriguez square off after pitcher Bronson Arroyo hit Rodriguez with a pitch. Then, with Boston down to its last three outs of the AL Championship Series against New York, Mueller’s single up the middle off Yankees closer Mariano Rivera, following Dave Roberts’ infamous steal of second base, tied the score at four; David Ortiz would eventually win the game with a walk-off home run three innings later. Overall, Mueller would bat .321 in the 2004 post-season, including .429 in the World Series with two RBI, as Boston won its first world championship in 86 years.
Mueller remained for one more season with the Red Sox, playing in 150 games and batting .295 in 2005, before leaving Boston as a free agent and signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers. However, his career would soon end; he appeared in just 35 games for Los Angeles before a knee injury, the third of his career, ended his season in early May. Mueller would eventually retire after the 2006 season to join the front office of the Dodgers.
Tags: Bill Mueller, Boston Red Sox, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek
10 March 1986 - On this day twenty-two years ago, former Red Sox second baseman Bobby Doerr, along with catcher Ernie Lombardi, are elected by the Veterans Committee to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The nine-time American League All-Star, who never received greater than 25% of the vote from the Baseball Writers Association of America, gains entrance thanks to heavy lobbying by former teammate Ted Williams, who referred to Doerr as “the silent captain of the Red Sox.” He also holds the distinction of being the only player in franchise history to hit for the cycle twice, once in May of 1944 and nearly three years later to the day in May of 1947. Picked up on the same scouting trip that former Boston general manager Eddie Collins discovered Williams, Doerr played 14 seasons in Boston and averaged .288 at the plate, though he never batted below .270 in any season except for his shortened rookie campaign. Three times, he hit better than .300, batting .325 in 1944 while also leading the league with a slugging percentage of .528.
He proved valuable in the field as well, making an average of just under 140 starts at second base each season, the only position he ever played in his major league career; at one point, Doerr held the American League record for handling 414 consecutive chances without an error. His all-around hustle and determination earned Doerr five starts in nine All-Star appearances between 1941 and 1951. He missed one season due to World War II in 1945; the following season, along with Williams, shortstop Johnny Pesky, and center fielder Dom DiMaggio, he returned to help lead his club to its first American League pennant in 28 years, batting .271 with 18 home runs and 116 RBI. Doerr collected his 2,000 hit in July of 1951 and retired a month later due to severe sacroiliac pain that put a premature end to his career, although Doerr later returned to baseball as a coach for Boston in the late 1960s. Two years after gaining election to the Hall of Fame, Doerr became just the third former Boston player to have his number (1) retired by the Red Sox.
[1] National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
03 March 1950 - Fifty-eight years ago today, former Boston Red Sox manager Grady Little is born in Abilene, TX. Selected by the Atlanta Braves in the 1968 baseball draft, Little never made it to the big leagues, spending five seasons as a minor league catcher in the Atlanta and New York Yankees organization. He eventually began managing at the minor league level from 1980 through 1995, then worked as a coach for the San Diego Padres, Boston, and Cleveland Indians between 1996 and 2001. In March of 2002, with new ownership at the helm, the Red Sox hired Little to replace interim manager Mike Cubbage as the team’s new manager, less than a month before the season opener. In Little’s first-ever season as a manager, the team jumped out the gate, winning 27 of the first 36 games played, and finished second to the Yankees in the American League East with a respectable 93-69 record. The next season, Grady’s team improved to 95-67; though Boston again finished behind New York, the club secured the wild card spot and faced the Oakland Athletics in the divisional round. The Red Sox quickly fell behind with two losses to begin the series but won the next two at home in Fenway Park, then completed the comeback with an impressive 4-3 win in Oakland to set up a rematch of the 1999 American League Championship Series with the Yankees.
