Red Sox vs. Yankees by Bill Nowlin

Author:Bill Nowlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781683583059
Publisher: Sports Publishing
Published: 2019-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

Honorable Mention

Roger Clemens, “The Rocket,” had great stats, too. He is, among other things, tied for the most wins in Red Sox history—192, tied with none other than Cy Young. Clemens himself won three Cy Young Awards with the Red Sox. He still holds the major-league record for strikeouts in a nine-inning game (20) which he achieved twice, once in 1986 and once in 1996. He leads the team in strikeouts with 2,590, in part reflecting the 13 seasons he pitched for Boston.

Clemens did win one more Cy Young with Boston than did Pedro, but he also won four others with different AL East teams, and that didn’t sit well. He said he wanted to pitch closer to home (Texas), and then signed with Toronto. And then he went to the (gasp) Yankees. And Boston fans have long memories. They recalled Clemens complaining about having to carry his own luggage. His last four seasons with the Red Sox, he was only 40–39.

There’s also the cloud that hangs over Clemens’s head. Steroids. Just a couple of months after he retired, in the words of Rick Bush, “all sorts of skeletons fell out of Clemens’s closet upon the release of the Mitchell Report.” It’s been a dozen years since he retired and despite unquestionable first-ballot Hall of Fame stats, he hasn’t been elected. In fact, in his first year of eligibility he was named on only 37.6 percent of those ballots.

Smoky Joe Wood had two World Championships on his resume. In 1912, he had the best won–loss record of any Red Sox pitcher: he was 34–5 with a 1.91 ERA in a season that saw him throw 10 shutouts. In 1915, he had an even better earned run average: 1.49. His record was 15–5. The only reason he didn’t win a Cy Young Award or two was because the award wasn’t initiated until 1956. He also threw a no-hitter in 1911.

In the 1912 World Series, Smoky Joe won three games for the Red Sox. An arm injury kept him from taking part in the 1915 World Series or playing at all in 1916. Wood later converted to become an outfielder for the Cleveland Indians, and proved to also be a very good hitter, with a career .297 batting average over six seasons for the Tribe.

Cy Young didn’t win a Cy Young Award, either, for the same reason Joe Wood did not. But he probably would have, in each of the first three years of the franchise: 1901, 1902, and 1903. He threw two no-hitters, one a perfect game on May 5, 1904. In fact, Young faced 76 consecutive hitters without giving up a hit over 25 1/3 innings, as part of a stretch in which he threw 45 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings. During that stretch, Young threw four straight shutouts, three of the wins by the score of just 1–0.

As noted above, Young won 192 games for Boston, tied with Clemens for tops in team history. Interestingly, the first seven of his eight seasons for Boston pre-dated the club adopting the name “Red Sox.

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