Boston Red Sox: Most memorable games in franchise history
The Boston Red Sox have had some incredible winning moments in their long and storied franchise. Here’s a look at the best ones.
The 117 year history of the Boston Red Sox has been filled with some of the highest highs imaginable for a baseball team. From Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth to David Ortiz and Mookie Betts and everyone in between, Fenway Park has been home to some of baseball’s greatest players over the years as they’ve helped the Red Sox win.
Even during the team’s eighty-six year World Series drought between 1918 and 2004, there were many thrilling and important wins along the way that kept faithful fans coming back year after year with the belief that the next season would finally be the one where that faith would be rewarded.
Since 2004, there have been numerous thrilling wins, but even during the “wilderness years” the Red Sox always kept us coming back for more. The following list goes through the greatest wins in franchise history. In the interest of keeping it from getting unwieldy, great regular season wins that didn’t impact the final standings won’t be considered…these are all games that mattered.
In chronological order, let’s begin.
Ted Williams hits .406
This one isn’t a game that meant a whole lot in terms of the Red Sox place in the standings as they finished the 1941 season at 84-70 and in second place in the American League, but this win was still a big deal. In fact, besides being the only entry on this list that isn’t a game of importance, it’s the only one that’s actually two games.
On September 28, 1941, Ted Williams was closing in on one of the greatest individual accomplishments in baseball: hitting .400. Entering that final day of the season, he was batting .39955 which would have been rounded up to an even .400 then and there. Fans and the press wondered if he’d bother playing the final two games of the season (a doubleheader); even Red Sox manager Joe Cronin offered to sit Williams to preserve his average.
Williams’ response was legendary: “If I’m going to be a .400 hitter, I want more than my toenails on the line” he reportedly said. In a gutsy move totally in keeping with his character, he played in both games and went a combined 6-for-8 at the plate on the day to finish the season with a .406.
To this day he is the last player to hit .400. Only two players since 1941 have even come remotely close: George Brett hit .390 in 1980 and Tony Gwynn hit .394 in the strike-shortened 1994 season.
Making Williams’ feat even more impressive is the fact that in 1941, sacrifice flies were still counted as at-bats. Had modern rules applied, most baseball statisticians calculate that Ted would have actually hit between .411 and .419 (it’s a range because sacrifice flies weren’t a recorded statistic at the time).
For the season, Williams hit 37 home runs and 120 RBI to go along with his .406 average, missing the Triple Crown by five RBI (he still ended up winning two Crowns over his entire career, a record).
This one is an individual accomplishment, but it’s still one of the greatest days in Red Sox history and worthy of inclusion on this list.
The Red Sox win the 1967 pennant
As most Red Sox fans who are well-versed in the team’s history know, the Red Sox of the 1950s and 1960s were bad…really bad. Since being one of the best teams in the American League during the 1940s, the Red Sox sank to the bottom of the standings for the entirety of the 1950s and into the 1960s. When the 1967 season started, there was little reason to expect anything different in Boston.
The 1966 Red Sox had gone 72-90 and finished ninth out of ten teams in the American league. Heading into the 1967 season, Sox fans had no reason to expect anything other than more of the same, but a funny thing happened. The season started and the team started winning… and they never stopped. Even the tragic incident that injured Boston slugger Tony Conigliaro and ended his season on August 18 couldn’t slow the Sox down.
The final month of the season was a battle between the Red Sox, Tigers, Twins, and White Sox for the top spot in the American League. The teams traded places atop the standings all month heading into the final day of the season. The Red Sox finished the campaign with two games against the Twins while the Tigers had two games against the Angels. The Red Sox swept the Twins and then had to listen to the Tigers game on the radio in the clubhouse to learn their fate.
With the Tigers losing, the Red Sox finished the season at 92-70 and completed what came to be known as the Impossible Dream. Their star player Carl Yastrzemski finished his Triple Crown-winning season and the Red Sox won their first pennant in twenty-one years. They would go on to lose the World Series to the powerhouse Cardinals in seven games.
While the Red Sox didn’t complete their dream season by winning the World Series and ending their then-49 year drought, winning the pennant was still one of the biggest and most important victories in Red Sox history. The 1967 season ended up being the first winning season the Red Sox had since 1958 and they won their first pennant since 1946.
More than that, the 1967 team saved baseball in Boston and gave birth to Red Sox Nation. Prior to that season, the Red Sox were dead last in the American League in attendance and New England had long lost interest in the team. During that magical season, the Sox led the American League in attendance and re-energized the entire region, giving birth to the baseball-crazed region that’s so well-known to the present day.
