In the fall of 1897, over 250 baseball fans from Roxbury, Massachusetts, traveled to Baltimore with saloon keeper Nuf-Ced McGreevy and Pres. John F. Kennedy's future grandfather Honey-Fitz Fitzgerald to cheer their Beaneaters to the pennant. They became known famously as the Royal Rooters. Singing their fight song, “Tessie,” they cheered on five world champion teams in the early 1900s. When Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees after 1919, “Tessie” all but disappeared from Fenway. A new generation of Fenway Faithful suffered through decades of heartbreak until “Tessie” returned in 2004 to deliver another world title. In the course of a century, the original group of rooters has grown into a legion of fans known as Red Sox Nation. Boston's Royal Rooters chronicles the rich tradition of Boston's pioneering fans like Nuf-Ced, Honey-Fitz, and Lib Dooley, “the Queen of Fenway Park,” and examines through rare images their influence on modern-day fans.
For 52 years, Boston was a two-team Major League city, home to both the Red Sox and the Braves. This book focuses on the two teams' period of coexistence and competition for fans. The author analyzes the Boston fan base through trends in transportation, communication, geography, population and employment. Tracing the pendulum of fan preference between the two teams over five distinct time periods, a deeper understanding emerges of why the Red Sox remained in Boston and the Braves moved to Milwaukee.
Not only was it probably the most cutthroat pennant race in baseball history; it was also a struggle to define how baseball would be played. This book re-creates the rowdy, season-long 1897 battle between the Baltimore Orioles and the Boston Beaneaters. The Orioles had acquired a reputation as the dirtiest team in baseball. Future Hall of Famers John McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, and “Foxy” Ned Hanlon were proven winners—but their nasty tactics met with widespread disapproval among fans. So it was that their pennant race with the comparatively saintly Beaneaters took on a decidedly moralistic air. Bill Felber brings to life the most intensely watched team sporting event in the country’s history to that time. His book captures the drama of the final week, as the race came down to a three-game series. And finally, it conveys the madness of the third and decisive game, when thirty thousand fans literally knocked down the gates and walls of a facility designed to hold ten thousand to watch the Beaneaters grind out a win and bring down baseball’s first and most notorious evil empire.
Baseball was a rough sport in the nineteenth century and no one played the game with more vigor (and often violence) than Hall of Famers Hugh Duffy and Tommy McCarthy, dubbed "The Heavenly Twins." This book details their professional history playing for Boston Beaneaters teams and personal experiences with baseball, faith, and legendary Boston baseball scribe Tim Murnane. The book also traces their minor league careers and post-professional baseball activities.
Recapturing the drama and color of this historic sporting event, Roger I. Abrams shows how the first world series (Boston Americans vs. Pittsburgh Pirates) provided a unique lens to view American life and culture at the dawn of the twentieth century. It is a fascinating story brimming with colorful, larger-than-life characters: legendary players Honus Wagner, Cy Young, Jimmy Collins, Fred Clarke, Big Bill Dineen, and Deacon Phillippe on the field; and Mike "Nuf Ced" McGreevey, "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, and the boisterous Boston Royal Rooters, cheering, chanting, and singing in the grandstands. This is also the story of how the post-season play gave disparate classes in society--Brahmins, industrialists, Irish politicians, Jewish immigrants--the rare opportunity to join in common support of their local teams and heroes.
From the genesis of baseball in the 1840s, when so-called "kranks" cheered the teams of their choice, fans have been an ever-present component of the sport. As the number of fans has increased over the years, their influence has increased proportionally. Following the evolution of the game and its fans over more than a century, this book examines the role fans have played in the formation of modern baseball and the part the sport has played in the lives of its devotees. How have fans influenced, reacted to, or been affected by baseball's changes through history? How do fans determine player popularity? Are there famous fans--and how do they manifest that interest? How has the evolution of baseball in the media, including newspapers, radio, and television, affected the fan base? The answers to these questions and more give a lively feel to this baseball history from a fan's perspective. The final chapter sums up the fan's importance to the sport of baseball.
Until 2004, when the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series Championship in 86 years, the team had been plagued by the Curse of the Bambino, a mythical drought attributed to the team's loss of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Though Ruth was a star pitcher in Boston, he was merely continuing a 14-year tradition of the club's strong arms and bats. With rosters that included Cy Young, Jimmy Collins, Jesse Burkett, Jack Chesbro, Big Bill Dinneen, Smoky Joe Wood and Tris Speaker, among others, the young franchise powered its way to three pennants and a couple of world championships before Babe arrived in Beantown. This book covers the team's early years from the diamond to the executive offices.
