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The Boston Red Sox staged one of sport's most compelling turnarounds in 2004, culminating in a World Series win that broke the "Curse of the Bambino" -- an 86-year drought dating to the team's sale of Babe Ruth to the dreaded Yankees.
Hitting bookstores Tuesday is an inside account of the historic reversal, engineered by the team's out-of-town owners -- including Wall Street legend John Henry -- who bought the franchise in 2002.
The book, "Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top," was written by Seth Mnookin, a lifelong Red Sox fan whose first book explored the scandals that embarrassed The New York Times earlier this decade.
Mnookin spent a year in the team's inner sanctum, and much of "Feeding the Monster" is devoted to the business tactics implemented by the owners -- Henry, a former money manager, Larry Lucchino, a lawyer turned sports executive, and Tom Werner, a media and entertainment executive.
"This is really a smart group of businessmen, and they have a very different approach than most baseball teams, and most sports teams, in relation to marketing, in relation to maximizing revenue," Mnookin says.
Henry brought to the team the same numbers-driven approach that helped him amass a fortune as a commodities trader, prospering even through Wall Street's downturns.
Mnookin's book offers insight into how a successful sports franchise operates, including how it maneuvers to turn a profit in a business where financially successful teams like the Red Sox must share their earnings with perennial losers like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
"There are teams that are increasingly advocating for a different way to divide (revenues) up," Mnookin says. But the Red Sox are not among them.
That's partly because the Red Sox owners had come from small-market teams, Mnookin says. Henry bought into the Boston franchise after selling the Florida Marlins. Lucchino and Werner had previously been involved with the San Diego Padres. "They don't think the revenue-sharing system should be abolished," Mnookin says.
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But not all revenues have to be shared. Fenway Park, which sells out for every Red Sox game, also hosts rock concerts. And the team helps with marketing of Boston College's athletic department.
Then there's the revenue saved by not capitulating to the lavish contract demands of aging superstars.
"(Henry) doesn't want the team to get sentimental about its all-stars," Mnookin says. "He has brought that kind of rational, clear-eyed view of the world to baseball operations over the past couple of years, from the trading of Nomar Garciaparra to not matching the New York Yankees' offer for Johnny Damon to not matching the Mets' offer for Pedro Martinez."
So with a budget of $120 million this year, compared with the rival Yankees' payroll of more than $200 million, the Sox must get more for their money.
Exhibit A is David Ortiz, perhaps the best clutch hitter in the game today and a player the Red Sox picked up for a paltry $1.25 million after he was released by the cash-strapped Minnesota Twins before the 2003 season.
"Searching out inefficiencies in the market is almost a mantra for them," Mnookin says of the Red Sox ownership trio. "On-base percentage was that inefficiency three or four years ago; now that's become known throughout the game," thanks to "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis, which profiled Billy Beane, the creative general manager of the Oakland A's.
Now other teams are vowing to pay only for proven talent, not buzz, and finding other business-savvy ways to put a competitive team on the field.