Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox: Babe Ruth and the World Champion Boston Red Sox

1918. The date resonates with every Boston Red Sox fan the year their team won its last World Series championship. But beyond the franchise's legendary curse, what is known of the men who were crowned baseball's best on September 11, 1918?During that tumultuous summer, the Great War in Europe cast an ominous shadow over the national game, as enlistments and the draft wreaked havoc with every team's roster. Players and owners fought bitterly over contracts and revenue, the parks were infested with gamblers, and the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs almost called off the World Series. And a Boston player known as The Colossus 23-year-old Babe Ruth began his historic transformation from pitching ace to the game's greatest slugger.Allan Wood has written the first complete account of Boston's last champions, mining 80 years of history and illuminating the season in which the Red Sox won an unprecedented fifth World Series title. And befitting a modern-day Red Sox fan's pessimism, Wood poses a chilling question: Was the 1918 World Series fixed?

Allan Wood began rooting for the Red Sox in 1975 while growing up in Vermont. He has been writing professionally since age 16, and has worked as both a sportswriter and a music critic. His writing has appeared in Baseball America, New York Newsday, Rolling Stone, Sportsjones and the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, among other publications. He lives in New York City with Laura Kaminker and their two dogs