Tag: red sox

Youkilis Sets New Consecutive Error-Free Games Record

On the last play of Wednesday afternoon’s game in Oakland, Boston Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis collected a ground ball from Athletics left fielder Jack Cust and recorded the out at first unassisted; in the process, he set a new major league record for consecutive error-free games by a first baseman with 194. That mark breaks the old mark held by former big leaguer Steve Garvey, who set the mark between June 1983 and April 1985 with the San Diego Padres. Youkilis also went 2-for-4 with a double and an RBI single in Boston’s 5-0 win over Oakland.

In 2007, Youkilis broke Stuffy McInnis’s old team record of 119 games and then surpassed the old American League mark of 178 straight games by Mike Hegan. At season’s end, Youkilis not only finished with a 1.000 fielding percentage but was awarded a Gold Glove, the only Red Sox first baseman other than George “Boomer” Scott to win the award at that position. Oddly enough, Youkilis originally joined Boston as a third baseman in 2004 but transitioned to first base full-time in 2006, though he did have some minor league experience at that position.

Today In History – Pedro Martinez Debuts with Win in Oakland

01 April 1998 – On this day ten years ago, Pedro Martinez makes his debut with the Boston Red Sox, strikes out 11 batters, and allows only three hits in a 2-0 win over the Athletics in Oakland. Martinez, who had pitched the previous four seasons in Montreal, had signed as a free agent with Boston over the off-season in a deal that guaranteed six years and $72.7 million, with a club option for a seventh season at $17.5 million. The previous season, he had posted 17 wins in 31 starts with a 1.90 ERA and 305 strikeouts, easily winning the National League Cy Young award. With the game starting late on the West Coast at 10:40 PM ET, Martinez set down the first eleven batters he faced before giving up a line-drive single to left field to Ben Grieve. The only real threat came in the seventh when back-to-back singles followed by a sacrifice bunt put runners on second and third with one out; however, facing his last two batters of the night, Martinez struck out catcher A.J. Hinch and center fielder Jason McDonald to keep Oakland off the board. Darren Bragg provided the only run the Red Sox would need in the fifth with a sacrifice fly to right that scored Darren Lewis, and John Valentin added an insurance run in the seventh with a sac fly that plated Bragg.

Martinez would go on to finish second in the American League Cy Young vote that season behind former Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens, posting a 19-7 record with a 2.89 ERA and 251 strikeouts in 33 starts. The following year, he joined Randy Johnson as the first pitchers to win a Cy Young award in both leagues, the first of two consecutive awards for the ace. In seven seasons with Boston, Martinez would win 117 games against 37 losses, post a 2.52 ERA, and strike out 1683 batters in nearly 1400 innings of work. He would also be part of the club in 2004 that won Boston’s first World Series championship in 86 years, winning Game Three of the series against the St. Louis Cardinals with seven scoreless innings of work. Through 2007, his won-loss percentage of .760 puts him first in franchise history, his win total puts him tied for sixth, and his strikeout total puts him second behind Clemens, though just three ahead of current Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield.

Did You Know? – Red Sox Players in Japan

As the Boston Red Sox head to Japan to play the first two games of its 2008 regular season schedule in Tokyo against the Oakland Athletics, it is interesting to note that, as well as having had Japanese players like Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima play for Boston, there have been several non-Japanese players with past Red Sox teams that have also logged time with a Far East baseball club.. Perhaps the most well-known of these players is former outfielder and recent Red Sox Hall of Fame inductee Mike Greenwell, who signed on to play with the Hanshin Tigers in 1997 after twelve seasons with Boston. However, “the Gator” unexpectedly left the team during spring training while claiming an undiagnosed back injury, abruptly flew back to the United States, then returned to Japan and rejoined the team in late April. He finally played his first Japanese professional game in early May but, after fracturing his foot with a foul tip, announced his official retirement from baseball after batting .231 in just seven games with the club.[1]