Carlton Fisk’s home run in Game Six
The 1975 World Series pitted the Red Sox against the Big Red Machine Cincinnati Reds. It proved to be an epic seven game tilt that to this day is considered one of the greatest World Series of all time. Even though the Red Sox came out on the wrong end of yet another World Series and failed to end their championship drought, Sox fans look back on this series for a variety of reasons, perhaps none more so than the events that transpired just after midnight on October 22, 1975.
Game Six was played after being delayed three days due to torrential rain in Boston. Once it started on October 21, it was a back and forth affair that was tied after nine innings. Heading into the bottom of the twelfth inning, both teams had their chances to win the game without coming through.
Stepping up to the plate, Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk hit the second pitch he saw deep to left field. Watching as it soared into the night sky, television cameras caught him jumping and waving the ball fair before it hit the foul pole for the game-winning solo home run.
It’s become an iconic moment in baseball and Red Sox history and capped off what is widely considered to be one of the greatest games in World Series history. My dad (who is a Yankees fan, believe it or not) had told me when I was a kid that he was watching this game and it was even more exciting at the time than the film footage conveys.
While the Red Sox ended up losing the World Series in the late innings of Game Seven the next day, Fisk’s home run and the Game Six victory remain one of the greatest in team history. The left field foul pole was named the Fisk Pole in 2005 to commemorate the moment… clearly the win meant something, and continues to, all these years later.
Red Sox win 1986 ALCS
This is where the big wins start to get personal for me as I was a kid during the 1986 season and that year looms large in my memory as a baseball and Red Sox fan. As I wrote in my article about the greatest Red Sox players of the 1980s, the 1986 team was the first one that I fell in love with and that season thrilled me before the Red Sox broke my heart for the first time.
After winning the AL East with a 95-66 record, the Red Sox faced the California Angels in the ALCS. After splitting the first two games at Fenway Park, the Red Sox dropped the next two games in Anaheim and entered game five down 3-1 in the series and on the brink of elimination. Things looked grim heading into the ninth inning with the Angels leading 5-2.
Red Sox DH Don Baylor hit a two-run home run with one out to pull the Red Sox to within a run at 5-4, but the Angels retired the next batter. After Sox catcher RIch Gedman was hit by the first pitch he saw with two outs, the Angels put their closer Donnie Moore in to finish the game off.
With Gedman on base, two outs, and down to his last strike after fouling off a few pitches, Red Sox center fielder Dave Henderson swung at Moore’s splitter which didn’t dive as much as he would’ve liked. Henderson got a hold of it and launched it over the left field wall for a two-run homer and a 6-5 Red Sox lead.
Henderson’s leaps and twists down the first base line as the ball sailed out have become as iconic as Carlton Fisk’s waving during his home run in the 1975 World Series. The Angels tied the game in the bottom of the ninth, but Henderson drove in the winning run in the top of the eleventh with a sacrifice fly off of Moore. The Sox survived to play another day while the Angels were shell-shocked and never recovered.
The Red Sox went on to win the final two games of the series 10-4 and 8-1 to complete their comeback and win the pennant. It remains to this day one of the greatest series in baseball postseason history and probably second only to the 2004 ALCS in Red Sox history. We all know how the Red Sox lost the ensuing World Series in excruciating fashion, but the ALCS remains one of their finest (and biggest) wins.
Red Sox win 1999 ALDS behind Pedro Martinez & Troy O’Leary
This win didn’t result in a pennant, World Series, or individual record, but it was a huge win nonetheless. After going to the World Series in 1986 and losing in the ALCS in 1988 and 1990, the Red Sox had made two more trips to the postseason but hadn’t advanced past the ALDS, losing in 1995 and 1998.
In 1999, things looked like they were finally lining up correctly for the Red Sox. Their ace Pedro Martinez was coming off of one of the most dominating seasons in baseball history and shortstop Nomar Garciaparra‘s incredible season led things on the offensive side. With Martinez pitching Game One, it looked like Boston would make short work of the Indians and move on to the ALCS.
Instead, Pedro left that game in the fifth inning with a shoulder injury and the Indians took a 2-0 series lead before the Red Sox came back to tie the series and force a decisive game five. Tied 8-8 going into the bottom of the fourth inning, Pedro was put into the game in relief and proceeded to throw six no-hit innings while completely shutting the Indians down.
While Pedro took care of the Indians, Troy O’Leary put the Red Sox up for good with a go-ahead three-run homer in the seventh inning. That hit came after his grand slam in the third inning which kept the Sox in the game before Pedro came in. Behind Pedro’s mastery and O’Leary’s 7 RBI game, the Red Sox completed the comeback and won the series to move on to the ALCS.