Fenway Park. The name evokes a team and a sport that have become more synonymous with a city's identity than any stadium or arena in the country. Since opening in the same week of 1912 that the Titanic sank, the park's instantly recognizable confines have seen some of the most dramatic happenings in baseball history, including Carlton Fisk's "Is it fair?" home run in the 1975 World Series and Ted Williams's perfectly scripted long ball in his final at-bat. For 100 years, the Fenway faithful have been tested. They have known triumph and heartbreak, miracles and curses -- well, one curse in particular -- to such a degree that an entire nation of fans heaved a collective sigh of relief when Dave Roberts stole a base by a fingertip in 2004, triggering the most amazing comeback in the game's annals. To sit and watch a game at Fenway is to recognize that the pitcher is standing on the same mound where Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and Babe Ruth pitched, that a hitter is in the same batter's box where Ty Cobb and Hank Aaron and Shoeless Joe Jackson dug in to take their swings. This is a ballpark that has embraced its odd construction quirks, including the bizarre triangle out in center field and the Green Monster that looms above the left fielder, and today -- for better and for worse -- it remains largely unchanged from the day it opened. In its long history, Fenway has hosted football, hockey, soccer, boxing, and so much more. It has provided a backdrop to hundreds of historic events having nothing to do with sports, including concerts, religious gatherings, and political rallies. It was the site of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's final campaign address, as well as visits by music luminaries from Stevie Wonder to Bruce Springsteen to the Rolling Stones. Through it all, the Boston Globe has been the consistent, respected chronicler of every important moment in park history. In fact, the newspaper played a remarkable role in Fenway's creation and evolution: the Taylor family -- founders and longtime owners of the Globe -- owned the ballclub in 1912, helped finance the new stadium, and renamed the team the "Red Sox". It is the Globe's insider perspective, combined with more than a century of exemplary journalism, that makes this book the definitive narrative history of both park and team, and a centennial collectors' item unlike any other. Its pages offer a level of detail that is unmatched, with exceptional writing and hundreds of rarely seen photographs and illustrations. This is Fenway Park, the complete story, unfiltered and expertly told.
The team now known as the Boston Red Sox played its first season in 1901. The city of Boston had a well-established National League team, known at the time as the Beaneaters, but the founders of the American League knew that Boston was a strong baseball market and when they launched the league as a new major league in 1901, they went head-to-head with the N.L. in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston. Chicago won the American League pennant and Boston finished second, just four games behind. The Boston Americans played in a new ballpark — the Huntington Avenue Grounds — literally on the other side of the railroad tracks from the Beaneaters and they out-drew the Beaneaters by more than 2-1, in part because they had enticed some of the more popular players — player/ manager Jimmy Collins, pitcher Cy Young, and slugger Buck Freeman. This volume represents the collective work of more than 25 members of SABR --the Society for American Baseball Research. It offers individual biographies of the players, team owner Charles Somers, league founder Ban Johnson, and two of the team's most noted fans: Hi Hi Dixwell and Nuf Ced McGreevy. There is also a "biography" of the Huntington Avenue Grounds ballpark and a study of media coverage of Boston baseball in 1901, and a timeline running from the first spring training through that year's postseason games. Includes written contributions by the following SABR members: Bill Nowlin., Fred Schuld, Joe Santry and Cindy Thomson, Ron Selter, Donna L. Halper., Charlie Bevis, Steve Krah., Charles Faber, Dennis Auger, Jim Elfers, Eric Enders, Jack Morris, Paul Wendt, Frank Vaccaro, Rory Costello, Mike Lackey, Dan Desrochers, David Forrester, Tom Simon, David Southwick, Joanne Hulbert, Pete Nash, Dan Fields. Full Table of Contents: Introduction: Bill Nowlin Franchise Firsts: Bill Nowlin Team Owner: George Somers: Fred Schuld American League President Ban Johnson: Joe Santry and Cindy Thomson The Ballpark: Huntington Avenue Grounds: Ron Selter A Fuller Portrait of the First Home Game of the Franchise Baseball in the New Century: Following the Boston Americans in 1901: Donna L. Halper The Players Ben Beville: Bill Nowlin Jimmy Collins: Charlie Bevis Lou Criger: Steve Krah George “Nig” Cuppy: Charles Faber Tommy Dowd: Bill Nowlin Hobe Ferris: Dennis Auger Frank Foreman: Jim Elfers Buck Freeman: Eric Enders Harry Gleason: Jack Morris Charlie Hemphill: Paul Wendt Charlie Jones: Frank Vaccaro Win Kellum: Bill Nowlin Ted Lewis: Rory Costello Larry McLean: Mike Lackey Fred Mitchell: Bill Nowlin Frank Morrissey: Bill Nowlin Freddy Parent: Dan Desrochers George Prentiss: David Forrester Osee Schrecongost: Bill Nowlin Jack Slattery: Bill Nowlin Chick Stahl: Dennis Auger Jake Volz: Bill Nowlin George Winter: Tom Simon Cy Young: David Southwick Personality: “Hi Hi” Dixwell:Joanne Hulbert Personality: Mike “Nuf Ced” McGreevy: Pete Nash 1901 Boston Americans Season Timeline: Bill Nowlin By the Numbers: Dan Fields
