RED SOX CITY

The city of Boston, Massachusetts is the abode to the Boston Red Sox a professional Major League Baseball team. Boston is the capital and largest city in Massachusetts in the United States. It is the unofficial capital of the region known as New England. It is also one of the oldest and wealthiest cities in the United States, with an economy based on education, health care, finance, and high technology. Its nicknames include "Beantown", "The Hub" (shortened from Oliver Wendell Holmes's phrase The Hub of the Universe), and The Athens of America, due to its great influence on cultural, intellectual, and political matters. Boston has the following professional sports franchises; Boston Bruins (Ice Hockey - National Hockey League) , Boston Celtics (Basketball - National Basketball Association), Boston Red Sox (Baseball - Major League Baseball), Boston Cannons (Lacrosse - Major League Lacrosse), and Nearby Foxboro has the New England Patriots (National Football League) and the New England Revolution (Major League Soccer). As of the 2000 census, its population was 589,141. The Greater Boston metropolitan area, including nearby cities like Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline, has about 5.7 million residents. Boston is the county seat of Suffolk County. It is located at 42°20'N, 71°W. Founded on September 17, 1630, on a peninsula called Shawmut by the Native Americans who lived there, Boston is named after Boston, England, a town in Lincolnshire from which several prominent colonists originated. Early colonists believed that Boston was a community with a special covenant with God. Winthrop's sermon, "a City upon a Hill," captured this idea, which influenced every facet of Boston life, and made it imperative that colonists legislate morality, enforce marriage, enforce church attendance, enforce education in the Word of God, and enforce the persecution of sinners. These values molded an extremely stable and well-structured society in Boston. Puritan values of hard work, moral uprightness, and education remain a part of Boston's culture. On June 1, 1660, Mary Dyer was hanged on Boston Common for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from the colony. She is considered to be the last religious martyr in North America. On March 20, 1760 the "Great Fire" of Boston destroyed 349 buildings. Boston played a key role in the American Revolutionary War. The Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and several of the early battles of the revolutionary war (such as the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston) occurred near the city. During this period, Paul Revere made his famous ride. As a result Boston is known as the Cradle of Liberty and historic sites remain a popular tourist draw to this day. After the revolutionary war, the city became one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports, exporting products such as rum, fish, salt and tobacco. It was chartered as a city in 1822, and by the mid-1800s it was one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation noted for its garment, leather goods, and machinery industries. As of 2004, the city is in the final stages of a massive construction project called the Big Dig. Planned and approved in the 1980s under Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, with construction beginning in 1991, the Big Dig moved a jumble of elevated highway routes underground, produced the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, and will create over 70 acres of public parks in the heart of the city. The Big Dig should ease Boston's notorious traffic congestion; however, it is now the most expensive construction project in United States history, and currently the most expensive construction project in the world. On March 18, 1990, the largest art theft in modern history occurred in Boston. 12 paintings, collectively worth over $100 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by two thieves posing as police officers. As of 2004 these paintings have not been recovered.