While they ended up losing to the dynastic Yankees in five games in the ALCS, the Red Sox showed real grit in finally breaking through to make the final round of the American League playoffs for the first time since 1990. It would be another five years before they’d finally break through, conquer the Yankees, and win another pennant, but for those of us who were around at the time it cannot be overstated how big this win was.
Red Sox win 2004 ALCS
This is the big one, probably the biggest one in Red Sox history. When the Red Sox won the 2004 ALCS, they vanquished the Yankees, exorcised all the ghosts of the past, won their first pennant in eighteen years, and avenged the heartbreak from the year before. The World Series was almost an anticlimax after this rollercoaster of a series.
After losing the 2003 ALCS in crushing fashion the previous October, the Red Sox and Yankees spent the entire season eyeing each other as the mutual hatred between the two teams grew even deeper than before. The Red Sox aborted trade for Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees subsequent acquisition of him threw gasoline onto the fire of enmity that had already burned brightly for a century.
After both teams made short work of their opponents in the ALDS, the stage was set for a rematch of epic proportions. The previous year’s ALCS between the two teams had gone to the eleventh inning of the seventh game and there was no reason to expect that the sequel would go anything less than the distance.
Imagine, then, the surprise of Red Sox fans who were stunned when the Yankees easily took a 3-0 series lead. After the 19-8 drubbing in Game Three at Fenway Park, the feeling of dread and disbelief among Red Sox fans was palpable. How could this be happening, especially because the two teams had been so evenly matched all season? Personally, I had given up all hope and told myself I was going to watch to the bitter end because I’d followed the Sox my entire life and wasn’t going to stop now.
First baseman Kevin Millar famously said “don’t let us win one game!” It seemed like a hollow proclamation of faith, but as we later learned, if there was ever a Red Sox team built to overcome adversity as great as a 3-0 deficit to the hated Yankees, it was the 2004 team.
With the Red Sox down to their last outs in Game Four, facing a ninth inning deficit and the greatest closer of all time in Mariano Rivera, they improbably won the game. Millar walked, Dave Roberts stole second, Bill Mueller drove him in, and David Ortiz hit the game-winning home run in the twelfth inning.
Game Five was another extra-innings marathon until Ortiz again won it with an RBI single in the fourteenth inning. The series then shifted to the Bronx for the final two games and as we know, the Red Sox were by then a team of destiny. Curt Schilling pitched masterfully on a hastily repaired ankle in the “Bloody Sock” Game Six, the same game when Rodriguez became a Red Sox villain by slapping the ball out of Bronson Arroyo‘s glove.
Game Seven? It was never close as Johnny Damon hit a second inning grand slam and a two-run homer in the fourth and the Red Sox routed the Yankees to finally beat them in the postseason and win the pennant.
The jubilation across Red Sox Nation was so great that the World Series was almost an afterthought. Facing a powerful St. Louis Cardinals team, the Red Sox never slowed their roll and swept the series to finally end eighty-six years of futility and heartache.
While winning the World Series was always the ultimate goal, ask any Red Sox fan and they’ll tell you that winning the 2004 ALCS was the best thing that the team ever did. I share that belief.
Red Sox win 2004 World Series
As mentioned previously, while winning the 2004 ALCS was cathartic on so many levels and lives on as the greatest win in Red Sox history, the ultimate prize was always the World Series. After winning the American League pennant, there was still no guarantee that Boston was going to finally end their drought.
Standing in their way were the St. Louis Cardinals, winners of 105 games and the best team in all of baseball in 2004. There was some trepidation among Red Sox fans that after winning such an epic and draining ALCS, there would be a letdown in the World Series and the drought would continue. We needn’t have worried.
The Red Sox carried over their roll into the World Series and absolutely dominated the Cardinals en route to a sweep and their long-awaited return to being World Series champions. The Red Sox led every inning of the four games and other than a scare in game one, the outcome was never in doubt.
The 2004 World Series gets overlooked a little bit because of how big winning the ALCS was, but make no mistake that had the Red Sox not sealed the deal and won it all after beating the Yankees, it would have been seen as a massive disappointment. If winning the 2004 ALCS is the greatest win in Red Sox history, winning the 2004 World Series is an incredibly close second… if not too close to call.
Red Sox win 2007 ALCS
What is it with the Red Sox and improbable comebacks? In the 2004 ALCS they became the first team to ever come back from a 3-0 series deficit and in the 1986 ALCS they came back from being down 3-1. They found themselves in the same boat in 2007, down 3-1 to a very good Cleveland Indians team, and yet somehow they found a way.
