When the Red Sox Ruled

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 9 MAY 2011

The 2011 Boston Red Sox may have gotten off to the worst start in team history leaving memories of the 2004 World Series championship far behind but Boston University professor Whalen now recounts the Sox's original rise and fall. Between 1912 and 1918, this American League charter franchise captured four World Series titles, an accomplishment matched only by the New York Yankees. Loaded with legendary players such as Babe Ruth, Harry Hooper, and Smoky Joe Wood, the Red Sox played in newly christened Fenway Park and reigned as kings of the dead-ball era. Whalen (Dynasty's End: Bill Russell and the 1968-69 World Champion Boston Celtics) chronicles those World Series games in great detail, but more insightful are his explorations of the business of baseball in the early 1900s, including a player walkout that occurred hours before Game 5 of the 1918 World Series. He documents the first, apparently spontaneous singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a professional baseball game, the inaugural presidential first pitch, and the role baseball played during WWI. In 1919 Ruth was traded to the Yankees in a move that became known as the "Curse of the Bambino" and began an 86-year World Series drought. Whalen relies on old, previously published material and fails to find the life in his narrative, but patient readers will appreciate his effort.