A notable Adair who lived with the Cherokee tribe in the eighteenth century was an Irish trader, James Adair. He wrote a lengthy book about his belief that the unique, dignified Cherokees were one of the biblical lost tribes of Judah. In 1838, a majority of the Cherokees under the terms of an onerous treaty with the United States government were forcibly removed on the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory. Thousands of Cherokees died along the way. In 1907, Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory were combined to form the state of Oklahoma.

Bordering on the state of Arkansas in the flint hills of northeastern Oklahoma, Adair County is named for one of Jerry Adair’s Cherokee family members of the Civil War era, Judge William Penn Adair. Jerry’s grandfather George Starr Adair was enrolled in a tribal census as a 28-year-old member of the Cherokee Nation in 1900 in what became Adair County, Oklahoma. His son, Kinnie Adair, spoke Cherokee when he visited with friends and relatives from Adair County. Today, heavy concentrations of the inhabitants of the county are descendants of the original Cherokee settlers.

Jerry Adair’s life was described by the Tulsa World‘s sports editor Bill Connors as “an experience of two lifetimes.” Connors’ obituary after Jerry’s death in 1987 surmised, “The first half was exaltation. The second half was tragedy.” Connors described Jerry as “the best athlete to come out of the Tulsa area in his lifetime.” He would not have stretched the truth if he had stated that no athlete from Oklahoma had a more storied pre-professional career than Adair, not even Mickey Mantle, who was 5 years older than Adair. Mantle had close relatives who were Cherokee; his grandmother was born in Indian Territory, but he was not a mixed-blood American Indian.

Jerry’s father played sandlot baseball on his employer’s teams in the Sand Springs area. Like Mantle’s father, Kinnie Adair always had time after work to play ball with his son. A tool grinder by trade, Kinnie also coached Jerry’s Little League teams. Jerry told Ray Fitzgerald, a Boston Globe sports columnist, about his Little League days when he “did a lot of pitching. Anybody who could throw a curveball was a pitcher, and I was a pretty good one.”

Kinnie Adair died in 1986, one year and three days before Jerry’s death. He had remarried after Jerry’s mother died in 1952 and had a son, Dennis, who died in 2005. Jerry’s only sister, Joyce, who was born in Adair County, still lives in Sand Springs.

Jerry’s high school coach, Cecil Hankins, was a legendary football and basketball player at Oklahoma A&M College, now Oklahoma State University (OSU), in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Hankins regarded Jerry as the greatest all-around athlete he ever coached. Jerry earned nine letters at Sand Springs High School, three each in football, basketball, and baseball. During his high school years, he earned the nickname “Iceman” because of his coolness. He is particularly remembered for his coolness during the football game against Ponca City during his senior year. Ponca City grabbed a 20-0 lead in the first quarter. Playing quarterback, Jerry scored just before halftime and kicked the extra point to cut the deficit to 20-7. In the third quarter, Jerry engineered a scoring drive and kicked another extra point for a 20-14 score. Late in the fourth quarter, Jerry scored a touchdown and kicked the extra point to win the game 21-20 for Sand Springs. Bill Connors once wrote, “Adair demonstrated All-American possibilities as a high school quarterback at Sand Springs.”

After football season in the fall of 1954, Daily Oklahoman sports writer Ray Soldan telephoned coach Hankins to tell him that he had selected Jerry for the all-state football team. For many years Soldan made Oklahoma’s all-state team selections. Only seniors were eligible and a player could be selected for only one sport. Coach Hankins spoke with Jerry, who said he did not want to make all-state in football; he wanted to make it in basketball. Soldan said he would give no assurance that Jerry would be selected for basketball, but Jerry said he would take the chance. Another player was named to replace Jerry on the all-state football team. After basketball season, Jerry was selected on the all-state basketball team. Playing in the state all-star game in the summer of 1955, Jerry was selected as the most outstanding player in the game.