Outfielder Reggie Smith was another former Red Sox great who later played in Japan, though his move to Japan came ten years after he departed Boston. After playing his final season in the majors with the San Francisco Giants in 1982, Smith was lured to Japan to play for the Yomiuri Giants; however, his personality and demeanor immediately clashed with the expectations of the Japanese fans and the media with regards to the norm for a baseball player. After injuring his knee early in the 1983 season, he was dubbed “Million-Dollar Bench-Warmer” by the Japanese media as he sat for two months nursing the injury; he also earned another less-honorable nickname, the “Giant Human Fan,” for striking out too often. Despite this, in just 263 at-bats, he managed a batting average of .285 with 28 home runs, a .409 on-base percentage, and a .609 slugging percentage.[2]

One other more-recent Boston player who donned spikes in the Land of the Rising Sun was Gabe Kapler who, lured by a lucrative contract offer, departed the Red Sox a month after the team won the World Series in 2004 and joined the Yomiuri club. However, after batting just .153 (17-for-111) with three home runs and six RBI in 38 games with the Giants, the team put the veteran outfielder on waivers and Kapler returned to the Red Sox in June of 2005. In addition, other non-Japanese players who have worn both a Boston uniform as well as one for a Japanese club include: John Wasdin, who played for the Red Sox between 1997 and 2000, then signed for one season with Yomiuri in 2002; Larry Parrish, who played a half-season with the Sox in 1988, then played a season each with the Yakult Swallows (1989) and Hanshin (1990); Kip Gross, who played five seasons in Japan for the Nippon Ham Fighters (1994-1998), then returned to the United States to play for Boston for one season (1999); and Benny Agbayani, who also played 13 games for Boston in 2002 and has played the last four seasons for the Chiba Lotte Marines (2004-2007).

Did You Know? – Stuffy McInnis

Stuffy McInnis enjoyed a long baseball career in the early part of the 20th century; between 1909 and 1927, the Gloucester, Massachusetts native played for six teams, including the Boston Red Sox between 1918 and 1921, and was part of five World Series champions. At the plate, he finished with a .307 batting average, batting over .300 12 times in 19 seasons, and his 2,405 career hits places him just inside the top 100 all-time through the 2007 season. He also finished third all-time in sacrifice hits for a career with 383, one of only 11 players in MLB history with at least 300, and fanned only 189 times in 6,667 at-bats between 1913 and 1927, a rate of 35.3 at-bats per strikeout, ninth all-time. With Boston, McInnis batted .296 with 594 hits and only 49 strikeouts in 2,006 at-bats.

McInnis was also known a great defensive player. He originally broke in as a shortstop, but ultimately moved to first base after a few seasons. In a time known as the “dead-ball” era, first base was a key defensive position and McInnis became part of Connie Mack’s “$100,000 infield” with the Philadelphia Athletics; teaming with second baseman Eddie Collins, third baseman Frank Baker and shortstop Jack Barry between 1911 and 1914, the team won World Series titles in 1911 and 1914 and an American League pennant in 1913. In 1921, his fourth and final season with Boston, McInnis set a record for his position with only one error in 1,651 chances, good for a .999 fielding percentage. He also went a stretch of 163 games between 31 May 1921 and 02 June 1922 without making an error, the first 119 games as a Boston player while spending the latter season with the Cleveland Indians.

Those records stood until 2007 when current Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis managed to go the entire year without making a single error in 1080 chances, the only player in the league to end the regular season with a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage. Youkilis also broke McInnis’s consecutive errorless games streak by a Red Sox first baseman when he lodged his 120th mistake-free contest on 25 June 2007. It should be noted that the streak continues; entering the 2008 season, he has now played 190 straight error-free games at first, a new American League record and three shy of the major league record set by former Gold Glove winner Steve Garvey.

Today In History – Tom Yawkey Buys The Red Sox

25 February 1933 – Seventy-five years ago today, in the midst of the Great Depression, Bob Quinn sells the Red Sox franchise to Thomas Austin Yawkey, who four days earlier had celebrated his 30th birthday. Quinn had owned the franchise since 1923 and the team had suffered considerably under his ownership; his clubs had averaged 99 loses against only 54 wins and suffered five seasons with 100 or more losses in ten years. In fact, since going 75-51 in the war-shortened 1918 campaign and winning the club’s fourth World Series in seven years, Boston had suffered 14 consecutive losing seasons under Quinn and previous owner Harry Frazee.

