What do Rube Walberg, Mike Nagy, Kevin Millar, and Dustin Pedroia all have in common? They have all worn #15 for the Boston Red Sox. Since 1931, the Red Sox have issued 74 different numbers to more than 1,500 players. In this newly updated edition, Red Sox by the Numbers tells the story of every Red Sox player since ’31—from Bill Sweeney (the first Red Sox player to don #1) to J.T. Snow (#84, the highest numbered non-coach in Sox history). Each chapter also features a fascinating sidebar that reveals obscure players who wore certain numbers and also which numbers produced the most wins, home runs, and stolen bases in club history. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Loyalty to a great cause raises some of the most profound issues in philosophy, and loyalty to the greatest of all causes, the Boston Red Sox, poses these questions in the sharpest possible way. The Red Sox and Philosophy brings together a team of thirty of America's leading thinkers (twenty-eight of them citizens of Red Sox Nation), to unravel some of the mysteries of the Red Sox. Can we adapt Anselm's proof of the existence of God to prove that the Red Sox are the greatest conceivable sports team? Why are Red Sox fans moral heroes? Can the science of sabermetrics be reconciled with the religion of baseball? Are pink Red Sox hats rationally defensible? These and other challenging problems are solved in The Red Sox and Philosophy. - Publisher.

With 100-plus years of Red Sox history, this lively, detailed book explores the personalities, events, and facts every Boston fan should know. It contains crucial information such as important dates, player nicknames, memorable moments, singular achievements, and signature calls. This guide to all things Red Sox covers the tradition of singing Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" at the stadium, the history of the Yawkey family, Wally the Green Monster, and the myth that lefties can't pitch at Fenway Park. Now updated through the 2013 World Series win, the book includes information about the signing of Shane Victorino and John Farrell taking over as manager.

From the series that created the prize-winning Redleg Journal and the bestselling Cubs Journal comes the definitive, in-depth chronicle of one of the most beloved franchises in major league baseball, covering every season from 1901 through 2005. Red Sox Journal is the ultimate Red Sox fan's resource. Dividing the team's history into decades, years, and even days, the book offers hitting and pitching highlights, team and player stats, interesting and unusual facts -- much more than just a box score. Red Sox Journal is loaded with photos, sidebars, statistics, and anecdotes, as well as lists of all-time hitting and pitching leaders, all-decade all-star teams, and even the all-time roster and uniform numbers. In short, there's so much information and trivia contained here that baseball fans will have their hands full well beyond the season of America's favorite game.

The retiring of a number to honor a player likely began with the New York Yankees. The Yankees were not the first team to experiment with numbers on uniforms to identify players, but they were the first to wear numbers permanently and retired Lou Gehrig's number 4 in 1939. This book covers retired numbers in baseball's major and minor leagues. In the major league section of the book, a player's name is followed by his retired number, the name of the team that retired it, the year that it was retired, the player's primary position, and the teams he was affiliated with during his playing career. The author then presents a brief summary of the player's career and lists any major awards or honors he won. Retiring numbers in the minor leagues is a bit different; a player who excels in the minors isn't usually with a team for long because he is promoted to the majors. In the minor league section, a player's name is followed by a brief summary of his significance. After both the major and minor league sections, readers will find team-by-team and numerical lists of honored players.

The Numbers Game is the first-ever history of baseball statistics - the keeping of them, the study of them, the people who devised them, the cultural phenomenon of them, from 1845 until today. Most baseball fans, players and even team executives assume that the National Pastime's infatuation with statistics is simply a byproduct of the information age, a phenomenon that blossomed only after the arrival of Bill James and computers in the 1980s. They couldn't be more wrong. In this unprecedented new book, Alan Schwarz - whom bestselling Moneyball author Michael Lewis calls "one of today's best baseball journalists" - provides the first-ever history of baseball statistics, showing how baseball and its numbers have been inseparable ever since the pastime's birth in 1845. He tells the history of this obsession through the lives of the people who felt it most: Henry Chadwick, the 19th-century writer who invented the first box score and harped endlessly about which statistics mattered and which did not; Allan Roth, Branch Rickey's right-hand numbers man with the late-1940s Brooklyn Dodgers; Earnshaw Cook, a scientist and Manhattan Project veteran who retired to pursue inventing the perfect baseball statistic; John Dewan, a former Strat-O-Matic maven who built STATS Inc. into a multimillion-dollar powerhouse for statistics over the Internet; and dozens more. Almost every baseball fan for 150 years has been drawn to the game by its statistics, whether through newspaper box scores, the backs of Topps baseball cards, The Baseball Encyclopedia, or fantasy leagues. Today's most ardent stat scientists, known as "sabermetricians," spend hundreds of hours coming up with new ways to capture the game in numbers, and engage in holy wars over which statistics are best. Some of these men--and women --are even being hired by major league teams to bring an understanding of statistics to a sport that for so long shunned it. Taken together, Schwarz paints a history not just of baseball statistics, but of the soul of the sport itself. The Numbers Game will be an invaluable part of any fan's library and go down as one of the sport's classic books.

"This book covers all of what might be called the cultural aspects of baseball. Biographical sketches of all Hall of Fame players, owners, executives and umpires, as well as many of the sportswriters and broadcasters who have won the Spink and Frick awards, join entries for teams, owners, commissioners and league presidents"--Provided by publisher.