The Best Outfield in the Game

Some outfields you remember for one player. This one you remember for the balance.

For six seasons in Boston, from 1975 through 1980, the Red Sox ran out a group that could beat you every possible way. Fred Lynn in center, a rookie who won Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season, the first player in history to pull it off, gliding to everything and hitting like a ten-year veteran. Dwight Evans in right, the quiet genius with a cannon arm and eight Gold Gloves coming his way. And in left, a young slugger learning the caroms off the Green Monster who would go on to lead the league in home runs, RBIs, and triples in the same season, the only player ever to do that.

They were homegrown, all of them, drafted and developed by the same organization that would eventually trade the center fielder away and spend the next forty years wondering what might have been.

The best of it came in 1975, when they were kids and the whole thing felt limitless, carrying Boston all the way to a seventh game against the Big Red Machine. It never got closer than that. But for a stretch there, if you wanted to see the best outfield in the game, you went to Fenway. The people who were there still talk about it. You can hear why.