Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox
From SoSH
Author:
Allan Wood
Publisher: Writers Club Press
Date: 2001
Summary: The first complete account of the 1918 Red Sox and the team's World Series championship (written by SoSHer joyofsox).
Reviews
Sports Illustrated, Ron Fimrite (June 11, 2001):
Was Boston's last victorious World Series -- way back in 1918 -- fixed? That possibility is suggested in the last chapter of this history of the long-ago encounter between the two classic also-rans of the modern game, the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs. Gambling was rampant then, and as we now know, the next World Series was definitely in the tank.
Wood, a sportswriter and music critic, only speculates about a crooked '18 Series. The rest of his book provides an entertaining and exhaustive account of a tumultuous season that was threatened and then shortened by the exigencies of World War I. This was also the year that Babe Ruth made what would soon become a permanent move from the mound to the outfield. Although later, as a Yankee, he was strictly a slugger, in 1918 Ruth demonstrated his astonishing versatility by pitching and powering Boston to its last world championship.
By then, Red Sox fans were notoriously jaded, what with five Series titles in 15 years and no end to the victory parade in sight. If only they had known.
Robert W. Creamer, author of Babe: The Legend Comes to Life:
Mr. Wood has lit upon one of the most turbulent and important and at the same time least known years in baseball history. He has done remarkable, revelatory research, and he has a clean, clear way of writing.
Boston Globe, Gordon Edes (November 11, 2001):
And if you haven't read it already, check out, 1918: Babe Ruth and the World Champion Boston Red Sox by Allan Wood, which asks, among other tantalizing questions, whether the fix was in the year before the Black Sox scandal.
Boston Phoenix, Mark Bazer (June 7, 2001):
... Enter Allan Wood, who's emerged from countless hours buried in old Boston Globes, Posts, Evening Records and other local dailies to tell us a Red Sox tale with a happy ending. The Vermont native’s first book is an intensely researched and entertaining read ...
The author understands that the usual game-by-game analysis and even the novelty of a Sox championship won't sustain a book. What made the 1918 season so unusual were the Great War, a narrowly avoided strike in the middle of the World Series, and the emergence of Ruth as a national superstar known as much for his bat as for his pitching arm.
Wood handles the potentially confusing nature of professional baseball’s relation to the war especially well. Without overburdening the reader or losing sight of the pennant race, he reveals the chaotic nature of a league that was battling the government for the right to finish the season, all the while losing players to combat and war-related industries. Meanwhile, during a season in which his father died and he briefly quit the team, came down with tonsillitis, and battled management to pitch less and play in the field more, Babe Ruth still led the league in home runs and had a 2.22 ERA. And apparently he still managed to party and goof off every chance he got. ...
Wood [offers] compelling reporting on the off-the-field activity during the postseason. As different as the game was 80 years ago, the players’ grievances and their near-strike over what they considered paltry World Series shares is a reminder that bitter feuds over money aren’t a new phenomenon that has destroyed a once-innocent game.