After the catharsis of 2004, Red Sox fans went from being constantly fatalistic to a quiet confidence when the team was facing adversity. After winning the first game of the series, the Red Sox lost the next three to the Indians and faced a do-or-die game five in Cleveland. As in 1986, winning this fifth game proved to be the pivot point of the series where the Red Sox gained confidence while the Indians lost theirs.
Knowing that Josh Beckett (who was phenomenal in the 2007 postseason) was getting the start in Game Five, the Indians decided to try to rattle him by bringing a country-singing former girlfriend of his out to sing the National Anthem. It didn’t work. The Red Sox pummeled CC Sabathia for the second time in the series and won the game 7-1. From there, the Indians never had a chance.
Heading back to Fenway Park for the final two games, the Red Sox absolutely destroyed Cleveland. JD Drew hit a first inning grand slam in Game Six and the Red Sox won 12-2. In Game Seven, the Red Sox never trailed and pulled away late in the game for the 11-2 win and another AL pennant. They’d go on to sweep the Colorado Rockies in the World Series. Mark this ALCS win as one of the biggest and most thrilling the Red Sox have ever had.
Red Sox win 2013 World Series
This was the most unexpected championship in Red Sox history. After finishing in last place in 2012 and enduring the insufferable Bobby Valentine, Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, and Josh Beckett, the Red Sox front office and then-GM Ben Cherington looked at the 2013 season as a way to reset and rebuild.
After firing Valentine and suckering the Dodgers into taking on the massive salaries of Gonzalez, Beckett, and Crawford, Cherington brought back former pitching coach John Farrell to manage the team. He then set about filling out the roster with lower cost veterans and journeymen in an effort to rebuild the character and leadership in the clubhouse and on the field.
In no one’s wildest dreams was this team expected to go 97-65 and win the division, but it was the perfect mix of players for that city in that year. With the Boston Marathon bombings shocking the city and the country, New England rallied around the Red Sox as the team helped heal the wounds with a season nobody saw coming.
It didn’t hurt that the new veterans and journeymen all had the best seasons of their careers at the same time. If ever a Red Sox team caught lightning in a bottle, it was the 2013 squad. They overcame a tough Detroit Tigers team in the ALCS to win the pennant and advanced to the World Series. They then defeated an excellent St. Louis Cardinals squad to win the unlikeliest World Series in their history.
In any other year, the 2013 Red Sox would’ve simply been a nice story, a fluke occurrence. But in 2013, they were exactly what the city of Boston and all of New England needed and for that, they’ll always hold a special place in the hearts of Red Sox fans.
Red Sox finish greatest season in franchise history
This last one may seem like recency bias, but hear me out. The 2016 and 2017 Red Sox had each won the division before going out with a whimper in the ALDS both seasons. Manager John Farrell, never a great field tactician, had worn out his welcome in the clubhouse and seemed to be a less than inspiring leader.
The 2017 Red Sox were also one of the more unlikable editions of the team, with fans across New England having a hard time warming to them despite exciting homegrown stars like Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley, and Andrew Benintendi. The Red Sox decided to fire Farrell and hire former Red Sox infielder (and member of the 2007 World Series winning team) Alex Cora as manager.
The other big addition was the signing of free agent slugger JD Martinez to fill the void left by the retirement of David Oritz after the 2016 season. The Red Sox started the 2018 season hot and never let up, finishing with a major league-leading 108-54 record, the best in franchise history.
However, heading into the postseason most fans and media outside of New England didn’t think the Red Sox would go far in October. Standing in their way were the Yankees (100-62) and defending champion Houston Astros (103-59). Their previous two October failures also hung over their heads and counted against them in the eyes of everyone else.
It was important for the Red Sox to have a strong showing and at least get to the ALCS in order for the season to not be considered a failure. Instead, they rampaged through the postseason, defeating the Yankees in the ALDS (3-1) and the Astros in the ALCS (4-1) to square off against the Dodgers in the World Series. They then dominated Los Angeles, winning the World Series in five games to finish off the greatest single season in Red Sox history.
Was the 2018 the best Red Sox season ever? In terms of record and sheer dominance, it was, although it will never be as important as the 2004 team. Still, the 2018 team winning the World Series was huge for Red Sox fans and the team itself. It proved that the previous two seasons weren’t meaningless, that this next generation of stars had to take their lumps and endure their growing pains before learning how to become winners.
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It’s also the most recent success the team has had and with the way things went in 2019 and are looking for 2020 and the near future, it might be the last for a while. For their sheer dominance from Opening Day to the final out of the World Series, the 2018 team winning it all was huge.