Touring the Bases with…Bill Nowlin

Matt Sisson recently sat down with Bill Nowlin to talk about his recent trip to see the Red Sox play in Japan, Japanese players in Major League Baseball and his books on Boston’s favorite team.

(Matt Sisson) Bill, you have a long history with the Boston Red Sox. Can you tell us what your favorite Red Sox moment was?

(Bill Nowlin) Being there the day the Sox won the pennant in 1967 and there was “pandemonium on the field” was the first. Then there was Game Six of the 1975 World Series – with Bernie Carbo’s pinch-hit homer and Carlton Fisk’s game winner. Roger Clemens’ first 20-strikeout game was maybe the greatest single accomplishment I’ve witnessed (more than the three no-hitters I’ve seen), but I’d have to say that Game Five of the 2004 League Championship Series now rules the roost. Of course, every game I go to is the one I hope will top them all.

(MS) What would you say was your favorite book to write?

(BN) All 20 of them! No, not really, but here, too, it’s a little hard to choose. I guess it still remains the first one I did (with Jim Prime), currently available under the revised title of TED WILLIAMS: THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION. I personally interviewed 175 people who had known Ted one way or another – doing the book gave me an excuse to talk with more than half the then-living members of the Hall of Fame, with John Glenn, and with any number of others who knew Ted in one way or another. I remain friends with many of them.

Coming out this summer, though, is another book that I’ve put a LOT into. The book is called RED SOX THREADS and it’s looking like well over 500 pages of all sorts of odds and ends about the Red Sox and their history that I’ve picked up over the years. Maybe we can do another interview about that one when it comes out!

(MS) You’ve co-edited a number of “team books” written by you and a number of SABR members that focus on different years in Red Sox history. The most recent is about the 1918 Red Sox titled, When Boston Still Had the Babe: The 1918 World Series Champion Red Sox . Can you tell us a little about the book?

(BN) It’s been a real pleasure to work with members of the Society for American Baseball Research on these “team books.” The one we published last year, The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox, was a collaborative effort of more than 60 SABR members! I wrote some of it myself, yes, but it was a massive effort and I really enjoy the liaison and follow up with all the writers, working with the peer readers and editors, and pulling the whole book together. Dan Desrochers brought a huge number of photos together for that one. We took it to another level, following the 1975 book. Now, the new book, on the 1918 Red Sox, brings together the collective efforts of another group of SABR members and presents the individual biographies of every player on that world championship team, its manager, and its owner. It’s accompanied by essays on the season, spring training, and the 1918 World Series. It was quite an amazing season, played out in the shadow of World War I. Red Sox fans used to hate to hear about 1918…until the Sox won the World Series in 2004. Now we can talk about 1918 again.

Coming soon, later this summer: a team book on Boston’s two baseball teams of 1948, the Boston Braves and the Boston Red Sox.

(MS) Bill, you recently returned from a trip to Japan in which you followed the Red Sox through their games against the Hanshin Tigers, the Yomiuri Giants and lastly two games against the Oakland Athletics. Can you talk about your experiences in Japan with the Sox?

(BN) I’ve always wanted to see some baseball in Japan. I’d been there for business maybe five times over the years, but it seems like I never went during baseball season. When I heard (a few years ago) that the Red Sox might open the season there, I knew I’d do everything I could to try and catch the games. It’s sort of like going to Toronto to see a game – but traveling a dozen time zones to do so!

I thought about going with the Red Sox Destinations group, but they were scheduled to arrive too late to see the game against the Hanshin Tigers – the team known as the Red Sox of Japan. How could I miss that game? So I traded in some frequent flyer miles and flew on a free ticket. I booked into the Tokyo Dome Hotel, a short stroll to the Dome itself, and the team publication Red Sox Magazine allowed to cover the series for them. I’ve written a story for the magazine that tells more of the details.

(MS) Do you think the addition of Daisuke Matsuzaka makes Boston the favorite MLB franchise amongst Japanese baseball fans?

