The team at its best is awesome, but it is slow and luck-prone (good and bad) at other times, and at its worst it resembles wet concrete. The Yankees, by contrast, seem capable of playing four or five different kinds of offensive baseball; in the first game of the Massacre, the 15-3 affair, they hit sixteen singles. Finally, I must observe that the Sox appear too restrained or introverted by nature to turn their troubles into a purging anger on the field. The Red Sox are a team of watchers and quiet talkers, with a few true eccentrics and emotional zombies among them. The leaders, Carlton Fisk and Carl Yaztrzemski (Yaz especially), burn within, and sometimes burst into beautiful, fiery deeds on the field, but their finest feats - the impossible late-season batting outburst, the fabled catch, the historic homer - appear as isolated and hallowed events, almost too painful in their personal cost to be emulated or enjoyed. These are decent, lonely men caught up in a dream of one perfect and thus perfectly unattainable season.
- Roger Angell, "City Lights", from The Red Sox Reader

This is the text of an email that was sent to the Bosox fan mailing list today, 2 December, 1999. The topic of conversation that sparked it was a request for people to come up with their own all-time list of favorite players, possibly even one for each position. And several of the initial answers had a certain nostalgia to them - after all, there are a lot of people out there who remember the Impossible Dream, for example, as well as other, less impressive years. I'm not one of them; I was born in 1978. Which means that my list of nostalgia-driven choices is somewhat limited, and the obscure but well-loved players of yesteryear are only rarely even names to me.

So instead of posting an all-time list, I posted a commentary. I tend to commentary a lot of things - as evidenced by this site in general.

But - at least for the moment - the list ending this stands as my list of favorites, chosen for reasons that really only occasionally have to do with statistics. For the well-known names, only the excellent or the bizarre are the ones that are known more generally - and I couldn't quite work up the heart to even suggest putting Pumpsie Green in the list.

The first part of the message has to do mostly with the often-repeated mantra that Boston fans are more knowledgeable about the sport and the twisted history of the team than any other subset of fandom. The second is my current choices for favorites, with reasons. Easier choices have longer reasons. More opinions that way.

(I'm feeling poetic again - warning. ;} FWIW, my alltime is at the end of this.)

I've finally figured out why Sox fans have the reputation of being the most knowledgeable fans in all baseball.

Purest self-defense.

In making the transition from the casual fan, the one who checks the box scores regularly and sees games when there's a chance, to being the true diehard, the rookie Sox fan is confronted with a century worth of history, comparisons, and what-if discussion. It's sink or swim - one must inhale the data or choke on it. The ones who choke go back down to the minors and keep reading their box scores.

Everyone else gets the information so deeply ingrained in their memories that it's impossible to remember that there could possibly have been a time when one didn't know these things. Those who are raised to diehard-dom from childhood get the history, the depth, the knowledge from their parents and their peers, and so for them it's true that there was no time when one could not cite moments from the hundred years of history.

I was about six months old when Bucky Dent rendered himself infamous. In 1986 going to Disneyland and dealing with the repercussions of my ailing grandfather was more important than Buckner. In 1994 I heard the news of the strike on NPR and shrugged, sighed, and went on with life. But even so - I know these things, now. When Bucky Dent showed up in Fenway for the ALCS and got interviewed, I had to go learn /why/ he earned that nickname.

It started out a bit as sort of twisted curiosity - the pratfalls the baseball gods have inflicted on the olde towne team over the years are the sorts of things that get remembered when discovered. But being superstitious like I am, I get into the traditions of things. (In a letter I wrote and sent to Yawkey Way, one of the lines was, "Traditions are lucky.") But it's important to remember the traditions, the history, the whys and wherefores of what's happened and what could happen - not least of which because every other serious Sox fan expects that if one claims Sox fandom, one will know what "The Buckner Year" means, no matter how old one was at the time.

And all the rest of it. You know the Kid was left off the MVP ballot, because there /will/ be a test next class period.

That said, I've spent goodly parts of today going through my own resources and puzzling out what my favorites might be, based on very little data worth basing a 'favorite' judgement on. I'm not sure I can really build a full team on my own information and opinions, but I'll give it a whirl.

• P:
  Bill Lee
  
  Pedro Martinez
  You need more than one pitcher for the average game anyway. Bill Lee - because he's so refreshingly unique as a ballplayer - someone who has as many interests as I do, for one thing. Because he's interesting to read about, and because of his unbounding enthusiasm for whatever subject he was tackling at the moment. And Pedro because he's beautiful to watch when he plays, has overall an excellent attitude towards the game and the team (and took the MVP news well enough to improve my overall respect for him, an impressive feat in and of itself), and is as zany to watch in the dugout as Bill Lee is to read about.

  C:

  Couldn't really come up with a coherent opinion about a catcher. Carlton Fisk on historicity, and the just because principle, but I also got a soft spot for Tek watching the postseason this year because he kept getting stranded....

  1b:

  Mo Vaughn
  For being one of the few names I actually remember from my adolescence as a ballplayer who wasn't a player on the Oakland A's.

  2b:

  Bobby Doerr
  For being consistent, stable, and quietly very good.

  3b:

  Wade Boggs
  For stubborn dedication to the game.

  SS:

  Nomar Garciaparra
  Because while the majors have the players who play well - that is, after all, why the majors are the majors - the players who transcend the mechanics of playing well and simply play beautifully are very rare. I'm faintly in awe of pitchers - pitching is something that it so far beyond my capabilities that all I can do is say that Pedro stands at the right hand of the baseball gods - but I can grasp fielding. There's glory for you.

  LF:

  Ted Williams
  

  Carl Yaztrzemski
  Ted Williams - for being a catankerous introvert who set his sights on a goal and went for it with everything he had. As a card-carrying catankerous introvert, I appreciate the good example. And Yaz, for the Impossible Dream.

  CF:

  Fred Lynn
  ROY *and* MVP?

  RF:

  Trot Nixon
  Sure he hasn't had a particularly good year yet - but I continue to insist that Trot Nixon is smiled upon by some sprite of chance or other. Gotta count for something. I'm also sort of in a phase of being stunned that there *are* baseball players out there who I could have been in high school with, such as Trot and Nomar. (The 22 year old starting pitcher for Atlanta had me twitching.) I think this is the final significant signpost of adulthood for me - there are Major league ballplayers out there who are /my age/.

  DH:

  Jim Rice
  It seemed important to put him somewhere, and this seemed best for the hitting coach. :} Don't tell Bill Lee. Or call him a spare OF.

Wow. I actually did manage to put together someone for every position, more or less. I guess that means I pass the quiz this time.

As a side note, when I was writing this, I somehow managed to misplace Dom DiMaggio mentally. He should be in there too - for being "Better than his brother Joe" and for not being there to throw the ball to poor Johnny Pesky. Who should also be in there, if only for getting the pole named after him, but leaving him off I did on purpose. I forget what the purpose was, but I did do it on purpose.