A look at 14 of the greatest Boston Red Sox of all time
In the spirit of March brackets, Boston.com launched its own: Voting to decide who is Boston’s greatest-ever athlete. The #GOATMadness bracket carries a full 64-person field, so go vote.
The city of Boston has played host or home to hundreds of incredible athletes, and Boston.com assembled the best of the best in a March Madness-style bracket. The GOAT candidates come from all over, mountain to Marathon, but the city’s oldest team sent the largest delegation.
The Red Sox were founded in 1901. In the 117 years since, the team has won eight World Series while producing an abundance of stars that need no full name. Babe. Ted. Pedro. Buckner? Yaz. The list goes on. We chose 14 of the greatest to ever grace Fenway Park for our bracket, and you can cast your vote in the round of 32 as the Sox legends go up against the rest of Boston’s best.
Here’s a look at the Red Sox players in the Boston.com #GOATMadness bracket:
Ted Williams: The Kid earned a No. 1 seed with a 19-year career that included 521 home runs, one .406 batting average, and 39 missions flown above Korea. “All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street folks will say, ‘There goes the greatest hitter that ever lived,'” Williams once said, and his sweet swing made the wish come true. In the first round, The Kid beat Celtics’ four-time NBA champion Bill Sharman and in the round of 32 he’ll face Drew Bledsoe.
David Ortiz: Big Papi spent five years in Minnesota before the Twins traded him to Boston, but once he landed in town he took over. In his 14 seasons with the Sox, Ortiz made 10 All-Star teams and won three World Series titles. He passed Williams on the all-time home runs list with 541 and 13 of those were walk-off homers. Big Papi cemented his place in Boston history when he took the field before the team’s first game back after the 2013 Marathon bombings and told the crowd, “This is our f—— city.” He beat Stoneham’s Nancy Kerrigan in the round of 64 and he takes on Kevin Garnett in the second round.
Carl Yastrzemski: Yaz spent his entire 23-year career in Boston and holds the team’s record for games played, at-bats, hits, doubles, runs scored, and runs batted in. He’s third on the team’s all-time home runs list, behind the aforementioned Williams and Ortiz. In 1967, Yaz won the Triple Crown (.326 average, 44 HRs, 121 RBIs) before the ‘Impossible Dream’ ended in a World Series defeat to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Hall-of-Famer knocked off Marathon winner Meb Keflezighi in the opening round and Yaz faces Kevin McHale next.
Pedro Martinez: During the 1999 All-Star game, Pedro struck out the side in the first inning and sent three more steroid-era stars packing in another 1-2-3 inning in the second. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were no match for the brilliant right-hander. Neither were the 3,154 batters Martinez struck out over the course of his 17-year career. Pedro started 409 games, winning 219 and posting a 2.93 ERA. The three-time Cy Young award winner beat Olympic long-distance runner Shalane Flanagan in round one and Martinez takes on Rocky Marciano in the round of 32.
Roger Clemens: The Rocket was drafted by the Sox in 1983. During his controversial 24 seasons in the majors, Clemens won seven (!) Cy Young awards and tallied 354 wins. His 4,672 strikeouts are the third-most all time. He had a decent season in 1986, winning the Cy Young, the MVP, and setting a single-game record for strikeouts with 20 against Seattle. The Rocket defeated Bobbi Gibb, the first woman to finish the Boston Marathon, in round one and faces Hilary Knight next.
Cy Young: There’s a reason the award bears his name. Denton True Young’s perfect game on May 5, 1904 was just one of his 511 wins (still the MLB record). He also holds the record for games started (815), innings pitched (7,335), and complete games (749). Young, who left school after sixth grade to help on the family farm, pitched three no-hitters during his 22 years in the league. He beat Dustin Pedroia in the only friendly-fire matchup on the first-round slate and takes on Aly Raisman in the round of 32.
