It Was Never About the Babe: The Red Sox, Racism, Mismanagement, and the Curse of the Bambino [Hardcover]

Jerry M. Gutlon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 9, 2009

The first book to tell the entire story of why the Red Sox are now a dynasty--and what kept them from winning for more than eight decades.

For years, Red Sox fans were told that their team was cursed because the Sox sold Babe Ruth to the hated Yankees. But as Jerry Gutlon reveals in It Was Never About the Babe, there is much more drama to Red Sox history than the “Curse of the Bambino.” The truth is more shocking than any myth.

With the thorough research of a seasoned journalist and the zeal of a lifelong Red Sox fan, Gutlon explains why the Sox came up short season after season: ownership chose managers and players not based on their talent, but on whom they drank with; before and after baseball integrated, personal and institutional racism affected their decision-making; and their teams consistently lacked the talent, leadership, chemistry, and luck needed to win championships.

Most fans don’t know that Babe Ruth was sold not just to produce a Broadway play, bust also because commissioner Ban Johnson was trying to run Sox owner Harry Frazee out of baseball and because Ruth was a major disruption in the Sox clubhouse. They will be surprised to learn that Jackie Robinson tried out at Fenway Park and shocked to learn that much-admired Tom Yawkey, along with owning the Red Sox, also owned a brothel for decades.

Covering the early Red Sox championship dynasty of Ruth, the never-good-enough teams of Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, and Carlton Fisk and Curt Schilling, It Was Never About the Babe is an eye-opening read for every baseball fan, and a must-own book for every fan in Boston. 20 color and b/w photographs

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Jerry Gutlon's It Was Never About the Babe: The Red Sox, Racism, mismanagement, and the Curse of the Bambino is an astute, anecdote-rich journey through the shadow of darkness. . . . Gutlon really hits his stride, however, when it comes to the 44-year regime of Tom Yawkey, an era of 'cronyism, poor management, racism, and downright stupidity' during which key decisions were arrived at by the owner in conference with his 'steam-bath buddies.' . . . . The book travels through the team's recent glories to the present and includes a nice stash of photos." ----Boston Globe

About the Author

Jerry M. Gutlon is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist who has been published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other publications. This is his first book.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing (March 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1602393494
• ISBN-13: 978-1602393493
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #781,453 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent history of the Red Sox, April 12, 2009

By 

Samuel Savage (Dedham, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: It Was Never About the Babe: The Red Sox, Racism, Mismanagement, and the Curse of the Bambino (Hardcover)

Once I opened the book, I had a great deal of difficulty putting it down. As a life long Red Sox fan, I thought I knew a lot about my team. As Jerry Gutlon ppointed out, I didn't know half of it. It was very disturbing to read the terrible truth about the racism and troubles of the organization prior to the John Henry group's purcahse of the team. Jerry tells it like it is and I hope to see more of his incisive writing on the local sports scene.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally the Stupid Curse of the Bambino is put to Rest, March 28, 2009

By 

R. C Sheehy "deadsox" (Foxboro,MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: It Was Never About the Babe: The Red Sox, Racism, Mismanagement, and the Curse of the Bambino (Hardcover)

Thank God this book has done what two world series championships have not been able to do and that is put to rest the stupid idea that by trading or selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees the Red Sox were cursed to not win another championship for 86 years. This book clearly makes an argument that if there is a curse it was the curse of Tom Yawkey. Often seen as a baseball good guy in Boston baseball history, here he is show as a racist and an alcoholic whose gross mismanagement of the team lead to the loss of many talented young rookies for over the hill veterans who never produced.

More shamefully, Yawkey's bigotry prevented the Red Sox from signing any talented young black athletes or using any black scouts to find them. This way he could high behind the "we can't find anyone worthy" scam for quite a long time. The book does a great job of destroying the arguments of Yawkey apologists and shows how even after Yawkey's death, his legacy continued through a trust that ran the Red Sox on auto pilot and continued to mistreat the club and the fans all in the name of the Red Sox "legacy."

This is a must read for Sox fans who want a true understanding of why it took them 86 years to win the World Series and why John Henry and company have won two series in less then 10 years while Yawkey never won a single series. There are a few factual errors so I can't give it a full five stars but I recommend it non the less.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of interesting material but could have been handled better, October 23, 2009

By 

bronx book nerd (Bronx, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: It Was Never About the Babe: The Red Sox, Racism, Mismanagement, and the Curse of the Bambino (Hardcover)

I struggled over giving this book 3 or 4 stars. I settled on 4 because there is a lot of interesting material about the history of the Red Sox for both Red Sox fans in particular and baseball fans in general. I thought of giving a 3 because the material could have been presented better by a more highly skilled writer.

The premise is that there was never such a thing as a curse that kept the Red Sox from winning a World Series for almost a century. Not exactly the hardest challenge to prove that a superstition was not the actual cause of the team's problems, as Gutlon goes on to demonstrate. Racism, administrative and managerial incompetence, poor managerial moves in key situations, bad overall strategy for finding talent, poor trades, etc., were among the actual causes of the Red Sox failed attempts to win a world series and to field consistently good teams. There are a lot of interesting tidbits and information that make reading the book worthwhile: for example, that the Red Sox, at the turn of the 20th century, had a Latino pitcher but changed his name to hide his ethnicity; that owner Tom Yawkey owned and financed a brothel in South Carolina; that the Red Sox held a sham try-out for Jackie Robinson and other Negro League players; and, that Ted Williams was immature and arrogant, and once gave Red Sox fans the finger after hitting a home run.

The quality of the writing could have been better. Gutlon uses too many cliches, even referring to someone as "not the sharpest knife in the drawer". It seems as if 90% of the text is quotes attributed to other baseball writers, or qoutes from newspapers that covered the Red Sox, or qoutes from the Sporting News. There is very little of Gutlon's own voice in the book, and therefore very little of his own analysis or interpretation of the material he worked with. The only time he displays his own voice is in a diatribe against Dan O'Shaugnessy, the sportswriter who coined the Curse of the Bambino and apparently made a lot of money from a book about the subject.

For a die-hard baseball fan, the recounting of individual scores of important games and updates on each years won-lost recors is palatable. However, Gutlon seems to lose his train of thought as he gets caught up in inconsistencies, labeling very similar ERA's and pitchers' won-lost records as both good and bad, seemingly applying the label he feels most appropriate to make his current point. There is more of this throughout the book, like first mentioning in a footnote that Roger Clemens' name came up in relation to steroids, downplaying it as if it was a minor thing, and then mentioning it again in a later footnote but this time giving it more serious discussion. Perhaps Gluton's greatest Gaffe in this regard is in one of his last chapters, when he describes the Red Sox World Series win as finally putting a dagger into the curse and ending it for all time. So there was a curse after all? If Gluton meant this sarcastically it did not come across like that.

In sum, there is enough interesting material here about baseball, the Red Sox and individual players to satisfy a baseball fan, and the book is written to do not much more than that.