Jerry also played Ban Johnson League baseball during the summer of 1955. He was scouted by Toby Greene, the longtime head baseball coach at OSU. Jerry’s team was leading 1-0 in the bottom of the ninth inning, but the opponent had loaded the bases with no outs. Greene watched as the manager motioned for Jerry to pitch. Jerry nodded and walked to the mound from his third base position with a big cud of tobacco in his mouth. He threw two balls to the catcher and announced he was ready. Greene thought this was the cockiest player he had ever seen. Jerry struck out the three batters he faced. Greene later declared to Coach Hankins, “I’ll take him–he can play anywhere.” Jerry Adair was one of Coach Greene’s seven All-Americans at OSU.

Jerry entered OSU in the fall of 1955 on an athletic scholarship to play basketball and baseball. Freshmen were not then eligible for varsity competition and played only limited schedules in all sports. Jerry’s first varsity competition was during the 1956-1957 basketball season under Hall of Fame coach Henry Iba, the Iron Duke. A rare sophomore starter at OSU, the 6-foot, 175-pound Adair was the team’s playmaking guard and second leading scorer on the nation’s top defensive team. During his junior year, he was again the team’s second leading scorer. Bill Connors once wrote, “Long time Iba watchers say Adair was one of the few players who was not yelled at by Iba. ‘There was no need to yell at Jerry,’ Iba said at the time. ‘He does everything right.'”

To this day, what is referred to as “The Game” at Gallagher Hall (now Gallagher-Iba Arena and Eddie Sutton Court) at OSU is the February 21, 1957, rematch between OSU and the Kansas Jayhawks, led by their phenomenal sophomore center Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain. Earlier in the season, Iba’s team was said to have played one of their best games of the season when they held the Jayhawks to a ten point winning margin on their home court at Lawrence, Kansas.

Chamberlain did not disappoint the fans as he scored an arena record of 32 points. But OSU came from far behind to win the game, 56-54. The high OSU scorer with 18 points was forward Eddie Sutton, who would return to his alma mater as head coach in 1990. Although he scored only six points, Jerry Adair, according to Bill Connors, “played brilliantly on the floor.” Jerry had no fouls and one field goal, and was four-for-four from the free-throw line.

The highlight game of Jerry’s junior year and his last basketball season at OSU was a 61-57 verdict over the Cincinnati Bearcats. Their future Hall of Fame player, Oscar Robertson, scored 29 points. Jerry was OSU’s second leading scorer, and made two free throws and a field goal down the stretch to preserve the victory. The 1957-1958 OSU team finished 21-8 and won two games in post-season NCAA play. They were eliminated by Kansas State in the western regional finals, one game from the final four.

Baseball was a much lower profile sport than basketball at OSU in the 1950s as well as today. OSU won the NCAA basketball championships in 1945 and 1946. Henry Iba had been the OSU basketball and baseball coach from 1934 to 1941. When he was also the athletic director in 1942, he passed the baseball coaching reins to Toby Greene, who was Jerry Adair’s head baseball coach during the 1957 and 1958 seasons.

The 1957 OSU baseball season was essentially “called on account of rain.” Nine games were canceled because of rain or unplayable fields. The year’s record for OSU was 12 won and three lost. When three consecutive days of rain prevented the Missouri Valley conference championship series from being played, Bradley University was given the NCAA tournament bid because of its better conference record.

Regarded as a “converted basketballer,” sophomore Jerry Adair was the starting shortstop on the experienced 1957 OSU baseball team. Two of his senior teammates signed professional contracts at season’s end. Center fielder Mel Wright, who was the other starting basketball guard with Adair during the 1956-1957 season, signed with the Kansas City Athletics. He had four undistinguished seasons in the minor leagues. Pitcher Merlin Nippert signed with the Boston Red Sox, with whom he had a cup of coffee in 1962 before finishing his career in the Pacific Coast League.

Competing in the Big Eight conference in 1958 for the first time, OSU was rained out of its last two games of the year with champion Missouri, which thus backed into the NCAA tournament bid. OSU’s record for the year was 17 won, six lost. Junior shortstop Jerry Adair was the team’s leading hitter with a .438 batting average. He was the first player from OSU named to the All-Big Eight team. He was also named to the All-American second team by the American Baseball Coaches Association. One of three excellent OSU pitchers was future Chicago White Sox ace Joel Horlen, who would lead the Adair-less 1959 team to OSU’s first and only NCAA baseball championship.

