Red Sox in 5s and 10s

by Bill Nowlin, Rico Petrocelli (Foreword by)

Overview

The Boston Red Sox have blown hot and cold over the decades. These lists of Top 5s and 10s cover both the highs and lows of a team that has endured a long history of both joy and sorrow. They won the first World Series ever played and then five more pennants in the next fifteen years. Famously, from 1918 until the magical year of 2004, the Sox endured eighty-six seasons without a championship, although they lost pennants and world championships on the last possible day more times than fans care to remember. Finally, in 2004, they won it all. Loyal fans will always remember the joy of Mo Vaughn's grand slam on opening day in 1998 and will likely never forget the agony of Game 6 in 1986. Through it all, unforgettable names like Buckner, Yaz, Tony C. and Big Papi still resonate in the shadows of Fenway Park. From the greatest pitchers to the worst opening days, author Bill Nowlin recounts the highs and lows of Boston's most celebrated sports franchise.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467145084
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	04/06/2020
Series:	Sports
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Born in Boston, Bill Nowlin has not gone far in life. He lives on the other side of the river now, in Cambridge. Less than five miles from Fenway Park, he has been going to games there since the latter days of Ted Williams and right up to the present. One of the founders of Rounder Records and a former college professor of political science, he has spent much of the past twenty years writing about baseball. Since 2004, he has been on the board of directors of the Society for American Baseball Research. He's closing in on one hundred books at this point, mostly about baseball and many of them Red Sox-related.

Table of Contents

Foreword Rico Petrocelli 5

Acknowledgements 7

I Opening Days

1 Opening the Season in Style: Top 5 Home Openers 11

2 A Few Opening Days to Forget: The Worst Home Openers 18

II Red Sox Player Debuts

3 Top 10 Debuts by a Red Sox Player 23

4 Players Who Performed Particularly Well in Their Red Sox Debuts 26

III Rookie Seasons and Grand Finales

5 Best Rookie Seasons 31

6 The Grandest Finales: Best Player Final Seasons 36

IV Red Sox Pitchers

7 Best Single-Game Performances 41

8 Best Years Enjoyed by Red Sox Pitchers 50

9 Shutouts 54

10 WHIP and WAR 56

11 Some Pitching Miscellany 67

12 A Special Section on Relief Pitchers 70

V Red Sox Batters

13 Best Single-Game Performances 81

14 Hitting Homers 89

15 Doubles and Triples and Other Forms of Offense 103

16 Best Years for Team Offense 109

VI Comebacks, Blowouts, and Other Great Games

17 Comebacks 115

18 Blowout Games 124

19 Two of the Most Astonishing Innings in Red Sox History 129

VII Fielding

20 Best and Worst Teams 135

21 Best and Worst Players in a Given Season 136

22 Best Fielder at Each Position, Career 139

23 Triple Plays and Double Plays 141

24 Fielding Miscellany 143

25 Hidden-Ball Trick 145

VIII Obscurities and Oddball Lists

26 Most Obscure Red Sox Players of All Time 149

27 Most Obscure World Champion Red Sox of the Twenty-First Century 153

28 Firsts from Foreign Lands 157

29 One-Hit Wonders: Players with Only One Hit 168

30 One-Win Wonders: Pitchers with Only One Win 171

31 The Exceptionally Strange Case of Joe Harris 173

32 Places the Red Sox Have Played Baseball 174

IX The Best of the Best

33 Top 10 Seasons of Individual Players (Pitchers and Batters) 177

34 All-Time Starting Lineup 184

35 Best Games against the Yankees 186

36 Best Red Sox Team of All Time 194

Notes 203

About the Author 207