RSN: What is the story behind "The 50 Greatest Red Sox Games"? How, and when, did you start putting the book together?
Cecilia Tan: We started in 2003, during the ALCS. At that point my Yankees book [The 50 Greatest Yankee Games] was finished, but hadn't been published yet. When I approached the publisher with the idea of a companion volume on the Red Sox, they liked it but wanted someone with more of a Red Sox connection involved. I told them, "I have the perfect co-writer."
Bill Nowlin: The minute I heard that Cecilia was working on "The 50 Greatest Yankee Games," I told her, “Hey, talk them into doing a Red Sox book -- and let me work on it!” It's such a great idea to have a series like this that it's surprising no one had done it before. This was really something I very much wanted to do. I knew it wasn't going to be easy to narrow it down to 50 games, though. I'm already thinking about another one: "The Greatest 13,200 Red Sox Games."
RSN: How did you decide on which games merited inclusion?
CT: I forced Bill to do what I did in the New York book, which is to use certain criteria to rate each game. That included: how exciting was the game, how historic, were any records set or broken, was there an interesting or significant back story to the game -- things like that. We started by compiling separate lists, and it was interesting that our top 10s were actually the same, although not in identical order.
RSN: It's notable that the Red Sox were on the losing end of several of the games, including some near the top of the list. Tell us about that.
CT: That's a big difference in the history of the franchises. Some of the losses were not only significant games in Red Sox history, but in baseball history. For instance, the only two one-game playoffs ever played were Red Sox losses. Despite him being the bigger Red Sox fan, Bill wanted to include quite a few more losses. Some of them didn't make the cut. One that didn't, coincidentally, is the first game I ever saw at Fenway Park. It was the same day Lib Dooley died, in 2000, with the Yankees winning 21-2 (the teams’ largest ever margin of defeat in the history of the rivalry).
BN: I did originally want that one, but near the bottom, of course. Defeats can be defining moments -- certainly defeats loom large in Red Sox history for something like, let's say, 86 years! One of the criteria that I tried to keep in mind was: was this a game that, win or lose, I wish I'd been at. Of course, I'd rather not ever see a loss, and I've been to games I wish I hadn't, but some of them truly are historic ones. A "great game" is a game that is a meaningful game in Red Sox history. I don't like to even THINK about games like game 6 of the 1986 World Series, but there's no denying it was a defining game in the history of the franchise.
RSN: Game 6 in 1975 is considered by many to be the greatest World Series game ever played. Why did you rank game 5 of the1986 ALCS ahead of it?
CT: It really came down to splitting hairs between the "Fisk game" and the "Dave Henderson game." Without 2004, the Fisk game probably rates as number one. Decisions like that are difficult, which is one reason I didn't want to rate the games in either book. But the publisher insisted, so that's what we did.
BN: While rating the games is very much subjective, it adds an interesting element, because it gives everyone a chance to debate them. As for comparing the Fisk and Henderson games, well, we wanted a few wins in there, too! But going back to the losses one last time, we needed the pain and suffering or the book wouldn't have been realistic. And besides -- we can say in a spirit of generosity -- how interesting would Red Sox history have been if they'd won the World Series even just twice between 1918 and 2004? Not nearly as interesting. It's really a great, great story the way it all played out -- now that we have 2004 to cap it off.
RSN: One of the games you include is from 2003, when the Red Sox beat the Florida Marlins 25-8, scoring 10 runs in the first inning before an out was recorded.
CT: That whole three-game series was weird. As I'm sure you remember, Jack McKeon complained that we ran up the score, and the next night we didn't play aggressively after taking a 9-2 lead and ended up losing. That was also the series where Trot Nixon tossed the ball to a fan in the stands with two out. It was the type of series where you wished you could include all of the games.
BN: That game is a prime example of one of those games that I really wish I'd been at! And, as it turns out, it was a game against the 2003 World Champions.
RSN: Going back a century, the final game of the 1903 World Series actually paralleled the 2004 postseason in some ways.
CT: Yes, doesn't it make you wonder if a blood sacrifice is needed for the Sox to win? In 2004 you had Curt's bloody sock, and in 1903 you had Big Bill Dinneen on the mound for Boston. He got hit with a line drive in the third that split open a finger on his pitching hand. He ended up pitching a complete game shutout and struck out Honus Wagner, the batting champ, to end the game.