On August 24, 1957, Jerry married his high school sweetheart, Kay Morris. They had met in an English class at Sand Springs High School. While he was playing semipro baseball during the summer of 1958 for Williston, North Dakota, in the Western Canada Baseball League (WCBL), Kay gave birth in Tulsa to Kathy, their first of four children.

Adair won the batting title with a .409 average, with the runner-up trailing at .371. He tied for the lead in home runs and finished close behind the RBI leader. Jerry was the league’s top fielding shortstop. He was the starting pitcher in three games and was credited with the victory in each. He batted .444 in 14 playoff games and led his team to the league title on August 30, 1958.

After being signed by Baltimore Orioles scout Eddie Robinson for a reported $40,000, Jerry made his major league debut defensively at shortstop for the O’s on September 2, 1958, in a 4-3 loss to the Senators in Washington. Playing right field for the Orioles that day was former Yankee Gene Woodling whose steadying influence and advice helped Jerry adjust to major league baseball. At third base for the Orioles was future major league manager Dick Williams who would be Jerry’s future ticket to participate in three World Series.

The news that Adair had signed a professional baseball contract came as a complete surprise to OSU’s athletic director and basketball coach, Henry Iba. He had understood that Jerry would return to OSU for conferences with him before making a definite commitment to a major league club. Iba had once counseled OSU’s baseball and football star, Allie Reynolds, to take a baseball contract offered by the Cleveland Indians instead of one offered by the New York Giants in Allie’s then favorite sport, football. As to Adair, Iba was quoted in the Tulsa World as saying “He has an excellent chance in baseball, I believe, for he is a fine baseball player and a boy with a great competitive spirit.” With his playmaking guard not in the lineup for the 1958-1959 season, Iba was to suffer through just his second losing basketball season (11 won, 14 lost) since his arrival at OSU in 1934.

The Red Sox had offered Jerry a larger signing bonus than Baltimore, but he figured he would move up the ladder quicker with the Orioles.

After playing in only 11 games with the Orioles in 1958, with just 19 at-bats, Jerry was shipped in the spring of 1959 to the Amarillo Gold Sox, the Orioles’ farm team in the Double-A Texas League. His Amarillo manager, George Staller, was quoted in the Tulsa World as saying that Jerry was a surefire major leaguer but that he needed a season of Triple-A experience. At the beginning of the season in Amarillo, Jerry batted around .275 and failed to cover much ground. Suddenly he caught fire, both at bat and in the field. Staller credited Adair with being instrumental in Amarillo’s surge from 17 games below .500 to four over that mark. Recalled Adair in a Tulsa World article, “My fielding improved when my hitting got better and I learned to play the batters. That’s the big difference. When you’re hitting everything seems to go well. Knowing the hitters is the key. That’s why I didn’t do so well with Baltimore.”

In 146 games, mostly at shortstop, for Amarillo in 1959, Jerry batted .309. Called up at season’s end by Baltimore, he batted .314 in 12 games, playing second base or shortstop, mostly as the starter. After playing in an instructional league in the fall of 1959, he batted .266 in 1960 playing for the Miami Marlins of the Triple-A International League. He was named the league’s all-star shortstop.   He played three games at second base for the Orioles at the very end of the year.

Jerry had an excellent 1961 spring training with the Orioles to make the club, but by Opening Day was still unable to dislodge veterans Ron Hansen at shortstop or Marv Breeding at second base. But as the season progressed, he replaced Breeding as the regular second baseman and substituted occasionally for Hansen at shortstop. Batting .264 for the season, he outhit both Hansen and Breeding and played 107 games at second base, 27 games at shortstop, and two at third base. Jerry hit nine home runs and drove in 37 runs. During the seasons 1961-1965, Adair was recognized as one of the premier fielding infielders in the American League. He batted .258 during these five seasons, substantially above the league average for middle infielders. However, he was overshadowed by the Orioles’ spectacular third baseman and future Hall of Famer, Brooks Robinson.