After a back-and-forth series between the division rivals, the pennant came down to a seventh game; the winner would advance to the World Series. Boston jumped to an early 4-0 lead and led 5-2 going into the bottom half of the eighth inning at Yankee Stadium; up to that point, Red Sox starter Pedro Martinez had pitched brilliantly for the visitors, allowing just two runs on six hits, with eight strikeouts also to his credit. Expecting Little to bring in reliever Mike Timlin or Alan Embree, Boston fans were surprised when he sent Martinez, who had already thrown over 100 pitches, back out to the mound, and the three-time Cy Young winner secured the first out by inducing a pop-up to short. However, Martinez quickly allowed two runs on three straight hits and, despite the bullpen having surrendered only two runs in 31 innings of post-season play, Little elected to keep the tiring pitcher out on the hill. The result was another hit that tied the score and, three innings later, Aaron Boone’s walk-off home run down the left field line on the first pitch from Tim Wakefield completed the comeback by New York. Despite having won 188 games over two seasons managing the local nine and the possibility that Martinez had persuaded his manager to leave him in the game, Little instantly became the scapegoat in the eyes of angry Boston fans and the media for his Game Seven blunder and, less than two weeks later, was fired as Red Sox manager.
25 February 1933 - Seventy-five years ago today, in the midst of the Great Depression, Bob Quinn sells the Red Sox franchise to Thomas Austin Yawkey, who four days earlier had celebrated his 30th birthday. Quinn had owned the franchise since 1923 and the team had suffered considerably under his ownership; his clubs had averaged 99 loses against only 54 wins and suffered five seasons with 100 or more losses in ten years. In fact, since going 75-51 in the war-shortened 1918 campaign and winning the club’s fourth World Series in seven years, Boston had suffered 14 consecutive losing seasons under Quinn and previous owner Harry Frazee.
In 1932, the team had won just 43 games, fewest in team history, while ending up on the losing end of the score 111 times. Not only was Quinn’s ballclub suffering, Fenway Park had been left to deteriorate as Quinn’s debts mounted. At the same time, Yawkey, who had been born into wealth and whose uncle (and adoptive father) had once owned the Detroit Tigers, was looking to buy a baseball team. He turned down an offer to purchase a minor league team and refused another to buy half of the Brooklyn Dodgers; for him, it was all or nothing. He eventually heard through one of his sources that the Red Sox were available and quickly got his lawyers busy looking into the opportunity. By early 1933, talks were underway and, in the end, Quinn agrees to sell both the team and the park to Yawkey to the tune of $1.2 million dollars, a bargain price even at the time.
Within two years, Yawkey not only had Fenway Park renovated using his own money while employing several out-of-worker Bostonians but, with trusted confidant and former Philadelphia Athletics star Eddie Collins installed as vice president and general manager, also had the team performing better on the field, finishing at .500 in 1934 and winning 80-plus games in 12 of 15 seasons between 1937 and 1951. Yawkey would own the team for 43 seasons until his death in 1976, and ownership would remain in his trust until 2002, when the team was sold to current owner John Henry and his investment group for nearly $700 million.
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.
25 November 2002 – On this day five years ago, Boston Red Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino hires Theo Epstein to serve as the team’s general manager, at the same time making him the youngest person to serve in this capacity. Less than a year after ownership of the Red Sox was transferred from John Harrington and the Yawkey Trust to the group led by commodity trading advisor manager John Henry and television producer Tom Werner, Boston needed to replace interim GM Mike Port. Lucchino recommended Epstein, who had served under him with the San Diego Padres organization as the team’s Director of Baseball Operations. Epstein, who was nearly a month shy of his twenty-ninth birthday, was more than eager for the opportunity to turn around the fortunes of a franchise that he had rooted for growing up in the shadows of Fenway Park in neighboring Brookline.
In 2003, his first season as the new general manager, and under the tutelage of Lucchino and the father of Sabermetrics, Bill James, Epstein worked to shape a Boston squad with more focus on numbers and objective evidence. The results were a return to the playoffs for the first time in four years but a disappointing loss in the seventh game of the American League Championship Series to New York. The following season, Epstein was at the forefront of a controversial decision to trade away fan favorite Nomar Garciaparra to the Chicago Cubs at the end-of-July trading deadline, knowing that the eventual outcome would make or break his short-lived career. The gamble paid off as the two players brought into the fold, Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz, as well as a trade for outfielder Dave Roberts, became integral parts of a club that ended 86 years of frustration with its first World Series title since 1918. The following season, Boston made the playoffs for a third straight season, the first time that had happened in club history, but the defending champions were bounced out in the first round by the eventual world champion Chicago White Sox.
