What's New:

Steve’s article has just been published in the Baseball Research Journal, No. 35. The in-depth piece looks at the New York-Boston trades of the late Teens and early 1920s, in which the Yankees acquired enormous pitching talent from the Red Sox, including two future Hall of Famers, Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock.

The provocative piece suggests that these deals were more important to the Yankees’ success of the 1920s than the purchase of Babe Ruth. Digging deeper, Steve looks at the deals in the context of the time they were made. While they turned out extremely favorably for New York (they’ve even been referred to as “the rape of the Red Sox”), they were actually considered quite equitable at the time they were done. The piece looks at the six trades and the men involved in them. It also suggests why they turned out so well for the Yankees and so poorly for the Red Sox.

Steve offer that “the Curse of the Hurlers” may be a more appropriate moniker for the Boston-New York deals of the time than “the Curse of the Bambino.” As Steve writes, “A close look at the Red Sox-Yankee trades of that era reveals that—as great as the Babe was for the Yankees—it really was the trade of Boston pitching talent to New York that solidified the Yankees’ march to greatness in the 1920s.”

Baseball Research Journal is a SABR publication, free to members of the Society for American Baseball Research. Non-members can order individual issues from the University of Nebraska Press, by calling (800) 755-1105.