Getty

The Red Sox announced their major charity event of the year starting Monday.

Though they suffered a heartbreaking defeat to the Miami Marlins on Sunday, with three bullpen pitchers combining to turn a 3-1 lead in the eighth inning to a 5-3 loss, the Boston Red Sox appear poised for an exciting and dramatic final stretch of the 2025 season.

With just 37 games left to play, the Red Sox still hold the second of the three American League Wild Card playoff berths, just 1/2 game behind the Seattle Mariners who played against the New York Mets on Sunday night. Boston also remained in position to make a late charge to win the AL East division, keeping themselves out of the Wild Card playoff round altogether.

Red Sox Still Have Chance to Win Division

At five games in back of the first-place Toronto Blue Jays, Fangraphs gives the Red Sox just a 5.2 percent chance of winning the division. But 5.2 is greater than zero, and while it would take a significant winning streak for the Red Sox to climb into contention for the AL East pennant, this edition of the Red Sox has done it before.

The team has three winning streaks of more than five games so far in 2025: a six-game streak from June 10 to June 16; a seven-game heater from July 29 to August 5; and the best one, a 10-gamer from July 4 through July 13.

As the Red Sox gear up for the final six weeks of the regular season, starting Monday with a home game against the Baltimore Orioles, the Red Sox announced their biggest and most traditional annual community event, which will also begin on Monday.

Team Announces Annual Charity Extravaganza

On Monday and Tuesday, the Red Sox’ longtime official charity, the Jimmy Fund of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, will hold its 23rd annual radio-telethon, broadcasting from Fenway Park from 6 a.m. until midnight Eastern Time on both days.

Red Sox players have long been closely involved with the Jimmy Fund. Former super-utility player and 2018 World Series champion Brock Holt serves a co-chair of the charity, along with broadcaster Tom Caron from the Red Sox-owned cable network NESN.

Former Red Sox knuckleball pitcher Tim Wakefield — who sadly himself passed away from cancer at age 57 in 2023 — was also one of the Jimmy Fund’s most tireless advocates, frequently appearing on NESN to encourage support for the cancer research charity.

$74 Million Raised For Jimmy Fund Since 2002

Since the first Jimmy Fund radio-telethon in 2002, the event has raised a reported $74 million to support cancer research at Dana-Farber, which was rated as the No. 4 cancer facility in the country by U.S. News and World Report.

The Jimmy Fund was founded in 1948 as a means for the Boston-area community to support Dr. Sidney Farber’s cutting edge cancer research and treatment techniques, particularly for children with cancer.

Mystery of Original ‘Jimmy’ Not Solved For 50 Years

The charity derives its name from a 1948 patient of Dr. Farber, a 12-year-old bay from Maine named Einar Gustafson — though the original “Jimmy” remained anonymous, widely assumed to to have syuvvumbed to his childhood cancer, until Boston Globe reporter Dan Shaughnessy tracked him down 50 years later, in 1998.

Though he never came forward until then, as a child Gustafson appeared on a radio program under the pseudonym “Jimmy.” He lived until 2001 when he died of a stroke at age 65.

For more information on the annual Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon, visit this link.

Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin

More Heavy on Red Sox

Loading more stories