In 1932, the team had won just 43 games, fewest in team history, while ending up on the losing end of the score 111 times. Not only was Quinn’s ballclub suffering, Fenway Park had been left to deteriorate as Quinn’s debts mounted. At the same time, Yawkey, who had been born into wealth and whose uncle (and adoptive father) had once owned the Detroit Tigers, was looking to buy a baseball team. He turned down an offer to purchase a minor league team and refused another to buy half of the Brooklyn Dodgers; for him, it was all or nothing. He eventually heard through one of his sources that the Red Sox were available and quickly got his lawyers busy looking into the opportunity. By early 1933, talks were underway and, in the end, Quinn agrees to sell both the team and the park to Yawkey to the tune of $1.2 million dollars, a bargain price even at the time.

Within two years, Yawkey not only had Fenway Park renovated using his own money while employing several out-of-worker Bostonians but, with trusted confidant and former Philadelphia Athletics star Eddie Collins installed as vice president and general manager, also had the team performing better on the field, finishing at .500 in 1934 and winning 80-plus games in 12 of 15 seasons between 1937 and 1951. Yawkey would own the team for 43 seasons until his death in 1976, and ownership would remain in his trust until 2002, when the team was sold to current owner John Henry and his investment group for nearly $700 million.

Vaughn, Greenwell Headline 2008 Red Sox Hall of Fame Class

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.

Red Sox Give Francona Contract Extension

With two world championships in the last four years to his credit guiding a team that hadn’t won a World Series since 1918, Terry Francona received a three-year contract extension Sunday from the Boston Red Sox that will keep him at the helm until at least through the 2011 season. The contract also includes a club option for two additional years, making it possible that the 44th manager in team history may be with the franchise for several years to come. Francona took over managerial duties in 2004 and immediately found success, taking Boston to its first World Series in 18 years and winning the club’s first title in nearly a century with a four-game sweep of St. Louis. The team repeated that success last season, capping the 2007 season with another four-game sweep of the Colorado Rockies in the World Series, and Francona became the first manager in MLB history to win his first eight World Series games without a loss.

In 648 games over his first four seasons, Francona has 375 wins and a winning percentage of .579, the best among Boston skippers with at least three full seasons or 462 games managed. The only other Red Sox manager to equal that mark over the same span of games is Don Zimmer, who took over for Darrell Johnson midway through the 1976 season and remained with the club until being fired with five games left in the 1980 season; his career winning percentage at the helm of the Red Sox is four percentage points behind the incumbent skipper. Francona is also one of only five managers in team history to lead a club to a world championship and the only manager other than Bill Carrigan (1915 and 1916) to lead a Boston club to two titles. In addition, he is one of three Boston managers to win two pennants and the first to take his club to the post-season three times.

Did You Know? – Boston’s First Spring Training

As Red Sox players gather in Fort Myers to begin spring training and prepare to defend the team’s 2007 World Series championship, it is a far cry from the very first Boston team pre-season. American League president Ban Johnson had only awarded a franchise in his upstart league to Boston in early January 1901 to Charles Somers and the season was slated to start just over three months later in Baltimore. Looking to directly compete against the well-established National League in Boston, franchise Somers and Johnson spent the first two months of the club’s existence putting together a team and signed Jimmy Collins, who had played for the Boston NL franchise only last season, to manage the club and play third base. Johnson also managed to lure Collins’ teammate, outfielder Chick Stahl, and another big-name National League star, Cy Young, into the fold.

With a roster in place, the team left South Station in Boston on 28 March and headed south to begin practice at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville; by coincidence, the “Americans” were on the same train carrying the “Nationals” from Boston, who continued on to their training facility in Norfolk. Unlike major league players today that spend a good percentage of the off-season working out in order to enter camp in near-peak physical form, the stars of yesteryear needed every moment of spring training to prepare for the long season and this remained true for many decades. For Boston’s first training camp, the standards of the day were followed; mornings were spent by the players taking practice at the plate and in the field, while the afternoons were devoted to long hikes in full uniform to build endurance. After less than a week of conditioning, the new club squared off in an exhibition against the squad from the local university on 05 April and soundly defeated the collegians by a score of 13-0. Unfortunately, the game was followed by a week of rain that made practice near impossible, as there were no field houses or indoor batting cages at the team’s convenience. The team managed only a few more practices before finally breaking camp and heading back north to Baltimore, where they would play the first game in franchise history on 26 April 1901 and lose, 10-6.

