Two Sides of Glory: The 1986 Boston Red Sox in Their Own Words by Erik Sherman (review)

Most often, books that focus on teams from years past are reserved for clubs that won a World Series title, showcasing the adversities overcome in the quest for a championship, the camaraderie amongst the players on the team, or how the team represented a specific city or demographic. In Two Sides of Glory, Erik Sherman addresses each of these issues, albeit with a slightly different twist: he tells the story of perhaps the most famous team to fall short in the Fall Classic, the 1986 Boston Red Sox.

Although every World Series will obviously have a losing team, perhaps none of the teams who have come up short in October did so in such a memorable fashion as the Red Sox that year. Hoping to bring Boston its first title in sixty-eight years, Bill Buckner's infamous error in Game Six dealt the team a crippling blow with the New York Mets handily winning the final game 8–5.

In the book's preface, Sherman admits this was a book he had wanted to write back in 1993. While seven years had already passed since the heartbreaking loss, publishers thought it was "too soon" for Red Sox fans to want such a book (xx). However, having won the World Series in 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018, perhaps Red Sox fans no longer feel the sting of 1986 as much as they once did. And for readers who may not be as familiar with the Boston team of that era, Sherman's book is a reminder of not only the high-quality team on the field but of the closeness they shared off it, an aspect the author refers to as being something "like a brotherhood" (xxi).

Rather than recounting that season and playoffs chronologically, Sherman opted to interview sixteen players for the book, with a chapter dedicated to each one individually. With fourteen of the interviews happening in person, the result is a book that allows readers to eavesdrop on the conversations, giving a chance for fans to know about the players as they were during the '86 season, but also getting a better understanding of how that season has impacted their lives in more recent years as well.

Readers might be surprised that the book doesn't build to a climactic interview with Bill Buckner, the first baseball player who was, unfortunately, often blamed by fans for the loss in Game Six. Instead, the first chapter, "Safe at Home" is dedicated to Buckner, a result of the last major interview he gave before dying on May 27, 2019, from Lewy body dementia. While he had every right to harbor a grudge for the way many people in Boston treated him and his family following the World Series loss, Bucker comes across as a man at peace with himself and firm in his Christian faith.

Most fans remember 1986 as the year when a twenty-three-year-old Roger Clemens notched twenty strikeouts against the Seattle Mariners early that spring; many may have forgotten how dominant the Rocket was that year, starting the season 14-0 and not losing his first game until early July. Although much of his chapter is about that season, Sherman also discusses the controversy surrounding Clemens not yet being enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Like the chapters that focus on other players, Sherman includes commentary from Red Sox teammates to provide insight into how others on the team viewed him in '86 as well as today.

One pitcher who is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Tom Seaver, is included in the book, even though he was only on the team for part of the year, coming to Boston from the Chicago White Sox as part of a trade for Steve Lyons, who is included in a chapter later in the book. Seaver's chapter is slightly shorter than his time with...