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Adrian Beltre’s brief time with the Red Sox was just a microcosm of what has been a truly remarkable baseball career.
Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn’t it?
— Stephen King, 11/22/63
Two weeks ago, I posted a study of the top “one-and-done” positional players in Red Sox history and the player who rose to the top of every statistical category we studied – WAR and OPS+ – was Adrian Beltre. It was almost no contest, as the former third baseman prove himself valuable at the plate and in the field.
Continue reading “One Season With Red Sox A Microcosm Of Beltre’s Career”
The time is right to let bygones be bygones and give one final honor to one of the best players to ever wear a Red Sox uniform.
The Red Sox employ a rather strict policy related to the retirement of uniform numbers; to be considered, you need first to have played a minimum of ten years with the team and you must also be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
To date, only one person has received this honor who has not met these criteria; Johnny Pesky, whose number 6 was retired in 2008, was recognized for more than 60 years of nearly uninterrupted time with the franchise as a player, a manager, coach, and instructor.
There is also one player who meets these criteria but whose number is absent from the façade in right field: former third baseman Wade Boggs.
Continue reading “Time Is Right To Retire Wade Bogg’s Number”
The Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Class of 2014 is stacked with some impressive honorees, at least one who will be inducted into Cooperstown next year.
The Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Class of 2014 is stacked with some impressive honorees, at least one who will be inducted into Cooperstown next year. Announced by the team this morning, this year’s class includes pitchers Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, and radio broadcaster Joe Castiglione. The team also selected one of Martinez’s greatest single game pitching performances as this year’s featured moment.
The Red Sox Hall of Fame, opened in 1995, honors players who spent at least three years with the Red Sox and have been out of uniform as an active player at least three years. Non-uniformed honorees and the memorable moment are chosen by a unanimous vote of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Selection Committee, a 15-member committee of Red Sox broadcasters and executives, past and present media personnel, and representatives from The Sports Museum of New England and the BoSox Booster Club.
Continue reading “Three Players, Long-Time Broadcaster Earn 2014 Red Sox Hall of Fame Honors”
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.
Monday afternoon, the Boston Red Sox announced that eight people, including Mo Vaughn and Mike Greenwell, were elected to the club’s Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2008. Joining Vaughn and Greenwell will be former pitchers Wes Ferrell, Bill Lee, and Frank Sullivan, shortstop Everett Scott, scout George Digby, and former player development executive Ed Kenney, Sr.. Ferrell joins his brother and former Sox catcher Rick, who was automatically granted induction based on his previous election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984 by the Veteran’s Committee. The committee also selected the home run hit by Ted Williams in his final Major League at-bat as its Most Memorable Moment for Hall of Fame recognition. The induction dinner is scheduled for Friday, 7 November 2008, at the Marriott Copley Hotel in Boston.[1]
This is the seventh class to be honored since the Hall opened in 1995 and elections have been held every two years since 2000. Selections are made by a committee consisting of Red Sox executives and broadcasters, media members and representatives of the New England Sports Museum and BoSox club. To be eligible, a player must have played a minimum of three years with the club and been officially retired from baseball for at least three years, while non-uniformed honorees, like former inducees Curt Gowdy (broadcaster) and Dick O’Connell (general manager), are added only by a unanimous vote of the selection committee.
The selection committee for the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame isn’t due to make a decision on the next list of nominees until more than a year from now, and the next induction ceremony isn’t scheduled to take place until November of 2008, but just whose career as a Red Sox player or manager might be worthy enough to earn enshrinement at that time? (We won’t consider non-uniformed honorees here nor will we consider a “memorable moment” from team history.) To be eligible, players must have played a minimum of three years with the team and have been out of uniform as an active player for another three years; former managers are generally chosen well after leaving Boston, as was the case for “Walpole” Joe Morgan and Dick Williams, two 2006 inductees. We are also going to shy away from more recent candidates who will be eligible when the next vote is expected, like John Valentin, Mo Vaughn, and Ellis Burks, simply because selections usually happen longer than three or so years after leaving the game.
Continue reading “Five Future Red Sox Hall of Fame Inductees”
(Note: This article was published by the author on another Red Sox web site prior to the establishment of this site.)
One cannot talk about the history of the Red Sox without included one of the most prominent figures in its history, Theodore Samuel Williams. Known as the Splendid Splinter, the Thumper, the Kid, and the self-proclaimed Greatest Hitter That Ever Lived, he was just a boy from San Diego who loved to swing a bat. With his mighty swing, he stormed through the record books and left behind marks that may never be reach again.
Besides being the last man to hit .406, he also had a lifetime on-base percentage of .482, best in the history of the game. He also had a slugging percentage of .634 (2nd), a career batting average of .344 (7th), 2654 hits, 2021 walks, 1798 runs, 1839 RBI, and 512 home runs, numbers that would be even more impressive, if not for the fact that he gave up nearly five years of his career to military service. He also won not one but two batting Triple Crowns, a feat that was last accomplished by another Red Sox legend, Carl Yastremski, in 1967.
As I never got to see him play (I was not born until nearly 12 years from the day he retired), I have only film reels, pictures, and reference material to teach me all there is to know about his baseball career. But there was more to the man as demonstrated by his commitment to his country in time of war when he could have opted to let his baseball career exempt him from service. It even happend during the prime of his career; his stint in World War II came just after completing his 1942 Triple Crown campaign. He also played a significant part in raising money for the Jimmy Fund, an organization he championed on behalf of former owner Tom Yawkey, to help support cancer research. He also made baseball realize that the Hall of Fame should recognize the records of those who played in the Negro Leagues of the past during his acceptance speech to the baseball shrine in 1966.
My one true memory of him will always be when he came onto the field to throw out the first pitch prior to the 1999 All-Star game. As he was carted onto the field to make what would be one of his last public appearances, he tipped his cap to the crowd, something he did not do when he homered in his final career at-bat in 1961. When he came to the center of the diamond, he was immediately surrounded by players past and present, those there to participate in the contest, and those who had been introduced on the All-Century team as Ted had. It was a magical scene that left not a dry eye in the house, not if you understood the significance of some great ballplayers of the present paying respect to arguably the greatest hitter who ever lived.
It will be hard to imagine that someone else will come along and make Williams look mortal in comparison. Williams stood tall in his time and he stands tall by today’s standards. Though he is gone now, it is not likely that he will be forgotten; even years from now, he will stick around in the hearts and minds of those who love the game of baseball.
