Fred Lynn makes it back to Fenway Park for at least three series each season. He sits in a suite above home plate, mingles with fans, and mugs for the camera when he appears on the center-field video screen. But he avoids the field before games and never ventures into the clubhouse, wary of getting in the players' way.
That's about to change.
Lynn sees something strikingly familiar in these Boston Red Sox. Start with a College World Series champion -- from a school with the initials "USC," no less -- in center field. Then there's the hotshot Rookie of the Year candidate in left. And get a load of the right fielder, a steal of a fifth-round pick with a rifle arm, a Gold Glove and middle-of-the-order power at the plate.
All three outfielders were drafted by the Red Sox and came up through the farm system. None is older than 26. They're athletic and dynamic, and it's possible they have only scratched the surface of their potential. Indeed, if they stay healthy and everything falls in line, they could play together for the better part of the next decade.
Sounds like Lynn, Rice and Evans, right?
Actually, it's Bradley, Benintendi and Betts.
Forty-two years after Lynn and Jim Rice -- the Gold Dust Twins, as they were known -- joined Dwight Evans in a dream outfield that carried the Red Sox to Game 7 of an epic World Series against Cincinnati's Big Red Machine, baby boomer baseball fans in Boston are experiencing a serious case of déjà vu. A homegrown outfield of Jackie Bradley Jr., Andrew Benintendi and Mookie Betts -- the Killer B's, if you will -- leads the Sox into the post-David Ortiz era as a popular pick to win the American League pennant.
It's no wonder Lynn says several team employees have told him he would enjoy wandering onto the field during practice this season. These outfielders are worth a closer look.
"As a group, Jimmy and Dwight, myself, we've been looking forward to something like this for a while now," Lynn, 65, says from his home near San Diego. "We haven't seen it for a bit, and it's fun to see. I would love to sit in the dugout once in a while and talk with them, and I might do that this year. I might sneak down during BP or something and just chat with them a little bit. I would like that."
Lynn, a former University of Southern California star, has already met Bradley, the 26-year-old out of the University of South Carolina. The current and former Red Sox center fielders were introduced early in the 2013 season after Bradley unexpectedly earned a spot on the Red Sox's roster with a breakthrough spring training. It took him two more years to secure a full-time spot, which he did last season with a 29-game hitting streak in May, an All-Star Game selection in July, 26 homers and his typically stellar defense.
Betts, 24, is one of the fresh new faces of the game, a do-it-all superstar right fielder. He finished as runner-up to Mike Trout in last year's AL MVP toss-up. After Betts made his major league debut in 2014 Evans began calling him "my little Willie Mays."
Benintendi's arrival last summer completes the Red Sox's back-to-the-future outfield -- and not just because hitting coach Chili Davis astutely notes that the 22-year-old rookie "looks like freakin' Marty McFly." Benintendi bypassed Triple-A and took over left field last August, 14 months after being drafted seventh overall. And in the first at-bat of his playoff debut, he became the youngest player in Red Sox history to homer in a postseason game.
Best outfield in baseball? Lynn and Evans think so. Same goes for many talent evaluators around the league, although the Pittsburgh Pirates (Starling Marte, Andrew McCutchen, Gregory Polanco) and Miami Marlins (Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich and Marcell Ozuna) would respectfully disagree. At the least, Bradley, Benintendi and Betts are in the discussion.
"These kids are tremendous. Best outfield we've had in a long time," says Evans, a consultant to the Red Sox's player development staff. "I never like to compare because these guys might be better than us. It's even more rewarding when you know they came out of your system. You'll see them do some great things. You'll see them do some things that hopefully they learn and get better from. There's really no telling what they can do."
Or how long they can do it together.
IT'S A SNOWY Saturday in January 2016, and Betts, Bradley, Rice and Lynn are participating in a panel discussion about outfield defense as part of the Red Sox's annual winter weekend. One fan asks Betts - who was an infielder until the Sox moved him to center field midway through the 2014 season and then to right field late in 2015 -- about the challenge of the Green Monster.
Betts: "I haven't really ever played left, so I don't really know how it works over there."
Rice: "Only the good athletes play left."
Betts, measuring Rice for a zinger: "It's all right. You did a great job considering you guys didn't have gloves back then."
That's how it goes when two generations of homegrown Red Sox outfielders get together. There's the requisite teasing and trash-talking between the old guard and the new. But there's also an abiding respect that goes both ways, even if the youngsters can't recite much about their predecessors' careers without consulting Baseball-Reference.com.
