Is Nomar Garciaparra retiring?  Say it isn’t so.  At age 36, with several surgeries having limited his playing time in recent years, the last rock at the shortstop position in Boston is hanging up his uniform for good – maybe, maybe not – with a press conference this morning in Fort Myers.

The legendary Ted Williams touted “NO-mah” as the game’s next great player and he seemed destined for a Hall of Fame career.  First, he easily won Rookie of the Year honors in 1997, then followed that with a second-place finish in the MVP ballot in 1998 and two batting titles in two years (1999 and 2000).  Five times, he was named to the All-Star while with Boston, and he was often compared to other great shortstops of his time, including Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Miguel Tejada.

When Garciaparra returned as an Oakland Athletic last July to Fenway Park for the first time since being traded away in 2004, he received a lengthy standing ovation from an appreciative crowd, to which he tipped his cap and graciously clapped along with them.  It reminded us of the moment following a series-ending loss to Cleveland in the 1998 American League Division Series; as the Indians celebrated on the field by the visitor’s dugout, Garciaparra stepped back out from the Boston dugout, turned to the stands, and began clapping in genuine appreciation of the Red Sox fans that had followed the team all season and every season before then.

Boston is still searching for the answer at short while fans search for answers on why such a promising career ended too soon; some might say that Garciaparra is to this generation what Fred Lynn was to the last one and Tony Conigliaro was to the one before then.  Red Sox fans will always have a place in its collective heart reserved for Garciaparra, who gave all he had with the club for eight seasons, but we will always wonder what might have been for him.

Tags: Boston Red Sox, Fred Lynn, Nomar Garciaparra, Ted Williams

RANDOLPH, MA – The Journey Forward Foundation is putting on an event like no other for one night.  Journey Forward will be hosting their annual Casino Night at Lombardos.  The night will consist of popular casino games, an auction with amazing prizes, and food and drinks to be enjoyed by all. Tickets for the event are $125. The first event, Casino Night, has a ticket that includes $1,000 play money, drink tickets, dinner, and a great evening. This event will not only be benefiting a remarkable foundation but allowing people to enjoy giving back. For more information regarding the event and to purchase tickets please visit www.journeyforwardevents.org or call 978-749-6700.

The second is a raffle that includes a dinner with veteran Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek. The raffle closes on Monday, 22 March 2010 at 9:00 AM EDT.  The winner will receive two (2) tickets to Red Sox Spring Training games in Ft. Myers, FL on 27 March and 28 March, dinner for the winner and a guest with Jason Varitek, and $1,500 to put towards traveling expenses during the trip.  The online raffle will take place at www.netraffle.org; tickets cost $2.00 each and there is a minimum purchase of 5 tickets. This gives every fan a chance.

About Journey Forward

Journey Forward was founded by Dan Cummings who was paralyzed one day while going for a swim with his friends. Dan was diagnosed a C6 quadriplegic and was in ICU for four weeks. Dan fought to live and showed improvement but was told there was a good possibility of never walking again. Dan promised to anyone that would listen that he would walk again and after three years in Boston and four years in California he did. Dan realized that his new mission was to make the program he used in California easily accessible to those in need so he moved back to Boston and began Journey Forward. Journey Forward is a non profit organization that is dedicated to bettering the lives of those who have suffered a Spinal Cord Injury through an intense exercise program. Journey Forward’s exercise program is designed to assists those with Spinal Cord Injuries so that they can achieve basic lifelong functions and receive the benefits.

About the Celebrities for Charity Foundation

The Celebrities for Charity Foundation was established in 1997 to assist charities in obtaining celebrity support for their organization fun raising and charitable purposes. It was also established to support celebrities in fulfilling their philanthropic aspirations. CFC is professionally managed by volunteers and provides celebrities with advice, fulfillment services, state of the art technology and a 501 (c) (3) public charity vehicle from which they can conduct their charitable work. Over the past 11 years Celebrities for Charity has donated $2 million of memorabilia and funds to over 1,000 different causes.

Tags: Boston Red Sox, charity, Jason Varitek, spring training

Buchholz announced today as fifth spokesplayer for annual fundraiser

BOSTON – Today, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund announced that Boston Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz is the fifth honorary Rally Against Cancer Spokesplayer. He joins the ranks of past Red Sox spokesplayers Jon Lester, Trot Nixon, Dustin Pedroia, and Kevin Youkilis.

Now in its fifth year, Rally Against Cancer encourages Red Sox fans to partner with their companies and schools, as well as their co-workers, classmates, and friends, to each contribute $5 or more to the Jimmy Fund. In exchange, they have the opportunity to wear Red Sox gear to work or school on Rally Day, Tuesday, April 6, when the Sox take on the New York Yankees at Fenway Park. The top fundraising company, school (K-12), and college or university are each eligible for a visit from Buchholz, if located within two-hour travel distance from Boston.

