Red Sox Century: The Definitive History of Baseball's Most Storied Franchise, Expanded and Updated

From Cy Young to Cy Young award winner Pedro Martinez, this is a franchise full of myth and history--the first to win a World Series and the last to cross the color line--and, contend authors Glenn Stout, the series editor of the annual Best American Sportswriting volume, and Richard A. Johnson, curator of the Sports Museum of New England, the most interesting franchise in the history of the game. Their splendid, fully illustrated chronicle, rich with anecdotes, of the club from 1901 to the present makes it hard to argue with the assessment. The Sox have always been interesting--as well as frustrating, enigmatic, contradictory, and thrilling, and Red Sox Century touches all of those bases. This is an exhaustively researched history, but it's also a fan's book, filled with affection and exasperation. Stout and Johnson effectively pepper their narrative with personal reflections and observations from writers such as Peter Gammons, Dan Shaughnessy, and Elizabeth Dooley. They also pick a Red Sox all-century team, make a fine case for Pedro's '99 season as the best ever for a pitcher, compile some requisite stats, and assemble the most complete Sox bibliography ever. About the only thing they don't supply is a good parking place near Fenway. --Jeff Silverman

Product Description
The definitive one-volume history of the most fascinating franchise in baseball

For a century now, the Boston Red Sox have meant many different things to many different people, eliciting elation, frustration, nostalgia, nausea, confidence, anger, bewilderment, love, and loss, often all at once. But no matter the ups and downs, in their long, storied history the Red Sox have always managed to provide us with one thing that is certain -- they are the most interesting team ever to have taken the field.
RED SOX CENTURY: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF RED SOX BASEBALL tells the Red Sox story in its entirety for the first time, from the team's inception in 1901 and its early peak in 1918, when it won its fifth and last World Series; through the glory years, which saw the rise of such greats as Cy Young, Babe Ruth, Teddy Ballgame, and Yaz and which witnessed the "Impossible Dream" of 1967 and near misses in 1975 and 1986; to the present, when the Sox are still chasing that elusive sixth world championship -- a championship that fate seems not to want them to have. In these pages, many a Red Sox myth is debunked, and many stories are told for the first time.

Did the Red Sox fix the first World Series game ever played?
What is the truth about Babe Ruth and Harry Frazee?
Did Johnny Pesky hold the ball?
Does Fenway Park have a future?
Will the Red Sox ever win a World Series again?

Drawn from countless interviews and tireless research and illustrated with more than two hundred photographs, many never seen before, RED SOX CENTURY is far more than a picture book. Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson have written a gripping narrative history, filled with details so vivid and accurate and irony so sharp that you think you can't possibly bear to relive some of those past moments (but you're a Sox fan, so of course you do). Your season ticket to one hundred years of thrilling baseball, Red Sox Century is a comprehensive and always colorful history of a team that helped to define not only its city but its sport.

Jeff
Boston, MA


The best and most complete history of Red Sox baseball   November 28, 2003
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

The writing is superb, attention to detail inspiring. If you're a Red Sox fan, you need to read this book.


Extraordinary   May 16, 2003
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

After living overseas for much of the last decade, I somehow missed this. But the book was mentioned quite prominently in Halberstam's excellent new book, The Teammates, so I sought it out. This is a rare book that combines research as rigorous as that of any academic with fine writing making it eminently readable, illustrated by pictures that help move the story along rather than just fill up space. I had always fancied myself as more knowledgeable than most Red Sox fans, but this book has humbled me. An absolute must for Sox fanatics.


Fact vs Fiction   May 7, 2003
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

This is THE definitive Red Sox history. It tells the whole story just as it happened. Of course, for Red Sox fans that is both good and bad. If you want a happier ending, read Bill Lee's The Little Red Sox Book, which changes Red Sox history and provides dozens of happy endings, including Ted Williams killing Hitler with a line drive, Babe staying in Boston and Jackie Robinson joining the Red Sox. I suggest you read them both...one to put you out on the ledge and the other to coax you back in.