James L. Ray's Review

Here's a review of It Was Never About the Babe by the national baseball correspondent for suite101.com:

Whether you are a Red Sox fan, a Yankee fan, or, really, any type of baseball fan, you are going to love Jerry M. Gutlon's new book It Was Never About The Babe.

This incredibly well-researched book completely debunks the myth that Boston's 86-year World Series championship drought had anything to do with Harry Frazee's trade of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees after the 1919 season.

Instead, as Gutlon demonstrates in great detail, the real reasons why the Red Sox couldn't get over the hump for almost a century were: (1) racist ownership, and (2) stubborn, often stupid, and almost always inflexible management.

While the rest of baseball was embracing racial integration during the late 1940s and the 1950s, the Boston Red Sox remained an all-white team. It wasn't until 1959 that the Sox signed Pumpsie Green, making Boston the last team in baseball to integrate. The discrimination wasn't limited to black players. Yawkey also kept Catholics and Jews off the team, a practice that led to a 1959 lawsuit against the Sox.

But it wasn't just racism that kept Boston down for so long. It was also a series of poor, stubborn decisions by ownership and management that contributed to the drought. Perhaps the most famous example of poor on-field management occurred in Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series, when manager Grady Little left Pedro Martinez on the mound for much too long, a move that allowed the New York Yankees to turn an almost certain loss into another tragic BoSox loss when Aaron Boone hit a walk off homer that sent the Yankees, instead of the Sox, to the Series.

The book also shows how the alleged Curse of the Bambino was nothing more than a fantasy dreamed up by noted (and often reviled) Boston sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy. In fact, according to Gutlon, the phrase "The Curse of the Bambino" didn't really come about until Shaughnessy wrote his 1990 book by the same name. The term was so catchy and irresistible to down-and-out Boston fans, that it soon took on a life of its own, and it remained a mythical staple in the Red Sox diet until, of course, the team finally won it all in 2004.

This is a great book, both as a history lesson and as an ode to one of the most important teams in the history of the game.

Buy it. Read it. Love it.