In four years, the Rally has raised $1.6 million in support of the fight against cancer at Dana-Farber. This year, the program hopes to raise $600,000. Buchholz will talk about his participation in the Rally at an upcoming press conference during spring training in Fort Myers, FL.

For more information about the Rally, please visit www.rallyagainstcancer.org.

Founded in 1948, the Jimmy Fund is an official charity of the Boston Red Sox, supporting the fight against cancer at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, helping to raise the chances of survival for children and adults with cancer around the world. Unrestricted support from the Jimmy Fund is an integral part of Mission Possible: The Dana-Farber Campaign to Conquer Cancer, a $1 billion capital campaign to accelerate cancer research, speed development of lifesaving therapies, and expand the Institute’s signature patient and family-centered care.

Tags: Boston Red Sox, cancer, Clay Buchholz, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Jimmy Fund

Ken Burns and Florentine Films are working on a new episode of its Baseball documentary series, focusing extensively on the Red Sox’s 2004 season.

To tell this story from the fans’ perspective, we are doing something new for us — we’re combing New England for personal photos taken by fans showing their jubilation in the days following the 2004 victory. …

The types of photos we’re seeking include: scenes of celebration taken in the hours and days after the 2004 World Series win, congratulatory signs posted in homes or businesses, memorabilia left at grave sites of loved ones (there were several reports of this happening throughout New England), and anything else that may be relevant.

If you have anything that might qualify, send it to photos@florentinefilms.com.

The episode is scheduled for broadcast this fall.

(Credit to Allan Wood from The Joy of Sox for this information.)

Tags: 2004 season, Boston Red Sox, Ken Burns

Dom DiMaggio, a seven-time All-Star Red Sox center fielder who played with the likes of Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, and Bobby Doerr, passed away Friday morning at the age of 92. Known as “the Little Professor” due to his glasses and his small frame, DiMaggio was the youngest of three brothers who played in the Major Leagues, which included Hall of Fame outfielder Joe DiMaggio and Vince DiMaggio. He played eleven seasons in the majors, all with Boston, and like Williams and Pesky missed three years between 1943 and 1945 serving with the US Armed Services during World War II.

While his brother Joe is remembered for a 56-game hitting streak that remains unbroken since 1941, DiMaggio holds a record of his own – a 34-game streak set in 1949 – that still stands as the water mark for Boston. In his career, he batted .298 and finished with 1046 runs scored, 87 home runs, 618 RBI, and an OBP of .383; his best season came in 1950, when he batted .328 and led the league in triples (15), stolen bases (11), and runs scored (131). That same year, on 30 June, he and Joe both homered in the same game playing against each other, only the fourth pair of brothers to accomplish the feat, in a 10-2 win for Boston over New York in the second game of a doubleheader at Fenway Park. In 1946, after returning from active duty, he made his one World Series appearance following Boston’s first pennant in 28 seasons, and batted 7-for-27 with two runs scored and three RBI, including a two-run double that tied the score in the top of the eighth inning of Game Seven of the series. DiMaggio was also part of the inagural class enshrined in the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 1995, where he again joined his teammates Williams, Pesky, and Doerr.

Tags: Bobby Doerr, Boston Red Sox, Dom DiMaggio, Fenway Park, Johnny Pesky, Ted Williams

16 April 1909 – On this day one hundred years ago, future Hall-of-Fame outfielder Harry Hooper makes his major league debut for Boston in a 3-2 loss to the Senators in Washington. A graduate of St. Mary’s College in Oakland, CA with a degree in civil engineering, Hooper was lured to the Red Sox by owner John Taylor who, in addition to a generous salary, promised the youngster the opportunity to work on the design for a new ballpark he was planning for his club. Hooper never did contribute to the construction of Fenway Park, opened three years later, but his contributions as a player for 12 seasons with the Red Sox made him legendary.

Among his career accomplishments, which included being the only player to compete on all four Red Sox World Series teams between 1912 and 1918, he still stands today as the club leader in stolen bases with 300, 33 more than teammate and fellow flycatcher Tris Speaker, and triples with 130, 24 more than Speaker. He also remains in the top ten for games played (1647), at-bats (6270), plate appearances (7330), runs scored (988), hits (1707), total bases (2303), base on balls (826), singles (1301), times on base (2587), hit by pitch (54), and sacrifice hits (180). Despite hitting only 30 home runs in his time with Boston and 75 total in his career, he was also the first player to lead off both ends of a doubleheader with home runs, a feat matched only by Rickey Henderson 80 years later.

