2003 Boston Red Sox season
Major League Baseball season
The 2003 Boston Red Sox season was the 103rd season in the franchise's Major League Baseball history. The Red Sox finished second in the American League East with a record of 95–67, six games behind the New York Yankees, who went on to win the AL championship. The Red Sox qualified for the postseason as the AL wild card and defeated the American League West champion Oakland Athletics in the ALDS. The Red Sox then lost to the Yankees in the ALCS.
The Red Sox led the major leagues in nearly all offensive categories, including runs scored (961), batting average (.289), on-base percentage (.360), and perhaps most impressively, a .491 team slugging percentage, which set a new record previously held by the 1927 Yankees. It would stand until the 2019 season when the Astros (.495) and Twins (.494) both surpassed them. They also had 649 extra-base hits, the most ever by one team in a single season.
In May 2003, the Red Sox settled a lawsuit in federal court filed by seven men who claimed to have been sexually abused as boys by Red Sox clubhouse attendant Donald James Fitzpatrick at the team's spring training site in Winter Haven, Florida between 1971 and 1991. The lawsuit requested $3.15 million in damages but the terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
This was the first season with designated hitter David Ortiz, as he signed a contract for the Red Sox during the offseason. He would stay with the Red Sox until his retirement in 2016.
The search for a new general manager
Lucchino initially attempted to hire J. P. Ricciardi, the general manager of the Blue Jays, but Ricciardi rejected the offer and instead signed a long-term contract with the Blue Jays.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2003 Boston Red Sox season” is major League Baseball season. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Boston, season and Major, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4601164. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 1927, 2019 and 1971.
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This entry incorporates text from “2003 Boston Red Sox season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.