Anyone who still believes the Boston Red Sox were cursed for selling Babe Ruth in 1919 hasn't read Jerry Gutlon's It Was Never About The Babe.
Gutlon, a lifelong BoSox fan and long-time newspaper reporter, adeptly dispels the silly notion that his beloved Red Sox endured 86 years between World Series because Boston owner Harry Frazee sold baseball's greatest slugger.
There's no pitching around the subject. Gutlon retires the so-called "Curse of the Bambino" in the first chapter.
The remaining 22 chapters chronicle the meanderings of front-office villains whose inept management, anti-Semitism and racism hindered the franchise between World Series championships in 1918 and 2004.
Long-time owner Tom Yawkey is the primary culprit on Gutlon's skewer. Yawkey, who owned the Red Sox for 44 years, is repeatedly harpooned for bonehead transactions and overt bigotry.
The Red Sox were the last Major League team to integrate. Boston didn't cross the color barrier until 1959 — 12 years after Jackie Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and 13 months after Detroit became the next-to-last team to integrate.
And Boston committed unforgivable sins by passing up opportunities to employ Jackie Robinson (a Negro sportswriter pressured the team to give Robinson a tryout in 1945), Willie Mays, and other Negro League greats.
It Was Never About The Babe is purported to be a must-read for Red Sox fans, but Ford Frick probably would attach an asterisk to such a statement.
Truth is, die-hard Red Sox fans will find more pain than pleasure in It Was Never About The Babe.
Those who want to relive the Red Sox's pennant winning years of 1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986 best look elsewhere. Gutlon devotes only a handful of pages to each magnificent summer when Boston won the American League title, only to lose the World Series.
This is very much a book about lowlights, not highlights.
For example, the 1972 season, in which the Red Sox went 85-70 and were in the pennant race down to the wire, merits just seven paragraphs. The 1979 squad that rolled to a 91-69 record gets a mere sentence.
Individual stars don't fare much better. Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter of all time, rates a chapter and change. Hall-of-Famers Carl Yastrzemski, Wade Boggs and Jim Rice merit just a few pages each.
As a definitive history of the Red Sox, It Was Never About The Babe is down and outside the strike zone. As a look at the unsavory side of a mismanaged franchise, it cuts the plate.
Published March 22, 2009
Gary Corsair is a senior writer with the Daily Sun.
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As I told Gary after reading his review, the book wasn't intended to be a comprehensive history of the Red Sox. It was simply intended to debunk and deconstruct the so-called "Curse" once and for all.
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