2019 SABR Baseball Research Award Few people have influenced a team as much as did Tom Yawkey (1903-76) as owner of the Boston Red Sox. After purchasing the Red Sox for $1.2 million in 1932, Yawkey poured millions into building a better team and making the franchise relevant again. Although the Red Sox never won a World Series under Yawkey's ownership, there were still many highlights. Lefty Grove won his three hundredth game; Jimmie Foxx hit fifty home runs; Ted Williams batted .406 in 1941, and both Williams and Carl Yastrzemski won Triple Crowns. Yawkey was viewed by fans as a genial autocrat who ran his ball club like a hobby more than a business and who spoiled his players. He was perhaps too trusting, relying on flawed cronies rather than the most competent executives to run his ballclub. One of his more unfortunate legacies was the accusation that he was a racist, since the Red Sox were the last Major League team to integrate, and his inaction in this regard haunted both him and the team for decades. As one of the last great patriarchal owners in baseball, he was the first person elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame who hadn't been a player, manager, or general manager. Bill Nowlin takes a close look at Yawkey's life as a sportsman and as one of the leading philanthropists in New England and South Carolina. He also addresses Yawkey's leadership style and issues of racism during his tenure with the Red Sox.

On the 50th anniversary of the historic 1967 World Series acclaimed author Thomas J. Whalen shows how the Red Sox and Cardinals waged an epic battle for baseball supremacy that captured the imagination of weary Americans looking for escape from the urban riots, racial turmoil, and antiwar protests that were roiling 1960s society.

Chronicles the history and significance of Boston's Fenway Park through interviews with Red Sox players, management, groundskeepers, vendors, and fans.

A tongue-in-cheek look at the complicated love-hate relationship between Red Sox and Yankees fans, how and why it developed, what accounts for the animosity and the grudging respect, and why it and continues to dominate the baseball landscape, this book provides the only well-constructed tutorial on how both tribes can peaceably coexist. With only around 200 miles of terra firma dividing the two capitals of the "Empire" and the "Nation," Wasif attempts to bring peace to the Northeast through understanding. The humorous book also has key terms, charts, testimonials, quizzes, and even drawings that will save fans from emotional distress and time-consuming arguments.

Following an epic American League Championship Series win over the California Angels and just one out from winning their first World Series in sixty-eight years, the 1986 Boston Red Sox lost Game Six to the New York Mets in unforgettable and devastating fashion. Then they lost Game Seven and the Series itself. Two Sides of Glory portrays the losing side of the story about one of baseball's most riveting World Series match-ups. With the benefit of years of reflection from the men who made up the '86 Sox, this will be the definitive book on this iconic yet most Shakespearian of Boston teams for years to come. After telling the Mets' side of the story, Erik Sherman turns here to the Red Sox's version, with recollections from players that are both insightful and surprisingly emotional. Bill Buckner, whose name became synonymous with a muffed grounder, speaks openly about the cruel aftermath. Pitcher Bruce Hurst broke down three times while being interviewed. Dwight Evans confesses in his interview that he had never before talked at length about the '86 team. And Roger Clemens talks candidly not only about the '86 squad but also accusations of alleged steroid abuse later in his career and the toll it has taken on his family. In each player's retelling, there is the excitement of history never told and old mysteries answered. The story of the '86 Red Sox is well known, but now, after thirty years, the players have opened up to Sherman like never before. It's an in-depth, first-person account with the intriguing key players who made up this once-in-a-generation Boston team, and also a look at how the extremes of tantalizing victory and heart-wrenching failure shaped and influenced their lives--both on the field and off.

Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

Advance Praise for THE 50 GREATEST RED SOX GAMES "Here's the deal. It costs about $43 for a grandstand seat at Fenway Park these days, unless you buy the ticket from a scalper, which makes the cost $2 million. If you went to just 50 games of any dimension that means the cost would be either $2,150 or $100 million. Here, for considerably less, you get the 50 greatest games the Red Sox ever played plus tight prose, snappy anecdotes, and reasoned judgments. Bargains like this don't come often. Plus, you don't even have to pay for parking." --Leigh Montville, author of Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero "It's a daunting task, but Cecilia Tan and Bill Nowlin have come up with the Red Sox greatest hits album, the box set. Enjoy." --Dan Shaughnessy, author of Reversing the Curse "Old Towne Team fans will think they have died and gone to heaven with The 50 Greatest Red Sox Games in their grasp. Informative, exciting, entertaining . . . Cecilia Tan and Bill Nowlin have done a good deed for the Fenway faithful." --Harvey Frommer, coauthor of Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry

"An autobiography of Joe Castiglione that recounts his years in broadcasting and with the Boston Red Sox"--

The rivalry between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox involves not just the teams, but the cities, owners, ballparks, fans, and the media. Its roots reach back to before even Babe Ruth and Harry Frazee, yet it is as contemporary as the next Red Sox–Yankees game. This book tells the story of the rivalry from the first game these epic teams played against each other in 1901 through the 2013 season in what former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called “the best rivalry in any sport.”

The history of Fenway Park, in its Voices' words