The franchise, which had been founded in 1901, had spent the previous 11 seasons playing its home games at the Huntington Avenue Grounds.  In 1911, then-owner John I. Taylor purchased land in the Fenway neighborhood of Boston with the intent of building a new ballpark.  Ground was broken on 25 September of that year and construction was overseen by the Charles Logue Building Company at a cost of $650,000.

The opener actually came two days later than expected.  The original date, 18 April, had been rained out, as was a doubleheader scheduled the following day.  It was also not the first game played at the new ballpark; 11 days earlier on 09 April, the Red Sox had played an exhibition contest against the Harvard Crimson baseball team, winning 2-0 as snow flurries made for less-than-ideal playing conditions.

Boston went on to its most successful regular season campaign in franchise history with 105 wins against only 47 losses.  Led by manager Jack Stahl and featuring outfielder Tris Speaker and pitcher Smoky Joe Wood, the team also capped off the season with its second World Series championship, winning four games to three against the New York Giants.

Carrigan started his career as a platoon catcher for Boston in July of 1906 and caught a career-high 110 games in 1910. Never an offensive threat, he collected just over 500 hits and batted only .257 in his career. Midway through the 1913 season, he was asked to replace Jack Stahl as manager of the then-defending world champion Red Sox after it was turned down by Fielder Jones, who had guided the 1906 Chicago White Sox to a World Series title; like his predecessor, Carrigan assumed his position as player-manager. After a second-place finish in his first full season at the helm in 1914, he guided the team to a 101-50 record and the American League pennant before leading his team to a 4-1 World Series win over the Philadelphia Phillies. The following season, his team finished 91-63 and won its second straight World Series title over the Brooklyn Robins. Following that season, he retired from baseball, returned to his hometown of Lewiston, and began a second career in the banking business. In 538 games, he had compiled a 322-216 record as manager for a .599 winning percentage.

Ten years later, the Red Sox convinced Carrigan to manage the club once again, but fortunes had changed dramatically at that point for the once-proud club; the franchise had not enjoyed a winning season since its last championship in 1918 and the celebrated skipper could do nothing to reverse its fortunes given the lack of talent at his disposal. Three straight seasons that averaged 95 losses convinced Carrigan to permanently retire from baseball after the 1929 season, and he returned to Lewiston to spend the rest of his life, passing away in 1969 at the age of 85. In 2004, the Red Sox posthumously honored the former manager with induction into the team’s Hall of Fame.