The Ultimate Boston Red Sox Time Machine Book
The Ultimate Boston
Red Sox Time Machine Book
by
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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