Hooper was also a top-notch defensive player, spending most of his career playing right field, and joined Speaker (center field) and Duffy Lewis (left field) in creating Boston’s “Million Dollar Outfield,” also known as the “Golden Outfield,” between 1910 and 1915. Besides being part of the greatest defensive outfields in the game’s history, all three were integral for Boston’s championship teams in 1912 and 1915. In the first series, Hooper batted .290 with two doubles and a triple, while Speaker batted .300 with a double and two triples while Lewis batted just .188 but hit three doubles and scored four runs. The second and final time they played (Speaker would be sent Cleveland following the season over a contract dispute), Hooper batted .350 with two home runs, while Lewis batted an astonishing .444 with a double, a home run, and five RBI and Speaker hit .294 with two runs scored. Hooper would finish his career with five solid years in Chicago, batting .302 with 45 home runs and another 75 stolen bases for the White Sox, and later joined Speaker in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971 upon election by the Veterans Committee.

Tags: Boston Red Sox, Duffy Lewis, Harry Hooper, Tris Speaker

Baseball’s Cy Young Award was first introduced by MLB Commissioner Ford Frick in 1956 following the death of former Red Sox player and Hall of Fame pitcher Denton True “Cy” Young, who amassed 511 wins during his 22-year career, in 1955. Initially, it was given to a single pitcher chosen from the major leagues; in 1967, the new commissioner of baseball, William Eckert, announced that winners from each league, the American and the National, would be chosen.

In 53 years, three Red Sox pitchers have won a total of six awards; Jim Lonborg, Roger Clemens, and Pedro Martinez. Lonborg was not only the first Boston pitcher to receive the honor, but he was the first pitcher honored by American league voters when the award was split between the leagues in 1967. Clemens won the first of seven total awards in 1986 and repeated as the honoree in 1987, the first since Baltimore’s Jim Palmer won back-to-back awards in 1975 and 1976. Clemens would win one more with the club in 1991 before winning four more as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays (1997 and 1998), New York Yankees (2001), and Houston Astros (2004). Martinez is the only other pitcher in franchise history to win the honor; he won in 1999 and 2000, considered two of the best seasons by a pitcher in modern baseball history, after winning the award with Montreal in 1997.

Red Sox pitchers have also finished twice in five separate votes. In 1990, Clemens finished with a 22-7 record, a 1.93 ERA, and 209 strikeouts, but lost to Oakland’s Bob Welch, who despite winning 27 games finished with an ERA+ nearly half that of Clemens. Martinez also finished twice in the vote during his Red Sox tenure, once in 1998 when he finished second to Clemens, then playing in Toronto, and again in 2002 when Oakland’s Barry Zito won the award. In 2004, Curt Schilling finished his first season in Boston with 21 wins, but was easily bested by Minnesota’s Johan Santana, who finished with a lower ERA and a higher strikeout total.

Most recently, Cleveland’s CC Sabathia finished 2007 with near-identical numbers (19-7, 3.21 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 209 SO, 143 ERA+) to Boston’s Josh Beckett (20-7, 3.27 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 194 SO, 145 ERA+); the latter then went 4-0 in four starts during the 2007 postseason, while the former went 1-2 in the playoffs, with both loses coming against the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series. However, as voting takes place before the postseason starts, Sabathia was named the winner with 19 first-place votes to eight for Beckett.

Tags: Boston Red Sox, Curt Schilling, Cy Young, Jim Lonborg, Josh Beckett, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens

With “zero regrets,” former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling announced his retirement Monday morning on his official blog hosted by sports radio station WEEI Boston (MA). The 42-year-old Schilling, who signed with Boston after being drafted in the second round of the 1986 amateur draft, spent sixteen seasons away from the Red Sox following a mid-season trade in 1998 before an off-season trade with Arizona in November 2003 brought him back into the fold with the self-imposed expectation that he would help the team win its first championship since 1918.

In four seasons with Boston between 2004 and 2007, Schilling went 53-29 with a 3.95 ERA, an average of 143 strikeouts per season, and an ERA+ of 121. He was also signed to play a fifth season but missed all of 2008 due to a shoulder injury. In total, he finished with 216 career wins, a 3.46 ERA, and 3,116 strikeouts. More importantly for the Red Sox, Schilling delivered as promised during the postseason. In 2004, Schilling went 3-1 during Boston’s march to its elusive championship, winning both Game Six of the ALCS and Game Two of the World Series with the tendon in his right ankle stabilized by an advanced surgical procedure and blood seeping through his sock in both games. Schilling would also finish second that season in the Cy Young vote to Minnesota’s Johan Santana.

