Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Homegrown by Alex Speier

The tagline for this book says it's "How the Red Sox built a champion from the ground up"

That couldn't be more accurate. This book follows the Red Sox behind the scenes starting with the 2011 draft. It follows the players drafted then, and acquired elsewhere along the way to the 2018 World Series Championship. Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, and Jackie Bradley Jr (all key contributors to the championship) are followed in detail as the work their way through the organization to Boston. It expores how each piece contributed to a greater whole.

This book is absolutely fantastic. I had a hard time putting it down. As a Red Sox fan who follows the team pretty closely, this book opened my eyes to a whole new world of player development. It explored how relationships are built between teammates in the minors. It showed how each player handled their advancements, or lack of advancement. It saw each of them integrated into the major league team in their own ways in their own time. It showed how those introductions sometimes formed the players they would become. It explained what happened with the 2014 Red Sox, and how that played a part in what would become the 2018 team. No detail was missed, so you're able to get the whole picture behind the team. I've never read a book like this before. It was so good I'm sure I would have loved it if it was about any team, but I'm glad this one covered the Sox.

Rating: 4 bases

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