2019 SABR Baseball Research Award Few people have influenced a team as much as did Tom Yawkey (1903-76) as owner of the Boston Red Sox. After purchasing the Red Sox for $1.2 million in 1932, Yawkey poured millions into building a better team and making the franchise relevant again. Although the Red Sox never won a World Series under Yawkey's ownership, there were still many highlights. Lefty Grove won his three hundredth game; Jimmie Foxx hit fifty home runs; Ted Williams batted .406 in 1941, and both Williams and Carl Yastrzemski won Triple Crowns. Yawkey was viewed by fans as a genial autocrat who ran his ball club like a hobby more than a business and who spoiled his players. He was perhaps too trusting, relying on flawed cronies rather than the most competent executives to run his ballclub. One of his more unfortunate legacies was the accusation that he was a racist, since the Red Sox were the last Major League team to integrate, and his inaction in this regard haunted both him and the team for decades. As one of the last great patriarchal owners in baseball, he was the first person elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame who hadn't been a player, manager, or general manager. Bill Nowlin takes a close look at Yawkey's life as a sportsman and as one of the leading philanthropists in New England and South Carolina. He also addresses Yawkey's leadership style and issues of racism during his tenure with the Red Sox.

"Red Sox Century chronicles the complete history of this enduring team with authority, insight, and high style. From the team's inception in 1901 and its early peak in 1918, when it won its fifth World Series, to the glory years, which saw the rise of such greats as Cy Young, Babe Ruth, Teddy Ballgame, and Yaz and the "impossible dream," to the near misses in 1975, 1986, and 2003, and finally to the glorious World Series victory in 2004 - it's all here, drawn from countless interviews and extensive research and illustrated with more than 225 photographs, many never seen before."--Jacket.

Shut Out is the compelling story of Boston's racial divide viewed through the lens of one of the city's greatest institutions - its baseball team, and told from the perspective of Boston native and noted sports writer Howard Bryant. This well written and poignant work contains striking interviews in which blacks who played for the Red Sox speak for the first time about their experiences in Boston, as well as groundbreaking chapter that details Jackie Robinson's ill-fated tryout with the Boston Red Sox and the humiliation that followed.

In what is sure to be the definitive book on Eddie Collins's life and long career, author Rick Huhn covers the Hall of Fame player's experiences from childhood through his days at Columbia University, his tenure with the great Athletics clubs of 1906-1914, the highs and lows of a championship and scandal with the White Sox, and his return to the A's during their final run at greatness. By the time his 25-year playing career had ended, he was a pivotal performer on five all-time great clubs, dominating his position like no one before (or since), and earning a reputation for intelligent, selfless play that followed him to Cooperstown. Also covered in detail is his tenure with the Boston Red Sox, a team he served variously as part owner, vice-president and general manager until 1951, when after 45 years in major league baseball a stroke ended his career and, weeks later, his life.

For years, Red Sox fans were told that their team was cursed because the Sox sold Babe Ruth to the hated Yankees. But as Jerry Gutlon reveals in It Was Never About the Babe, there is much more drama to Red Sox history than the “Curse of the Bambino.” The truth is more shocking than any myth. With the thorough research of a seasoned journalist and the zeal of a lifelong Red Sox fan, Gutlon explains why the Sox came up short season after season: ownership chose managers and players not based on their talent, but on whom they drank with; before and after baseball integrated, personal and institutional racism affected their decision-making; and their teams consistently lacked the talent, leadership, chemistry, and luck needed to win championships. Most fans don’t know that Babe Ruth was sold not just to produce a Broadway play, bust also because commissioner Ban Johnson was trying to run Sox owner Harry Frazee out of baseball and because Ruth was a major disruption in the Sox clubhouse. They will be surprised to learn that Jackie Robinson tried out at Fenway Park and shocked to learn that much-admired Tom Yawkey, along with owning the Red Sox, also owned a brothel for decades. Covering the early Red Sox championship dynasty of Ruth, the never-good-enough teams of Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, and Carlton Fisk and Curt Schilling, It Was Never About the Babe is an eye-opening read for every baseball fan, and a must-own book for every fan in Boston.