Rating: 
Summary: Knoxville News Sentinel review (4/2/03)
Review: "Maybe this will be the Boston Red Sox's year, after all:
- The team's three best players, Pedro Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra and Manny Ramirez, are healthy again.
- It's the 100th anniversary of Boston's victory in the first modern World Series.
- And the best baseball book of 2003 is a fractured history of the Red Sox by former pitcher and lifetime instigator Bill "Spaceman" Lee. Lee's book leads an outstanding crop of baseball books for the new season. ..." ~ Bruce Dancis
Rating:
Summary: Burlington (Vermont) Free Press review excerpt (4/6/03)
Review: "... [Bill Lee's] new book, "The Little Red (Sox) Book: A Revisionist Red Sox History," written with Jim Prime, is Lee's baseball manifesto. The title, if not the content, is a take-off on Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book." The difference is Mao's manifesto urges people to think in a certain way, while Lee's imperative calls for a kind of fantasy free-for-all in thinking, imagining and documenting. His book mixes true baseball stories with imaginary takes on the national pastime. " ~Sally Pollack
Rating:
Summary: Knoxville News Sentinel review (4/2/03)
Review: "Maybe this will be the Boston Red Sox's year, after all:
- The team's three best players, Pedro Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra and Manny Ramirez, are healthy again.
- It's the 100th anniversary of Boston's victory in the first modern World Series.
- And the best baseball book of 2003 is a fractured history of the Red Sox by former pitcher and lifetime instigator Bill "Spaceman" Lee. Lee's book leads an outstanding crop of baseball books for the new season. ..." ~ Bruce Dancis
Rating: 
Summary: Silly stuff
Review: A very silly ghostwritten re-telling of Red Sox history spiced by a few Bill Lee one-liners that were tired and old a generation ago and are more tired and older now. Bill has morphed from being cool and hip into cranky and square. I want the Sox to win as much as anyone but even I have to draw the line at a fairy tale like this, which unfortunately perpetuates more than a few popularly believed but factually incorrect errors of Red Sox history. This is a relatively rich season for Red Sox books; buy a real one instead.
Rating:
Summary: A "Groaner" on every page!
Review: Bill Lee is a very sick man!! This book is a riot....history is revised! The Sox REALLY won it in '46! To celebrate, they wanted to throw a posh bash. They didn't know where to have it:"Pesky came forward to say that two weeks earlier he had rented the Imperial Ballroom of the Statler Hotel. Players and newspapermen appreciated the gesture and remember to this day the fact that Pesky held the ball." If you know and love your Red Sox history, then you are sick, too...but you'll love this book! A great summer read!
Rating:
Summary: a real lift for downcast Sox fans
Review: Ever wonder how things might have been different if the Red Sox had not sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees? There might have been Red Sox players walking around with more World Series rings than they could wear on ten fingers. Bill Lee and Jim Prime float some flights of fancy here - suppose Harry Frazee didn't buy the Sox and Joseph P. Kennedy had. Suppose Ruth stayed put in Boston. Suppose the Red Sox actually signed Jackie Robinson at that infamous tryout he had in Boston. Suppose Ted Williams really had killed Adolf Hitler with a line drive. What?? You have to read the book to find out. You'll be entertained with the photo of Bucky Dent as the concert pianist he became, when he chose the keyboards over the ballfield. You'll see Bill Lee conferring with Albert Einstein. Jackie Robinson becomes President of the US. Bill Lee is one of the more fertile minds in baseball, and Jim Prime a skillful writer who had helped corral some of "The Spaceman's" ideas and added more than a few of his own. Any Red Sox fan who needs to have their spirits lifted momentarily will find this an easy, fun read.
Rating:
Summary: Bill Lee is still going strong!
Review: I loved watching the Spaceman pitch, and I really enjoyed his autobiography. Now he rewrites history so the good guys always win! If you love the Red Sox or humor in general, or if you hate the Yankees, this is a must-read!
Rating: 
Summary: Funny stuff from the Spaceman...
Review: I'm not a Red Sox fan, so I can't really identify with long-suffering Boston baseball fans, to whom this book is really directed. I can, however, appreciate the history of baseball, good humor and the occasional satire, all of which Bill Lee provides in his tongue-in-cheek revision of the history of the Boston Red Sox. From the Ho Chi Minh Trial to Ted Williams' saving of the free world to "Bucky freuging Dent": concert pianist, this book is filled with wonderfully silly speculations of what might have been, had the episodes that have caused so much heartbreak for Boston baseball fans not occurred. Lee takes aim at several of his most despised adversaries, including the Yankees and Don Zimmer (whom he referred to as a "Gerbil" during his career), and never lets up. The fall of New York and the rise of Boston are directly linked to the fate of the Babe, as Yankee fans become the embittered and cynical of the two, and Boston becomes the Baseball capital of the world. What would have happened if the Red Sox would not have traded Babe Ruth? If Ted Williams hadn't lost 5 years to war? If Jackie Robinson had been signed by the Bosox? If Bucky Dent had become a concert pianist instead of a baseball player? Probably not Lee's revised version of events, but that doesn't make the book any less enjoyable, it managed to keep a smile on my face throughout. A good, funny, fanciful baseball story.
Rating:
Summary: Funny stuff from the Spaceman...
Review: I'm not a Red Sox fan, so I can't really identify with long-suffering Boston baseball fans, to whom this book is really directed. I can, however, appreciate the history of baseball, good humor and the occasional satire, all of which Bill Lee provides in his tongue-in-cheek revision of the history of the Boston Red Sox. From the Ho Chi Minh Trial to Ted Williams' saving of the free world to "Bucky freuging Dent": concert pianist, this book is filled with wonderfully silly speculations of what might have been, had the episodes that have caused so much heartbreak for Boston baseball fans not occurred. Lee takes aim at several of his most despised adversaries, including the Yankees and Don Zimmer (whom he referred to as a "Gerbil" during his career), and never lets up. The fall of New York and the rise of Boston are directly linked to the fate of the Babe, as Yankee fans become the embittered and cynical of the two, and Boston becomes the Baseball capital of the world. What would have happened if the Red Sox would not have traded Babe Ruth? If Ted Williams hadn't lost 5 years to war? If Jackie Robinson had been signed by the Bosox? If Bucky Dent had become a concert pianist instead of a baseball player? Probably not Lee's revised version of events, but that doesn't make the book any less enjoyable, it managed to keep a smile on my face throughout. A good, funny, fanciful baseball story.
Rating: 
Summary: Imaginative and Creative
Review: Let me start by saying Bill Lee is a wildly funny and inventive guy! If you have yet to read this book or his autobiography Spaceman do so soon!
Bill Lee has a way of bringing his rich sense of humor out with every word and anecdote.
This particular book is very creative. Bill Lee, like many other members of Red Sox nation has misgivings about many events in Red Sox history. So he takes this lovable but snakebit franchise to task... and rewrites it all!
This revision of history is interesting and laughable. He begins by reversing the curse of the Bambino in 1919... and it just gets wilder and wilder from there.
I guess my only problem with the book is dealing with all the changed history... the premise is funny and engaging at first but begins to wear as the book goes along.
But by all means it is worth your time and effort. If you love the Sox or just love baseball read this book and you will not be disappointed!
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