(BN) There’s no question about that! The timing of everything was perfect. Before now, it was pretty much the Yankees. People wear those “NY” baseball caps without some of them even knowing they’re a baseball team. And the Yankees had played Japan in the past. But it’s no exaggeration to say that Matsuzaka is a bit of a “national treasure” – he’s been a star there since winning the Koshien high school tournament with an unbelievable sequence of wins.

Winning the 2007 World Series, with Daisuke getting the win in Game Three (and driving in two runs) didn’t hurt his popularity, either!

(MS) How does Matsuzaka compare in popularity to other Japanese born stars playing in the major leagues?

( BN) In Japan? Time will tell. There’s no question that Ichiro and Matsui are both big, big stars. But Matsuzaka is primed. Let’s see how he pitches this year. Naturally, performance counts. He had a very good first year, but the Red Sox made a long-term commitment to him and we’ll hope to see improvement after the adjustments of the first season.

(MS) How would you say the Japanese baseball experience differs from the game we are used to in the United States?

(BN) That would be hard to say based on my limited experience. Every one of the games I saw involved a US team, and was run under the auspices of Major League Baseball. I do regret that I didn’t see a Japanese vs. Japanese ballgame. I’ve long heard about their amazing cheering sections, and I suspect I just got a taste of in Tokyo. That was impressive enough. Our “Let’s Go Red Sox, Red Sox Let’s Go” chant pales by comparison to the songs, flag waving, and so forth.

(MS) What would you say was the highlight of your trip to Japan?

(BN) I don’t think there was any one particular highlight – other than seeing the Red Sox win the first game of the year! And hearing “Love That Dirty Water” played over the Tokyo Dome sound system!

(MS) What did you do to fill the time between games?

(BN) The hotel offered free broadband internet connections, so I was able to do a lot of work right from my room. I did take one trip across town that I had really wanted to do – I took the Tokyo Metro to visit the site from which Moe Berg shot film back in 1934. Berg was a backup catcher for the Red Sox when Ted Williams first came up in 1939, and he was a pretty amazing guy. He worked as a “spy” (doing intelligence work) during World War II, and the film he shot from the top of St. Luke’s Hospital in Tokyo was used by the US Army Air Force in planning the bombing of Tokyo during the war. It interested me to go visit the top of the hospital.

(MS) Do you think trips like this really help in spreading the popularity of Major League Baseball to foreign countries?

( BN) How could it not? There was a lot of excitement in the air, coverage on Japanese TV, coverage in the newspapers. I met Japanese fans there who had traveled as much as 10 hours to take in a game, and I met gaijin fans (foreigners, like me) who had flown in from Hong Kong, Beijing, Sydney….

(MS) You’ve traveled to more than 100 countries; where else have you seen baseball outside of the US and Canada?

(BN) Hardly anywhere. I did see the Red Sox play a couple of games in the Dominican Republic during spring training in 2000, but almost none of my travel has been baseball-related. There have been other reasons – the music business, research, and just plain curiosity (wanting to see Angel Falls in Venezuela or visit the Sahara in Mauritania – two recent trips.) Now that you mention it, though, I did make sure to schedule my trip to Venezuela during their baseball season and I took in a game there. And I once took a Cubaball trip to Cuba, and spent a full week watching six games in various Cuban ballparks. That was a real treat!

(MS) What was your most memorable baseball experience outside of the United States?

(BN) The one I just mentioned! A full week of baseball in Cuba.

(MS) Being a frequenter of Fenway, what would you say is your favorite place inside the ball park?

(BN) Inside the scoreboard in left field – I’ve visited a few times, but one time several years ago, I actually had the opportunity to work the manual scoreboard from inside the Green Monster. That was great!

(MS) Lastly, what are your predictions for the Sox in 2008?

(BN) All the way!!!!

I’d like to thank Bill for taking the time to talk baseball with me. If you haven’t already, check out the latest “team book,” When Boston Still Had the Babe: The 1918 World Series Champion Red Sox .