This article is adapted from Alex Speier’s book Homegrown: How the Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground Up, to be published August 13 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Speier is a baseball writer for the Boston Globe.
Coming into the season, the 2013 Red Sox were never a World Series favorite. But the team won 97 games, the AL East, and, eventually, the World Series. Contrast that with the 2014 team, which had high expectations but managed to win just 71 games. In Homegrown, Speier spins the tale of those two seasons.