Miracle at Fenway

May 26, 2014
Ticketless Boston Red Sox fan Kevin McCarthy snuck into Fenway Park the night before game seven of the 1967 World Series and remained unseen until the morning, only to be caught when he needed to use the bathroom. Larry Lucchino was recovering from cancer treatments at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston when a visit to Fenway Park led to a series of events culminating in his becoming president of the Red Sox. These stories are two of many that make up this unique portrait of the Red Sox and their struggles to win the World Series. Whereas the majority of sports narratives revolve around the athletes, Wisnia (Fenway Park: The Centennial) interestingly chooses to frame his narrative around a variety of perspectives; along the way, he offers fresh insights into well-known stories, such as the Nomar Garciaparra trade saga. Only about half of this book deals directly with the 2004 season, but this is to the reader’s advantage since Red Sox history is fascinating, even to non-fans. This is an entertaining book about the power and promise of sports, passionately and intimately told.

June 15, 2014
Wisnia (Fenway Park: The Centennial: 100 Years of Red Sox Baseball, 2011, etc.) proves that celebratory baseball writing need not be maudlin in his comprehensive account of the Boston Red Sox's 2004 championship season, their first since the Woodrow Wilson administration.The author explores the team's early history and tradition of losing big games; in a chapter titled "Kings of Pain," we see how the front office's bungles and tightfistedness have traditionally harmed the team. A chapter on the multiyear plan to revamp historic Fenway Park beginning in 2002 illustrates how management understood how a stadium's layout and design create memories and a game experience as indelible as the players on the field, as demonstrated by interviews with old-time fans from the 1950s and various "super fans" who explain the importance of sacrificing yourself "for the good of the team." These stories are relatable and warm but not treacly, and chapters on the two years preceding the championship provide necessary background and context. After the "bitter and very crushing" end to the 2003 season, when their hated rivals, the New York Yankees, beat Boston to advance to the World Series, 31-year-old General Manager Theo Epstein created the new-era Red Sox, who were about "teamwork, respect for the game, and a burning desire to win." He boldly shook up the roster by placing brilliant but maddening outfielder Manny Ramirez on waivers and trading the immensely popular shortstop Nomar Garciaparra in midseason. "Change didn't happen overnight," writes Wisnia, "but when it came it came quick." The author goes on to raise some tantalizing what-if questions: Would the Sox have won the championship-or perhaps, how many would they have won?-if the proposed Manny-Ramirez-for-Alex-Rodriguez trade had gone through? And what if Nomar "Mr. Boston" Garciaparra had remained in Boston?A winning story of how the right owners, players and die-hard fans can create a championship team.

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June 1, 2014
As baseball fans know, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, their first championship (after a legendary history of near misses and total failures) since 1918. After reading this book, fans (even many Sox fans) will know a great deal more about that team and its storybook season. Wisnia's well-researched account is more a conventional narrative than an oral history; although players, fans, and team execs (Larry Lucchino and Theo Epstein) are quoted extensively, this is Wisnia's book, not theirs. The text makes clear that, despite the Sox' comeback from three games down in the playoffs against the Yankees, the championship was no miracle: the team was methodically assembled (there are more echoes here of Michael Lewis' Moneyball, 2003, than of Peter Golenbock's Bums, 1984) by a front office that had nearly as much to do with the victory as the players on the fieldOrtiz, Damon, Millar, Schilling, Martinez, Varitek, and all the others who cowboyed up in their breakthrough year. Sox fans will vastly enjoy reliving the season, but it will be heartbreaking reading for Yankee fans (who have plenty of their own books).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)