The road to the World Series goes through baseball’s oldest ballpark
By Cody Rivera
With the best record in baseball, the Boston Red Sox will get the luxury of home field advantage throughout all of October — and they might need it.
If a team not named the Boston Red Sox hopes to win the 2018 World Series, then a team will have to go into Fenway Park and win at least one game.
As for the Red Sox, they will get to play the majority of their upcoming playoff games in the luxury of their home ballpark — a stadium that they’ve called home since 1912; longer than any other team in baseball. This bodes well for the Red Sox, who have struggled in recent postseasons when they haven’t had home field advantage.
Obviously, every team wants to have home field. You can never play too many games in front of your home fans, especially when you play for a city like Boston.
But the Red Sox might actually need that home field advantage. They’ve won the AL East the last two years, in both 2016 and 2017, but they didn’t finish either season with the best record in the American League and thus had to start each of those postseasons on the road.
The results weren’t pretty. They started the 2016 playoffs in Cleveland and the Indians swept them right out of the ALDS. After winning their first division title in three years, this was an epic disappointment, especially since these were the final games of David Ortiz’s legendary career.
The year after that, the Sox won the AL East again, but started the division series in Houston against the eventual world champion Astros. They only managed one win, and it came in Game 3 at Fenway Park.
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Now that the Red Sox have locked up home field advantage for the entirety of the 2018 postseason, they might be able change their fortunes this time around. Any visiting team will have to come to Fenway Park and try to squeeze out a win against a team that has won 106 games and counting, and they’ll have to do it in front of arguably the most passionate baseball fans in the nation.
The third time might be the charm for the Red Sox.