It's All True

March 15, 2009
After the Red Sox blew the World Series to the New York Mets in 1986, Boston sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy wrote The Curse of the Bambino (1990), which facetiously laid the Sox woes since 1918 on the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees. There was never a curse, but there was mismanagement, bad luck, and racism. Gutlon, who grew up outside Boston, seems genuinely annoyed at Shaughnessy for perpetuating the myth of Babes curse on the Sox. His vitriol toward a fellow scribe aside, Gutlonprovides afascinating chronicle of Sox managements endless missteps until the 2004 World Series win. At the heart of Gutlons critique is the Sox refusal to integrate, long after the rest of baseball. The Sox were the last to add a black player, waiting a decade and a half after Jackie Robinsons debut. Other than the Shaughnessy quibble, Gutlon has written an excellent history of a franchise that has transformed itself from being an object of ridicule to a model of sports excellence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)