Boston’s Royal Rooters

In the fall of 1897, over 250 baseball fans from Roxbury, Massachusetts, traveled to Baltimore with saloon keeper Nuf-Ced McGreevy and Pres. John F. Kennedy’s future grandfather Honey-Fitz Fitzgerald to cheer their Beaneaters to the pennant. They became known famously as the Royal Rooters. Singing their fight song, Tessie, they cheered on five world champion teams in the early 1900s. When Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees after 1919, Tessie all but disappeared from Fenway. A new generation of Fenway Faithful suffered through decades of heartbreak until Tessie returned in 2004 to deliver another world title. In the course of a century, the original group of rooters has grown into a legion of fans known as Red Sox Nation. Boston’s Royal Rooters chronicles the rich tradition of Boston’s pioneering fans like Nuf-Ced, Honey-Fitz, and Lib Dooley, the Queen of Fenway Park, and examines through rare images their influence on modern-day fans.