Today In History – Red Sox Name Becomes Official

17 December 2007 – On this day 100 years ago, the Red Sox’ team name becomes official in an announcement by club owner John I. Taylor. Before that, the team had no true identity other than that of being the American League representative in Boston; in fact, most teams of that era did not have true names other than what creative sportswriters deemed necessary to make good copy. Though Bill Nowlin has shown that the name most often used by columnists was either the “Bostons” or the “Americans” (and not the Pilgrims, as some historic references have falsely reported), the truth was that there was no official nickname used by the team.

So how was Red Sox chosen by Taylor? Following the 1907 season, the National League representative in Boston, managed by Fred Tenney, had switched from wearing red stockings to white on the belief by Tenney that the red dye would cause infection if a player was spiked in the course of action on the ball field. Taylor took note of this and decided to switch his team from wearing uniforms trimmed in pale blue to bright, fire-engine red, though it should be noted that the “Nationals” had worn a dark, deep red. He also took an old nickname that had been used for the NL club, the Red Stockings, and shortened it to simply Red Sox. To emphasize the name, on the center of the jersey, he had a large red sock shown with the name Boston in white letters. That design just lasted one season and the uniforms switched back to read as they had in 1907, with just the name Boston on the front of the jersey, but the name stuck with fans and the media long enough to become synonymous with the identity of the team.

Lester Named 2007 Tony Conigliaro Award Honoree

After overcoming a cancer diagnosis in 2006 to pitch for the Red Sox in 2007, southpaw Jon Lester was honored on Wednesday with the 2007 Tony Conigliaro Award. The honor is given to players who have overcome an obstacle and adversity and is named after the former Boston outfielder who was tragically struck by an errant pitch in 1967 but returned to earn Comeback Player of the Year honors in 1969. He played another full season for Boston before the effects of the pitch on his vision forced him to retire shortly into the 1971 season; however, he then made an abbreviated comeback with the Sox in 1975 and got a hit in his first at-bat on Opening Day at Fenway Park. Sadly, the East Boston native suffered a massive heart attack in early 1982 while interviewing for a broadcast position with the Sox and passed away eight years later at age 45 in 1990.

Lester, who was 4-0 in 12 starts this season and won the decisive Game Four of the World Series for the Sox, started 15 games in 2006 and posted a 7-2 record before doctors discovered a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in late August 2006 during a physical that followed a minor car crash nearly two weeks earlier that month. Following treatment, CT scans a few months later showed that the cancer was in remission, and the young pitcher joined his teammates in Fort Myers the following spring. Lester then started the season for the Greenville Drive, a Red Sox Single-A affiliate, before moving to Triple-A Pawtucket in late April. In mid-June, Boston removed Lester from the disabled list but kept him in Pawtucket to continue his rehabilitation. Nearly a month later, with his parents watching on from the stands at Jacobs Field, he made his first major league start of 2007 on July 23 against the Indians in Cleveland, going six full innings and allowing just two runs on five hits while striking out six and picking up his first win in nearly a year.

In the post-season, Lester made two relief appearances in the American League Championship Series versus Cleveland and pitched a total of 3-2/3 innings, giving up two runs on three hits. Lester was then given the ball to start Game Four of the World Series against Colorado in place of veteran Tim Wakefield, who had been left off the series roster due to back problems. He responded by keeping the Rockies off the board in 5-2/3 innings while yielding just three hits and three walks and striking out three; he eventually earned the series-clinching win for Boston as the team celebrated its second championship in four seasons.

Lester is the second Boston player to be honored; former pitcher Bret Saberhagen, who came back from serious shoulder injuries to win 15 games for the Red Sox in 1998, received the award that same season. The following year, current Boston third baseman and 2007 World Series MVP Mike Lowell was honored after being treated for testicular cancer in spring training and returning to average .258 while collecting 12 home runs and 47 RBI for the Florida Marlins over the final four months of the 1999 season.