Late Actor Robert Redford Had Deep Ties To Red Sox
Robert Redford spent much of his life on the West Coast, but he was a Boston Red Sox fan through and through.
The late actor and director, who passed away on Tuesday at age 89, was born in Santa Monica in 1936 and grew up in California. He was a high school classmate of Don Drysdale, who went on to become a Hall of Fame pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
There weren’t any Major League teams in California when Redford was growing up, however, as MLB didn’t expand to the West Coast until 1958. Accordingly, the young Redford cheered for a team 3,000 miles away — the Red Sox.
Like many kids of his generation, Redford grew up idolizing Ted Williams during the 1940s and ’50s. Like Redford, Williams was from California and batted left-handed, making The Splendid Splinter an easy figure for Redford to root for.
“Ted was my hero when I was a kid,” Redford told The Boston Globe in 2016. “He was from California, and I was from California. He was left-handed, and I was left-handed. And I wanted to be a professional ballplayer.”
Redford was athletic and had dreams of following in Williams’ footsteps, but he later pivoted to acting — a move that worked out pretty well for the future Academy Award winner.
It’s no coincidence that when Redford played fictional baseball legend Roy Hobbs in 1984’s “The Natural,” he wore No. 9 for the New York Knights — the same number William wore during his 19-year career with Boston. Redford also studied Williams’ iconic swing in preparation for the role.
While Redford was a lifelong Red Sox fan, he didn’t make it to Fenway Park for the first time until the end of the 2005 regular season. Boston rewarded the then-69-year-old with a win, beating the New York Yankees 5-3 on Sept. 30.
Redford returned to Fenway after that and was fortunate to see the Red Sox win four World Series during his lifetime, all between 2004 and 2018.