Just before the All-Star break, the Red Sox joined Major League Baseball’s exclusive 10,000 wins club.
Only four other clubs beat Boston to the punch since the Modern Era began in 1901: the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, New York/San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals.
It’s a great achievement, to be sure, but it’s difficult to truly grasp the enormity. After all, the inaugural Red Sox game on April 26, 1901 was the first of 19,316 regular-season contests in a franchise history that spans 125 seasons. In that time, 22 men have served as president of the United States. There have been two World Wars and countless others. Prohibition came and went. Women were finally granted the right to vote. Jim Crow laws were overturned. The NHL, NFL, and NBA were founded. Major League Baseball slowly expanded from eight teams per league to 15, sorting them into divisions along the way. There were births and deaths, including every person who was alive for that first Red Sox win. (The oldest person on earth is Ethel Caterham, who was born Aug. 21, 1909.)
Or, as summarized perfectly by the late, great James Earl Jones in the classic baseball movie “Field of Dreams,” “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.”
Being someone who loves history, I decided to examine each thousandth win. On this multi-part trip down memory lane, I wanted to revisit these victories, the men who won them, and the context in which they played, and try to understand some of the parts that make up the sum of 10,000 Red Sox victories.
A special thanks to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), and Baseball Reference and its Stathead database, which were marvelously helpful.
Now, to paraphrase ‘The Sound of Music,’ the beginning is a very good place to start.
Win No. 1 – April 30, 1901 (at Philadelphia Athletics, Columbia Park)
Red Sox manager: Jimmy Collins
President of the United States: William McKinley
The first victory in Red Sox history wasn’t technically won by the Red Sox.
They were the Boston Americans when they beat the Philadelphia Athletics that day, and continued playing under such name for six more seasons.
Win No. 1 was the fourth contest in a 138-game season, which Boston ultimately finished 79-57 and second out of eight in the fledgling American League. And because this was decades before the implementation of the designated hitter, Boston’s Cy Young and A’s Billy Milligan each went 2-for-4 in addition to tossing complete games; Young had a pair of RBI and a walk, Milligan scored a run.
And like so many Boston games still to come, this win required extra innings.
It was far from the first extra-inning game in professional baseball history – that took place on June 14, 1870 – but in retrospect, it feels like the opening salvo to a franchise saga overflowing with memorable extra-inning moments.
Since their inception in 1901, the Red Sox have played 1,758 extra-inning games in the regular season, including 31 in 1943, an MLB record that stands. Boston’s former Triple-A affiliate, the Pawtucket Red Sox, also set the professional game record when they duked it out with the Rochester Red Wings for 33 innings in 1981.
The Red Sox own baseball’s seventh highest winning percentage in them (.514). (Or 10th best, if you exclude the Brooklyn Tip-Tops, Pittsburgh Rebels and Chicago Whales, three teams that existed for the 1914 and 1915 seasons, in the Federal League, a short-lived MLB competitor.)
Since the first official World Series in 1903 – which the Red Sox won, by the way – there have been 67 Fall Classic contests have gone to extras, including eight with the Red Sox (5-3). Three of their nine championships required at least one extra-inning game.
Some Red Sox extra-inning moments are legendary: Carlton Fisk’s homer in the ‘75 World Series, the nightmare of Bill Buckner’s misplay in ‘86, and most recently, the valiant effort of Nathan Eovaldi in Game 3 in ‘18, when the Red Sox and Dodgers broke their own 1916 record by playing the longest postseason game by innings (18) and time (seven hours, 20 minutes).
And in the 2004 ALCS, David Ortiz became the first player in MLB history to walk off back-to-back games, both times in extras.
But did you know that just over 11 years after their first-ever win in 1901, the Red Sox and New York Giants took Game 8 of the 1912 World Series to extras? It was the first time a deciding game went beyond nine innings, and in part because it was one of the only best-of-nine Fall Classics ever, the 75 total innings played over the course of that series stand as the record to this day.
So even though it’s an exercise in futility to compare the Red Sox of 1901 to the Red Sox of today, it’s funny, and kind of heartwarming to look back and see that this is a team that has fought and clawed since the very beginning.
Or if you’re a glass-half-empty type of person, this darn team has never been able to put opponents away in a timely fashion.
But back to 1901. Several American icons with unique ties to baseball were born, including legendary musician Louis Armstrong, whose love of the game was only surpassed by his love of music, and Walt Disney, who would play ball with his employees at the studio in Los Angeles and included baseball in several early animations. Decades after Disney passed away, his eponymous company owned the Anaheim Angels from 1996-03.
The day before the Americans’ first game, New York became the first state to require license plates for automobiles.
On Sept. 5, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, now known as Minor League Baseball, was formed in Chicago. The following day at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, N.Y., anarchist Leon Czolgosz fatally shot U.S. President William McKinley. McKinley succumbed eight days later, and was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.
Win No. 1,000 – July 29, 1913 (Chicago White Sox, Fenway Park)
Red Sox manager: Bill Carrigan
President of the United States: Woodrow Wilson
Despite the enormous success the Red Sox enjoyed in their first two decades, it took over a dozen years to reach their 1,000th win. During that time, Oklahoma (1907), New Mexico and Arizona (both 1912) officially became the country’s 46th, 47th, and 48th states.
