By Bill Simons

Monday, July 31, 1961. Along with 31,850 other fans, I was at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, for an All-Star game. My Uncle Ben took me, age 12, and my cousin Lloyd, 10. It was the best baseball game I ever attended. In the days before interleague play, opportunities to see stars from the rival circuit were limited to All-Star and World Series games. The All-Star game was the only time I ever witnessed Sandy Koufax pitch in person. 

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ ace was having his first dominant season. Koufax on the mound at Fenway Park made it a Boston baseball memory for me. Pitching the fifth and sixth innings, Koufax yielded two hits, issued no walks and held the AL scoreless. Called due to rain in the ninth inning, the 1961 All-Star game ended in a 1-1 tie. 

Previously, beginning in the late 1950s, I had attended several games at Fenway Park with my father, Shep, a coming-of-age ritual. We often sat in the right field bleachers, hoping to catch a home run ball off the bat of the great Ted Williams. I loved Boston’s bandbox, technicolor green ballpark with its distinctive caroms and angles, 40’ wall in leftfield, closeness of the stands to the playing field and Fenway franks. Sometimes members of Lynn AZA #471, the Jewish fraternal youth group that my father advised and coached, would accompany us. 

Given the Sox’ many late season collapses, both Fenway and Jerusalem have experienced lamentations at their respective walls. My father gave a Jewish dimension to the Red Sox with stories, real and apocryphal, about the great Jewish Detroit Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg, featuring one that had him hitting an epic 1937 500-plus foot home run over Fenway’s centerfield and into the street. 

The Simons’ connection to the Red Sox paralleled that of many other Boston area Jews. Founded in 1901 and originally called the Americans or Pilgrims, the team adopted the moniker Red Sox in 1908 and moved to Fenway Park in 1912. From 1901-18, the franchise won five World Series, but collapsed after the 1919 season following the sale of Babe Ruth and other stars. With the 1939 arrival of Williams, Boston generally fielded competitive teams until the late 1950s, then descended into futility between 1959 and 1966. After the 1967 Impossible Dream season introduced the modern era, Boston, save for a few downspins, has produced good teams. Through these various cycles, Jews have retained a significant Red Sox presence as players, front-office executives, media commentators and fans. 

Over the years, Jewish players have donned the Red Sox uniform. In 1925, outfielder Cy Rosenthal, a Boston native, emerged as the Sox’ first Jewish player. More significant as a linguist and wartime atomic spy, backup catcher and bullpen coach Moe Berg finished his MLB career with Boston. Journeymen Joe Ginsberg and Ryan Lavarnway also briefly caught for the Sox. Possibly a future Hall of Famer, all-star second baseman Ian Kinsler joined the club near the end of his playing days. Yale intellectual Craig Breslow pitched in relief during two stints with Boston. Much travelled outfielder Kevin Pillar spent part of a season with the team, and utility outfielder Adam Stern posted a couple of campaigns in Boston. Playing part-time during his four Fenway seasons, future manager Gabe Kapler hit credibly. An outstanding defensive first and third baseman, Kevin Youkilis – a formidable batter, Gold Glove winner and high ranker in MVP voting – was the Jewish Red Sox GOAT [Greatest of All Time]. A member of two World Series championship teams, fan-favorite Youkilis spent nearly nine seasons with Boston. During the 2005 season, with Youkilis, Stern, and Kapler in the lineup, the Red Sox tied a record for most Jewish players simultaneously on the field for a single team. Youkilis, Lavarnway, Breslow, Kapler and Kinsler affiliated with Team Israel. 

Jews made their primary impact on Red Sox fortunes as front-office executives. Executive vice president for public affairs, Dr. Charles Steinberg, burnished Fenway’s fan-friendly environment. Ending the Curse of the Bambino, General Manager Theo Epstein put together the 2004 team that brought Boston its first World Series championship in 86 years and repeated in 2007. Boston Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom endured an AL East last place finish, prompting his unceremonious ouster on the cusp of Rosh Hashanah 2023. Former pitcher Breslow succeeded Bloom as Red Sox chief baseball officer.

And it was a Jewish city councilman, Isadore Muchnick, who forced the Red Sox to give a tryout to Black players at Fenway Park. 

Jews have never provided the Red Sox with its dominant fan base, constituting only about 7 percent of the population of contemporary Greater Boston. Nevertheless, as Boston Jews moved from immigrant neighborhoods in the West End and North End, upward to Dorchester and Roxbury, followed by postwar suburbanization, and recent re-urbanization, they have remained a strong component of Red Sox Nation, evidenced by the Red Sox’ annual Jewish Heritage night. The 2024 notice proclaimed: “Gather your Tribe and join ours for the annual Jewish Heritage Celebration at Fenway Park… receive a… Jersey with BOSTON written in Hebrew!”

Experience and insight make Larry Ruttman the face of Jewish Red Sox fandom. During a recent interview, we discussed his engaging baseball memoir, “My Eighty-Two Year Love Affair with Fenway Park from Teddy Ballgame to Mookie Betts.” Now 92, he attended his first Red Sox game – part of a roped off, right-field standing room crowd – with his father, Morris, in 1936 and has not missed much of significance at Fenway since then. After retiring from a successful legal practice, Larry has proved a prolific author. Several of the landsman interviews for a previous publication, “American Jews and America’s Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball,” were done at Fenway Park. 

Jewish tradition includes High Holiday observance, Chanukah candles and Passover seders. For Boston Jews, it also means allegiance to the Red Sox. Early team allegiances are inherited for life. For more than a third of a century, my son, Joe, an attorney and synagogue president, and I have caught a game at Fenway annually, now accompanied by grandchildren.