Dustin Pedroia: The Sox second baseman hasn’t even hung up the cleats yet and he’s already making GOAT brackets. The two-time World Series champ won an MVP award in 2008 to add to his collection of four All-Star games and four Gold Glove awards. The MVP season followed his 2007 rookie campaign when he took home Rookie of the Year honors. Pedroia has a .300 career batting average and 1,802 hits heading into his 13th year in Boston.
Manny Ramirez: The slugger bashed a record 29 postseason home runs on his way to 12 All-Star games and two World Series rings. ‘Manny being Manny’ could mean many things, but it always meant driving a baseball far, far, away. He hit 555 home runs in his 19 seasons and compiled a .312 batting average during that span. The left-fielder, who led the Boston ‘Idiots’ in ’04 to the title that ended an 86-year championship drought, beat Marathon winner Joan Benoit in the round of 64 and faces Bob Cousy next.
Wade Boggs: The Red Sox drafted the third baseman in 1976, and nine years into his MLB career no less an authority on hitting than Ted Williams declared that “if he keeps up like he’s going now, he stands to be one of the greatest hitters of all time.” Boggs, a 12-time All-Star, reached base safely in 80 percent of his 2,432 career games. He retired in 1999 after posting a .328 batting average and 3,010 hits in 18 years. Boggs eliminated Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon officially, in the first round and takes on Bobby Orr in round two.
Babe Ruth: George Herman Ruth Jr. led the American League in home runs 12 times, won seven World Series, hit 714 homers, and drove in 2,213 runs. Yet one teammate said even those staggering numbers don’t tell the full story. “To understand him you had to understand this: He wasn’t human,” Joe Dugan once said. The Sultan of Swat made the switch from pitcher to hitter during spring training in 1918, then made the switch from Boston to New York when Sox owner Harry Frazee infamously traded him to the Yankees. He fell to Celtics power forward Kevin McHale in round one.
Jim Rice: Rice spent his entire career in a Sox uniform, proving himself to be a worthy heir to Yastrzemski as the team’s primary source of power at the plate. In 1978, he was named AL MVP after leading the league in home runs (46) and a team-record 406 total bases. Before the Sox lost Game 7 in ’86, Rice had scored 14 runs in the postseason. Along with the next name on this list, Rice came to be know as one of the ‘Gold Dust Twins.’ He finished his career with a .298 average and 2,452 hits. Rice knocked off four-time Boston Marathon winner Catherine Ndereba in the first round and faces John Hannah next.
Fred Lynn: Lynn came into the league as a rookie in 1975 and went into the 1976 season as the reigning Rookie of the Year and MVP. It was the first time a player had ever won both awards in one year and the feat wasn’t replicated until Ichiro Suzuki pulled it off in 2001. The Sox made the World Series in ’75 but lost in seven games. A championship would elude the nine-time All-Star, as it did for every Red Sox player between 1918 and 2004. Lynn lost to Marvelous Marvin Hagler in the round of 64.
Tris Speaker: The Grey Eagle won an MVP award and two World Series as a center-fielder with the Red Sox, then added a third ring as player-manager in Cleveland. Speaker was a member of the so-called ‘Million Dollar Outfield’ in Boston alongside Duffy Lewis and Harry Hooper. He had 3,514 hits and 436 stolen bases over the course of his 22 years in the majors. Speaker was eliminated by three-time Olympic gold-medalist Aly Raisman.
Jimmie Foxx: The first baseman, nicknamed ‘The Beast,’ won three MVP awards, two World Series, and one Triple Crown during his two decades in the MLB. Foxx finished his career with a .325 batting average after hitting 534 home runs and 1,922 RBIs. “When Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, he and all the space scientists were puzzled by an unidentifiable white object,” Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Gomez said. “I knew immediately what it was. That was a home-run ball hit off me in 1937 by Jimmie Foxx.” The moonshot man fell at the hands of Bruins defenseman Ray Bourque in the first round.
