The Ultimate Boston Red Sox Time Machine Book


The Ultimate Boston Red Sox Time Machine Book

by 
Martin Gitlin

4 Stars

I’d like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for providing me with a digital ARC of this book for my review.

The Ultimate Boston Red Sox Time Machine Book is a thoroughly enjoyable history of the Red Sox, many of their best players, and even their fans.  There’s not really anything new here, but then again it would be difficult to present anything truly new given all that’s been written about the Red Sox (especially since they broke the 86-year “curse” in 2004).  Nonetheless, the book is a pleasure for any Red Sox fan who wants to relive some of the joy of the last 15 years and who doesn’t mind remembering some of the pain of the years before the world changed in 2004.  Gitlin actually gives pretty equal treatment to both, but I personally would have preferred a little more emphasis on the more distant past.  After all, I’ve lived and died with this team for the last 50 years, so I’d love to see some more about those seasons before I was born.

The book also suffers from a few small factual errors that probably could have been caught with some better editing and proof reading.  For example, in discussing game 3 of the 1975 World Series Gitlin tells us that “a two-run homer by Evans over the Green Monster knotted the score at 5-5.”  The problem is that game 3 was played in Cincinnati and the Green Monster is in Boston.  That would have been quite a shot by Dwight Evans.  Later in talking about former Red Sox manager Ralph Houk, Gitlin states “the former Yankees skipper hadn’t won a pennant since 1964.”  I guess that’s technically true but I’m pretty sure Gitlin meant that Houk hadn’t won a pennant as a manager since 1964.  The Yankees did win the American League pennant in 1964 but Houk was no longer the manager, he’d moved into the front office to become the team’s general manager after the 1963 season.  Still an enjoyable read for any die-hard fan.

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