The Boys of October : How the 1975 Boston Red Sox Embodied Baseball's Ideals - and Restored Our Spirits

An inspiring look at the heroism and heartbreak of the 1975 World Series

In a year when the nation sorely needed a diversion from the harsh news of the day, it arrived in the form of a Fall Classic that would live up to its name and never be forgotten.

The Boys of October takes the reader back to those 12 exhilarating days in 1975, when the field was guarded by greatness--Carl Yastrzemski, Carlton Fisk, Pete Rose, Johnny Bench--as the ragtag Boys from Beantown faced Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine."

Their triumphs and tribulations are all here, from Fisk's historic winning homer in the wee hours of Game Six, to the series' nail-biting finale, decided by a single, heart-stopping run. Through it all, the Boston Red Sox embodied the spirit of the game, in victory and defeat, to give us the series we needed-- and one we'll never forget. Against the backdrop of one turbulent summer, The Boys of October celebrates baseball and the heroes who made it what it is.

Enough of that rant though. I really can not fathom why the author can't do something as simple as provide a little background context to this World Series. There is no mention of Boston's drive to the pennant that season in terms of how they did it, and nothing about their stunning upset of Oakland (three time defending champions) in the LCS. Instead, the author just starts with the World Series and breaks down the games so narrowly, which ordinarily would be a nice thing to do, but the absence of some background in his earlier chapters explaining how we got to this point ends up creating a pretty poor narrative overall. The author in a sense expects us to be familiar already with the 75 World Series and the season that led to us, hence his justification for dumping us in the middle of a story with not enough perspective on how we got there in the first place. Without the smarmy political asides we would still have a book that aspires to be definitive, but in the end can be no better than a supplement.


A quick read, but lacking depth   July 3, 2003
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

The author is too passionate about the Red Sox to write an objective review of the great '75 Series. And the interviews he does manage to get from participants lack depth. I often felt, which the author admits, that he was watching the games on videotape and writing about what he saw. The title pulled me in, and i was disappointed.