Boston Red Sox Designated Hitter lineage
By Rick McNair
The Boston Red Sox have had some memorable and forgettable designated hitters. Let’s take a look.
The designated hitter (DH) is, in actuality, not an easy role to consistently fill with success. The Red Sox have been quite fortunate to have the best to ever “play” that position in David Ortiz. Any discussion of “The Best” to be a DH in Boston has a beginning and an end with Papi and that can apply to all of baseball.
When examining the various practitioners of DH in Boston I have excluded some of whom the bulk of their Boston career was spent elsewhere on the diamond. Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice, Dwight Evans, Manny Ramirez and even a young and talented Cecil Cooper and underappreciated Brian Daubach. For Yaz, Rice, and Evans it was a career extender – especially Yastrzemski.
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With Cooper – a magnificent hitter – it was a place to play part-time or until a positional roadblock was eliminated, which appears to be a method many teams have employed over the years. So my focus was on those that the Red Sox decided to bring aboard to see if they had anything left in the baseball tank or could provide some stability at DH for several seasons.
The list contains four members of the baseball Hall of Fame, a flawed personality that became patient zero in the PED mess, a player who walked away from baseball over a slight, one who drove himself into bankruptcy and a few others who were totally forgettable.