The story of the changing face of baseball and the inner workings of its finest organization After a hundred "cursed" years, the Boston Red Sox rose gloriously to baseball domination. Under the leadership of manager Terry Francona, an extraordinary team of wildly disparate personalities—from the inscrutable Manny Ramirez to the affable David "Big Papi" Ortiz—pulled off two improbable post-season comebacks to make it to the World Series twice in three years . . . and ultimately emerged victorious. In Red Sox Rule , Michael Holley, bestselling author of Patriot Reign , provides a fascinating, insightful, and surprising inside look at how it all happened. With the exclusive cooperation of Terry Francona and stories from the clubhouse and the conference room, Holley reveals the private sessions and the dugout and front-office strategies that have made the Red Sox a budding dynasty, overtaking their archrivals, the powerful New York Yankees, as the American League's elite team. “Enlightening. . . . An X-and-O guy’s dream . . . the best thing I’ve read on football in recent years. . . . Superb.” - Peter King, Sports Illustrated on Patriot Reign “... a look inside the Fenway Park bunker...extremely insighful into how being a manager of a major league team has evolved, and how Francona has become the embodiment of that evolution.” - Providence Journal “Illuminating... enjoyable reading.” - Boston Globe “An inside look at how Francona manages gfames and his ballclub... Fascinating.” - Kennebec Journal (Maine) “Engaging...Holley puts Francona s managing style in perspective through accounts of his hard-luck playing career, descriptions of cantankerous managers of the past, and analysis of how the game has evolved over the years. - Providence Journal-Bulletin The story of the changing face of baseball and the inner workings of its finest organization After a hundred "cursed" years, the Boston Red Sox rose gloriously to baseball domination. Under the leadership of manager Terry Francona, an extraordinary team of wildly disparate personalities—from the inscrutable Manny Ramirez to the affable David "Big Papi" Ortiz—pulled off two improbable post-season comebacks to make it to the World Series twice in three years . . . and ultimately emerged victorious. In Red Sox Rule , Michael Holley, bestselling author of Patriot Reign , provides a fascinating, insightful, and surprising inside look at how it all happened. With the exclusive cooperation of Terry Francona and stories from the clubhouse and the conference room, Holley reveals the private sessions and the dugout and front-office strategies that have made the Red Sox a budding dynasty, overtaking their archrivals, the powerful New York Yankees, as the American League's elite team. Michael Holley is a journalism professor at Boston University. He has written six New York Times bestselling books and has spent a dozen years working for three daily newspapers (the  Akron Beacon Journal ,  Boston Globe  and  Chicago Tribune ). He was part of the  Beacon Journal ‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning team in 1994. He has co-hosted a sports-talk radio show in Boston for 13 years as well as co-hosting studio and pre- and post-game shows now on NBC Sports Boston.