"These kids are tremendous. Best outfield we've had in a long time. I never like to compare because these guys might be better than us." Dwight Evans
Lynn's rookie season is the benchmark for all who have followed, including Benintendi, who brings to Boston a similarly sweet left-handed swing and a center-field pedigree from a big-time college program (Arkansas). In 1975, at age 23, Lynn was named AL Rookie of the Year and AL MVP after batting .331 with 47 doubles, 21 homers and a .967 OPS. Rice won the MVP in 1978, played in eight All-Star Games, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009. And Evans was an eight-time Gold Glove winner and a five-time All-Star in a 20-year career.
In 1978, Lynn, Rice and Evans played in the same outfield for three innings of the All-Star Game, an achievement that Evans predicts "should happen and absolutely will happen" for Bradley, Betts and Benintendi. The older trio's best season, at least collectively, was 1979, when they combined for an 18.8 WAR. (For context, the Pirates' Marte, McCutchen and Polanco totaled a 12.9 WAR in 2015, their top year as a trio in Pittsburgh.)
Yet this is how Bradley sums up his grasp of the Lynn-Rice-Evans era: "I do know they played in the '70s." Two years ago, when Betts became the youngest Red Sox player since Rice in 1975 to hit two homers in a game, he conceded he knew "nothing" about the '75 team and joked that he would "talk some smack" to Rice the next day.
But Betts also credits Rice and former Red Sox ace Luis Tiant with "giving me insight to be able to play the game," a sentiment echoed by Bradley and Benintendi. Speaking for his ex-teammates, Evans pays back the compliment with one of his own: "I think I was around the cage with [longtime writer] Peter Gammons, and I said, 'If you ever saw Willie Mays walk, he was just bigger. But looking at Mookie, just the way he does things, he's a little Willie Mays.'"
Rice, 64, hangs around Fenway a lot as a pregame and postgame analyst for the New England Sports Network. Evans, 65, spends more time traveling to the Sox's minor league affiliates, where he got a sneak peek at Bradley, Betts and Benintendi before they reached the majors. As much as Rice and Evans are wowed by the young outfielders' talent and floored by their limitless ceiling, they're struck even more by their aptitude for learning from mistakes.
Case in point: Evans was watching a game on television late last season when he noticed Bradley not releasing the ball as quickly as possible on a pair of throws to home plate. He made a note to talk to Bradley during spring training.
"I'm watching him the first two or three days [of camp] and he's already starting his crow hop as he gets the ball or even before," Evans says. "I wanted him to work on that, but he was already doing it. I didn't even have to talk to him about it. That was impressive to me."
Lynn, meanwhile, has the perspective of being 3,000 miles away for most of the season. He has seen Bradley become a more aggressive hitter after previously seeming too content to take strikes early in the count, and has watched Betts become the East Coast's version of Trout. But Lynn is most impressed by Bradley's missile-launcher arm in center field and Betts' smooth two-year transition from infielder to Gold Glove right fielder.
"What I love is the fact that they all play defense. I'm a stickler for that," Lynn says, noting that Betts and Benintendi are really center fielders playing on the flanks. "It's exciting for me -- and I'll bet their pitching staff, too -- that balls hit in the air, they're probably going to be caught. It's fun to watch guys in the outfield that can run 'em down. And if they do make a mistake, they can throw 'em out after they run 'em down.
"I don't know that there's a better young outfield in all of baseball right now."
LYNN ALWAYS FIGURED he would play beside Rice and Evans for his entire career.
He settled for six years.
Never mind that Lynn, Rice and Evans were firmly in the prime of their careers or that the Red Sox averaged 91 wins per season from 1975-80. Before spring training in 1981, Lynn was dealt to the California Angels in a five-player trade that brought pitcher Frank Tanana to Boston.
In those days, there wasn't much opportunity to move as a free agent, Lynn says, so he thought he'd be with the Red Sox his whole career. "That was the attitude," he says.
The attitude has changed. Despite making his major league debut only four years ago, Bradley is the second-longest-tenured member of the Red Sox after second baseman Dustin Pedroia. Consider it a testament to how frequently today's players change teams.
Bradley and Betts are under team control through the 2020 season. Benintendi is so far from free agency it isn't even a speck on his radar. But all three know better than to take for granted that they will form the Sox's outfield even for the next four years.
"I mean, it all sounds good," says Bradley, a client of superagent Scott Boras. "But the realistic thing, the game that we live in, not many people get to play with one team or together. But it would be nice. I love playing with them. I think we all just enjoy each other. We really jell. We're just kind of taking each day and having fun with it."
Which is precisely why Lynn, Rice and Evans would rather not miss a second of it.
"Jimmy and I played [together] for 16 years. Not long enough with Freddy," Evans says. "I think everyone sees that these guys can be together for a long time. Can they go elsewhere and make more money? Probably. But they'll never have as much fun as playing in Fenway together."