Citing personal reasons, Epstein briefly left the club at the end of October 2005 after rejecting a substantial offer to stay for another three seasons, but returned in mid-January to resume his duties as general manager while also accepting the title of Executive Vice President. Although the team would miss the playoffs for the first time during his tenure in 2006, the popular GM rebounded in 2007 along with his club and captured the club’s first divisional title since 1995 along with the team’s second World Series in four seasons.
07 November 1989 - Eighteen years ago today, Nick Esasky, after just one season playing first base for Boston, turns down a long-term offer from the Red Sox and signs a sizable free agent contract with Atlanta; unfortunately for both Esasky and the Braves, the 6-foot-3 power hitter is forced to retire the following spring due to a serious illness. Nearly a year earlier in December of 1988, the Red Sox had sent pitcher Jeff Sellers, first baseman Todd Benzinger, and minor leaguer Luis Vasquez to the Reds in exchange for the six-year veteran, a 1978 first-round draft selection out of high school by Cincinnati, and pitcher Rob Murphy. He paid immediate dividends in Boston by setting several career highs during the 1989 regular season, including a .277 batting average, 30 home runs, 108 RBI, and 79 runs scored; his home run and RBI totals placed him in the top five in the American League for both categories, enough to earn some votes for AL MVP.
Believing they had found the future at first base, the Red Sox offered Esasky a long-term deal at season’s end, but he turned down the offer to become a free agent and sign a lucrative three-year contract with his hometown Atlanta Braves worth a total of $5.6 million. Unfortunately, the following spring, the young ballplayer began to experience symptoms of vertigo that stemmed from an ear infection. He played just nine games with Atlanta before the illness forced him to retire as he finished his career with a batting average of .250, 122 home runs, and 427 RBI.
11 October 1999 - On this day eight years ago, the Boston Red Sox becomes the first team in Division Series play to rally from an 0-2 deficit by defeating the Cleveland Indians 12-8 at Jacobs Field to win in five games. Boston had lost the first two games in Cleveland by scores of 3-2 and 11-1 and faced elimination in Game 3 at Fenway Park. Indians starter Dave Burba began the game by allowing just one hit in the first four innings of the game but left due to injury; the Red Sox took immediately advantage of the opportunity and pounded Jaret Wright, called in relief of Burba, for five runs in two-plus innings of work as the team extended the series one more game with a 9-3 win. The following night at Fenway, the Sox tagged Indians starting pitcher Bartolo Colon and the bullpen for a post-season record 23 runs off 24 hits, including four home runs, as Boston cruised to a 23-7 to send the series back to Cleveland.
Back at Jacobs Field for the winner-take-all finale, Boston jumped on top quick with a two-run home run by Nomar Garciaparra in the first inning, but Cleveland answered with three runs of its own in the first and two more the following frame off start Bret Saberhagen to take a commanding 5-2 lead. In the top of the third, with a run already scored and men on second and third, the Tribe elected to walk Garciaparra to get to Troy O’Leary. The Red Sox left fielder, who had hit 28 home runs that season, promptly sent a pitch over the center field wall for a grand slam to give Boston a sudden 7-5 lead. That lead was quickly erased in the bottom of the third when the first three batters scored on an RBI double by then-Indians right fielder Manny Ramirez and a two-run shot by first baseman Jim Thome off pitcher Derek Lowe as Cleveland took an 8-7 lead. However, Red Sox third baseman John Valentin, who batted .318 in the series with three home runs and 12 RBI, pushed home his second and final run of the game with a sacrifice fly to left to tie the score at eight runs each.
Boston manager Jimy Williams then called Pedro Martinez, who had won 23 games in the regular season and had left Game One of the series early with soreness in his back, to the mound to haul in the Cleveland offense. In perhaps one of the greatest relief efforts in playoff history, the eventual Cy Young award winner for 1999 no-hit the Indians over the final six innings of the game, allowing just three walks while striking out eight. Then, with the score still tied in the seventh, Cleveland again elected to intentionally walk Garciaparra to get to O’Leary with two on and one out. O’Leary made them pay dearly again, hitting a home run into the right field bleachers to make it 11-8, his second long ball of the game that even further deflated Cleveland’s hopes. Adding another run in the ninth on an RBI double by Garciaparra, Martinez made quick work of the Tribe in the final frame, striking out Omar Vizquel to end the game and give Boston its first postseason series win since the 1986 American League Championship Series against the California Angels.
