The Red Sox!!
If you live in Boston, you have to know about the Red Sox. This page will help you to understand the people and the places in Red Sox Nation
The Red Sox play at Fenway Park.
Fenway Park is the oldest baseball stadium in the United States. It was opened to the public in April 1912, the same week that the Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean. It is a small ballpark (it can hold about 35,000 people), but people love it because it is historic.
It is famous for its left field wall, which is called The Green Monster.
If you go to a Red Sox game, there are three songs that you need to know. For some reason, Red Sox fans have adopted the songSweet Caroline, and EVERYONE gets up and sings it in the middle of the 8th inning.
You can hear Sweet Caroline here
You can hear Red Sox fans at Fenway Park singing Sweet Caroline here
If the Red Sox win, you will hear the song Dirty Water (about the Charles River) at the end of the game. It’s funny because the group that did this song, the Standells, are not from Boston.
You can see a tiny clip of Dirty Water being played at Fenway here.
A song that people sing in EVERY ball park in America is Take Me Out to the Ball Game. It is sung at Fenway Park in the middle of the 7th inning.
Listen to Take Me Out to the Ball Game at Fenway Park
“Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don’t care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the Red Sox,
If they don’t win it’s a shame.
For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out,
At the old ball game.”
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Red Sox were the kings of baseball. They won the World Series in 1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918. Their best player was named Babe Ruth (George Herman Ruth). This is Babe Ruth, who was also called The Babe, The Bambino, and The Sultan of Swat. He was traded to the Yankees for $125,000. After that, the good luck of the Red Sox disappeared. People say that there was a curse on Boston because they traded their best player for money. The curse is called The Curse of the Bambino. After this, the hated Yankees became the royalty of baseball. They have won the World Series a total of 27 times.
Ted Williams was a Boston favorite. His batting average of .406 is still the highest ever in professional baseball. He left baseball during World War II to be a pilot in the Air Force. Although he was one of the greatest baseball players EVER, he never won the World Series. When he died, there was a BIG controversy about what to do with his body. You can read about it here. It’s VERY weird.
One of the WORST moments in Red Sox history
The Red Sox were one out away from winning the World Series in 1986 in a game against the New York Mets. Then they were one strike away. People took their champagne bottles out of the refrigerator and were ready to celebrate. Then the unthinkable happened. Mookie Wilson (of the Mets) hit a slow, rolling ball to first base. It should have been easy for Bill Buckner to pick it up and tag the base….but he didn’t. The ball rolled through his legs and the Mets won. The Red Sox lost the next game and AGAIN they were denied the world championship. At this point, all of us agreed that they would NEVER win the World Series in our lifetime. Click the link below to see how Bill Buckner broke our hearts.
Bill Buckner Breaks Our Hearts
And finally, 2004….
The Red Sox team in 2004 was a very strange team. They called themselves “The Idiots”, and so did everyone else in Boston. They had long hair (before it was fashionable again) and beards, and they were completely crazy. In September, they played great baseball. They won the first round of the championships against the California Angels, but then they had to play the Yankees.
In the American League championship of 2004, the Yankees won the first three games. With one more win, the Yankees would have gone on to the World Series. The Red Sox needed to win all 4 of the next games to go on to the World Series. We all knew it was impossible. No team in the history of baseball had EVER come back from 3-0. But 2004 was different….and beautiful.
The Red Sox won Games 4 and 5 at Fenway Park, and then went to New York City to win Games 6 and 7 in the House of Pain (which is what we call Yankee Stadium).
Harvard Square when the Red Sox beat the Yankees in Game 7
However, even though Red Sox Nation was happy, the Red Sox still had to play in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals had won more games that season than any other team in baseball. Sox fans were nervous.
BUT the Red Sox beat the National League St. Louis Cardinals in a sweep (they won Games 1-4) to win the World Series for the first time in 86 years!!!!
Click below and start at 2:11 to watch the reaction of some fans at home:
People at home watching the last game of the World Series (start at 2:11)
And after 86 loooooooooooooooooooooong years, the fans of “Red Sox Nation” got their victory parade on a cold, rainy October 30th, 2004.
About 3 million people came out to see the Red Sox on the Duck Boats. The parade went through Boston and then into the Charles River, where people were cheering on both sides of the River.
Click here to see the “parade” on the water
Many people went to visit their dead relatives in the graveyard to tell them that the Red Sox had finally won. Many of them decorated their relatives’ graves with Red Sox souvenirs.
There is an entire documentary about the 2004 World Series from ESPN on youtube. You can see it here, but it’s an hour long. The beginning gives you a feeling of October 2004 in Boston.
Of course, we won again in 2007. Watch the last out here.
Many people thought that they would be the champions in 2011, but in September, the Red Sox lost almost all of their games. As a result, they never went to the play-offs. In 2012, the Red Sox lost more games than they won.