BN: Wherever we could, we tried to make connections. Those two years are tied together by song as well. The song "Tessie" - sung over and over again by Boston's Royal Rooters - rattled the Pittsburgh players and just might have helped given Boston a bit of an edge in the first World Series ever held. In 2004, Dr. Charles Steinberg helped resurrect "Tessie" and a new version was recorded by Boston band the Dropkick Murphys. Guess what happened in 2004? Now every time the Red Sox win a game, they have two victory songs: "Dirty Water" followed by "Tessie." They're my two favorite songs!
RSN: The 2004 postseason included several games which were a huge part of Red Sox history, yet only a few are included.
CT: That was a hard decision to make, but we couldn't have too many from any one year. We actually cheated a little, too, as we picked games 4 and 5 as the same entry, as though it was a double header.
BN: They both ended on the same calendar day, so it almost was, and that's part of how we justified counting it as one game.
RSN: 1946 and 1967 were notable years in Red Sox history. How were they represented in the book?
CT: One game that wasn't in the original list that we ended up having to add was the 1946 pennant clincher. Every player I interviewed who had played in the game insisted this was the one game they wanted to have in the book. The Sox had been trying to clinch for a while that September and they just couldn't seem to win a game at the right time. In this one, Ted Williams ended up hitting his only inside-the-park home run --because he hit it into left with the "shift" on -- and they won the game 1-0. Johnny Pesky, Dom DiMaggio, Don Gutteridge; they were adamant we had to include that one. So even though we had a lot of Ted in the book, we had to put that one in.
BN: The first game in the book that I actually attended was October 1, 1967 -- the day the Red Sox won the pennant for the first time in 21 years. Yaz was 4-for-4, the final game in his Triple Crown season; he drove in two runs, all the difference in Jim Lonborg's complete game 22nd win of his Cy Young year. We put in two post-season games from '67 as well, though game 7 is one I'd just as soon forget.
RSN: In retrospect, which game didn't make your top 50 that probably should have?
CT: I regret that we didn't include the match-up between Smoky Joe Wood and Walter Johnson in 1912, when they both had long winning streaks. That was an age long before ESPN, but the nation's eyes were watching what happened in that game. We should have included that one instead of Smoky Joe's no-hitter.
RSN: That one was among the “Other Greatest Games,” which are included near the end of the book. Are there any other difficult choices that either of you found especially interesting?
BN: I had this discussion with Cecilia about the 1920's. It was such a dismal decade for the Red Sox. Only once did they get a foot on the stairs out of the cellar. I thought we could underscore the point by simply stating, "There WERE no great games in the 1920s." Cecilia wanted to find at least one from each decade, so we dug deeper. It wasn't a game that really meant anything, but we uncovered one of those games that had you suffered with the Sox through the 20's, this was one game you really would have wanted to be at: September 5, 1927. Yankees vs. Red Sox, which still meant something despite the Red Sox being 140 games out of first place during the year Ruth hit 60 and the Bombers dominated everything. The game was 8-6 Red Sox after eight, but the Yankees tied it in the top of the ninth. It was into extra innings, and on and on. In the top of the 17th, the Yankees scored three times -- but Boston tied it back up! And won it in the bottom of the 18th inning. An isolated effort, to be sure, but we ranked it #42 on the list of the 50 Greatest Red Sox games.
RSN: Last one: What if the Red Sox had won the World Series again in 2005?
BN: That would have been a problem! Good question. As you guessed, our deadline came during the regular season in 2005. We would have appealed to the publisher to let us revise the manuscript, had anything happened that pushed a 2005 game onto the list. Unfortunately, there just wasn't that outstanding a Red Sox game in 2005. I'm hoping they put up a few more this year, and in the years to come.
CT: A revised edition at this point would need either another World Series win, or something truly outstanding like... Tim Wakefield pitching a perfect game, against the Yankees, to Jason Varitek because Doug Mirabelli was unavailable, while one of their father's was getting a kidney transplant on the same day, which would of course be successful. Don't laugh--that's the kind of story that really happens in baseball and is why I love writing baseball history. It could happen!