Boston Red Stockings

The color red has been used in the names and commonly in the uniforms of several professional baseball teams in Boston.

  • Boston's first professional baseball club was established 1871 by Boston businessman Ivers Whitney Adams, and was named the Boston Red Stockings. Player-manager Harry Wright was brought to Boston to manage Boston's first-ever baseball team by Adams. He brought the nickname, the eponymous uniform, and three teammates from the Cincinnati Red Stockings when the Ohio team folded.
    • The Atlanta Braves of the National League are that Boston ballclub (established 1871) after a few name changes and two relocations.
  • The Boston Reds of the Union Association in 1884. The team was also called the "Unions".
  • The Boston Red Stockings of the Players' League in 1890 and the American Association in 1891. The team was called "Reds" more often than "Red Stockings".
  • The Boston Red Sox, established 1901 and still active. The club adopted the name "Red Sox" in 1908 after their intra-city rivals temporarily dropped the red trim from their uniforms. They were called "Red Sox" from that time, never "Red Stockings" or "Reds".

Famous quotes containing the words boston, red and/or stockings:

    The middle years of parenthood are characterized by ambiguity. Our kids are no longer helpless, but neither are they independent. We are still active parents but we have more time now to concentrate on our personal needs. Our children’s world has expanded. It is not enclosed within a kind of magic dotted line drawn by us. Although we are still the most important adults in their lives, we are no longer the only significant adults.
    —Ruth Davidson Bell. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 3 (1978)

    Iconic clothing has been secularized.... A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.
    Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
    No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,
    Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ankle,
    Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
    And with a look so piteous in purport
    As if he had been loosed out of hell
    To speak of horrors.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)