The Boston ball club, rechristened the Red Sox by principal owner John I. Taylor in 1908, posted a winning record 10 times between 1901 and 1913. (They were, however, only playing between 138-158 games each season during that span.)
The 1,000th win came atop a Tuesday doubleheader with the visiting Chicago White Sox. Fenway Park, barely a year old, saw Rube Foster toss a complete-game shutout in the victory, which took just an hour and 42 minutes.
It was also barely two weeks after Red Sox president and part-owner Jimmy McAleer had fired manager Garland “Jake” Stahl, and replaced the 1912 World Series-winning skipper with player-manager Bill Carrigan.
Though not mentioned by name, McAleer’s most enduring legacy is the story behind the Dropkick Murphy’s modernized version of the song “Tessie,” which is played after “Dirty Water” when the Red Sox win at home:
“The Rooters showed up at the Grounds one day / They found their seats had all been sold / McGreevy led the charge into the park / Stormed the gates and put the game on hold”
The Royal Rooters – the Irish booster club which counted Boston Mayor John J. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald (President John F. Kennedy’s maternal grandfather), who’d thrown out the ceremonial first pitch at Fenway’s very first game earlier that spring, among their ranks – arrived at Fenway for Game 7 of the 1912 World Series to discover what McAleer claimed was a clerical error. The incensed Rooters delayed first pitch by nearly an hour and called for a boycott of Game 8. Thus, Fenway was only at half-capacity when the Red Sox clinched the championship the following day.
Win No. 2,000 – July 19, 1927 (at Cleveland Indians, Dunn Field)
Red Sox manager: Bill Carrigan
President of the United States: Calvin Coolidge
A World War, the pandemic known as the “Spanish Flu,” and Babe Ruth’s entire Red Sox career had come and gone by the time the Sultan of Swat’s former team reached its next thousandth win on July 19, 1927.
One of the only remnants of that golden era of Americans/Red Sox baseball was Bill Carrigan, who had retired as player-manager after the ‘16 season but agreed to return to the latter role in ‘27.
As one quarter of the Main-New Hampshire Theaters Company, which owned an estimated 50 vaudeville and motion picture theaters, the Lewiston, Maine native quickly became a wealthy man during his years away from the team. So much so that after another partner announced his purchase of Carrigan’s share of the company on Jan. 18, 1922, the next day’s edition of the Washington D.C.’s Times Herald bore the headline, “‘Smiling Bill’ Carrigan Expected To Be Eventual Owner of Red Sox” near the top of the sports page.
The article described the former catcher as a “master baseball strategist” and reported that Carrigan’s partner paid him between $200,000 and $250,000, the equivalent of $3.84 to $4.8 million today.
Carrigan didn’t return to the Red Sox until ‘27, though, and he found that second time wasn’t the charm. During his time away, the franchise had plummeted from the heavens. While Ruth, his former teammate and roommate, headlined the Yankees’ legendary ‘Murderers’ Row’ lineup, the sad-sack Sox finished last each season in Carrigan’s three-year return and never won more than 58 games.
One of Boston’s 51 wins in 1927 was No. 2,000, a 6-5 road victory over the club then known as the Cleveland Indians. The home team needed three pitchers just to finish the first inning, as neither Emil Levsen nor Willis Hudlin recorded an out; they yielded a combined five runs on three hits and two walks before George Grant was called upon to pitch the rest of the game.
Though Bob Quinn, who’d purchased the club from Frazee in ‘23, wanted Carrigan to stay on to manage the Red Sox as they entered the 1930s, he resigned for good in late December ‘29. Just over three years later, Quinn sold the team to Tom Yawkey, instead.
Win No. 3,000 – Sept. 1, 1941 (Senators, Fenway Park)
Red Sox manager: Joe Cronin
President of the United States: Franklin D. Roosevelt
Close to a century before the Red Sox won their 10,000th game against a Washington D.C. club, they won their 3,000th against its predecessor.
Today, they’re known as the Minnesota Twins, but they were the Washington Senators when they lost both ends of a doubleheader at Fenway on Monday, Sept. 1, 1941.
Batting cleanup on that Monday afternoon, a 22-year-old Ted Williams had three hits over the two games, including his 33rd and 34th of an MLB-leading 37 total home runs that season. The Red Sox outscored their guests 23-11, putting up double digits in both contests.
Despite also hitting an AL-best .406 and leading the majors in on-base, slugging, OPS, runs, and walks, Williams finished second in MVP voting to Yankees’ Joe DiMaggio and Joe Gordon in ’41 and ’42, respectively. After missing the next three seasons while he served in World War II, the greatest hitter the Red Sox have ever known came home and continued his 19-year Hall of Fame career.
The 1940s were an era of immense change for baseball. While many major leaguers were serving in World War II, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was founded in 1943.
In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier when he made his Brooklyn Dodgers debut. The Red Sox, sadly, will be remember as the last MLB team to integrate. They famously passed up opportunities to sign several Black players, including Robinson and Willie Mays. Finally, on July 21, 1959, Elijah “Pumpsie” Green became Boston’s first Black player.