Schilling also figured prominently in the 2007 postseason, going 3-0 in four starts, with a win in each series for Boston. In all, Schilling finished 11-2 in 19 starts and 133-1/3 innings pitched in his post-season career, making him one of the most successful pitchers in post-season history. His other highlights with the Red Sox include a one-hitter in 2007 in which he went 8-2/3 innings against the Athletics in Oakland before yielding a hit, the closest he came to pitching a no-hitter in his career, as well as career win number 200 in May of 2006, the 104th pitcher in major league history to reach that mark.

Tags: Boston Red Sox, Curt Schilling

Years of waiting finally paid off for former Red Sox left fielder Jim Rice; on Monday, in his 15th and final year of eligibility, he was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame with 76.4 percent of the vote by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Rice, a 16-year veteran who retired after the 1989 season, follows in the footsteps of two other Hall of Fame outfielders who spent their entire careers in Boston: Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski. Rice fell 16 votes shy of election in 2008 but earned seven more than the minimum this year and will join first-ballot inductee Rickey Henderson and Veterans Committee inductee Joe Gordon this summer for enshrinement in Cooperstown. Had he failed again to reach the minimum 75 percent for eligibility, his only chance for induction after this would have been through the Veterans Committee, which has proven to be a challenge for other former players not elected by the writers to find themselves added to the Hall.

Proponents had lobbied for Rice based on the fact that, between 1975 and 1986, Rice was one of the most feared hitters in the American League as he averaged .304 with 29 home runs and 106 RBI each season. He also finished in the top five of the MVP vote six times during that stretch, winning his only award in 1978 when he stroked 46 home runs, led the league with 139 RBI, and batted .315, just twenty points behind league-leader Rod Carew. He also collected an amazing 406 total bases that season, the first to have 400 or more total bases in a single season since Hank Aaron in 1959 and a feat that’s been matched since only six times.

Drafted and signed by Boston in 1971, he earned Triple Crown, Rookie of the Year, and MVP honors as a member of the AAA Pawtucket Red Sox in 1974. The following season, Rice broke into the majors and, along with fellow rookie sensation and “Gold Dust Twin” Fred Lynn, helped Boston return the World Series for the first time in eight years (unfortunately, a wrist injury due to an errant pitch in September forced Rice to miss the remainder of the season as well as the 1975 Fall Classic between the Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds). Eleven years later, appearing for the only time in the playoffs, Rice hit a 3-run home run in the seventh game of the ALCS to help Boston win the AL pennant, then batted .333 and scored the lone run in a 1-0 Game 1 victory for Boston against New York in the World Series. He was also an eight-time All-Star and a Silver Slugger award winner in 1983 and 1984.

Tags: Boston Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski, Fred Lynn, Hall of Fame, Jim Rice, Ted Williams

He may be better known for his discipline at the plate, finishing second in the 2008 American League batting race with a .326 average, but Boston Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia was recognized Thursday for his fielding skills with his first Rawlings Gold Glove honor. Paired on the right side of the infield with 2007 Gold Glove winner Kevin Youkilis, Pedroia appeared defensively in 157 games and made just six errors in 733 chances, one year after making the same number of errors in 625 total chances; he also collected 448 assists and helped turn 101 double plays. Pedroia, who is also a leading candidate for the 2008 AL Most Valuable Player Award, became just the second player in team history to win a Gold Glove at his position; the only other Red Sox second baseman to accomplish the feat was Doug Griffin in 1972. He is also the third Red Sox player to win a Gold Glove in the past four years; besides Youkilis taking home the honor last season playing error-free ball at first base, catcher Jason Varitek earned recognition for his efforts behind the plate in 2005.

Much like Youkilis, who transitioned from third to first in 2006, Pedroia moved from his natural position at shortstop, where he had been named as a first-team All-American by Baseball America playing for Arizona State in 2004, to second to fill Boston’s needs and the change has been near-seamless. Pedroia’s .992 fielding percentage in 2008 was second in the American League only to Oakland’s Mark Ellis and third best in team history behind Mark Loretta (.994, 2006) and Bobby Doerr (.993, 1948). He also became the first Red Sox second baseman since Doerr to finish with as few as six errors in 700 or more chances. At one point this season, Pedroia enjoyed a 61-game streak without making an error, 12 games shy of Doerr’s record 73 straight games at that position, also made in 1948. In the post-season, his defense continued to shine, playing error-free ball in all 11 games for Boston while making 35 assists and taking part in five double plays.

Tags: Boston Red Sox, Dustin Pedroia, Jason Varitek, Kevin Youkilis