Adair is particularly remembered for setting a major league record for second basemen. In 89 games from July 22, 1964, to May 6, 1965, he handled 458 chances without an error. In 1964 and 1965, he led all American League second basemen in fielding percentage. He shares an American League record with Bobby Grich and Roberto Alomar for the fewest errors in a season by a second baseman (five in 1964). For his career he had a better fielding percentage (.985) than three Hall of Fame second basemen of his era: Nellie Fox, Joe Morgan and Bill Mazeroski.

Although Jerry was known primarily for his glove, he told the Boston Globe‘s Ray Fitzgerald in August of 1967 that his biggest moment in the major leagues came in late August 1962 in a five-game Orioles-Yankees series. Jerry recalled that the Orioles won all five games and that he had 13 hits in the series. His best day came in a twi-night doubleheader that opened the series when he was 3-for-4 in the first game and 5-for-6 (with a double and a triple) in the second game.

When Orioles manager Hank Bauer gave the second base job to rookie Dave Johnson, Jerry demanded a trade — more than once — and was finally dealt to the White Sox for Eddie Fisher on June 13, 1966. The trade cost him the opportunity to be a member of the Orioles when they defeated the Dodgers in the 1966 World Series and also cost him about $12,000 World Series money.

After hitting .243 for the White Sox in 1966, he shared second base with Wayne Causey early in the 1967 season. After having missed out on a pennant in 1966, things balanced out when on June 2, 1967, the White Sox traded him to the Red Sox. Dick Williams was glad to get him; the two had been teammates for several years in Baltimore and author Bill Reynolds said that Williams viewed him as “the ultimate professional.” Adair’s toughness appealed to Williams. Reynolds recounted a 1964 doubleheader when Jerry was hit in the mouth by a throw in the first game, received 11 stitches, then played in the second game. He described Adair as having “a face right out of the Grapes of Wrath.” Jerry was hitting only .204 with the White Sox when the trade was executed, but would hit .291 in 89 games while playing three infield positions for the Red Sox. The Red Sox were 22-21 before he joined them but were 70-49 afterward.

Adair filled in for the injured Rico Petrocelli at short off-and-on for a month, playing errorless defense. Adair played pivotal roles on offense in several games, too, but his biggest single day was likely the Sunday doubleheader at Fenway Park on August 20. Jerry was 3-for-3 in the first game, a 12-2 rout of the Angels. In the second game, California got off to an 8-0 lead after just 3½ innings. The Sox crept back, and Adair’s single in the bottom of the sixth tied the game, 8-8. In the bottom of the eighth, his leadoff home run gave the Red Sox the lead and the 9-8 win. As Herb Crehan wrote in Lightning in a Bottle, “Role players like Adair seldom get their moment in the sun. But in the summer of ’67 every Red Sox fan thought of Jerry as a hero.”

In the final game of the season, Adair was 2-for-4 at the plate. He singled and scored the tying run in the bottom of the sixth, but his big play of the day came in the top of the eighth as Jim Lonborg was working with a 5-2 lead. Pinch hitter Rich Reese singled to lead off the inning, but César Tovar grounded to second. Adair charged in on the ball, sweeping it up with his glove, tagging the oncoming Reese, and firing accurately to George Scott at first, though spiked so severely he had to leave the game and have several stitches. Red Sox broadcaster Ken Coleman called Jerry Adair “Mr. Clutch” and wrote that if there had been a “Tenth Player Award” in 1967, he would have deserved it.

After the wild clubhouse celebration when the Red Sox clinched the American League pennant on the last day of the season, Jerry telephoned his sister to say that manager Dick Williams had just kissed him and other Red Sox players. In the World Series that was won by the pitching heroics of Bob Gibson for the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games, Adair appeared in five games, starting the first four (all against righthanders), but had only two hits in 16 at-bats. He did have Boston’s only stolen base of the series and had one RBI. Williams started Mike Andrews in Game Five against lefty Steve Carlton, then stuck with Andrews in Games Six and Seven.

Neil Singelais, a sports writer with the Boston Globe later quoted 1967 Red Sox catcher Russ Gibson as saying, “No one could pivot as well as Jerry on a double play ball. He could play anywhere and he was a tough guy to get out.” Jim Lonborg, the 1967 pitching ace of the Red Sox staff, added that the trade that brought Adair to Boston “was like adding a gem to a beautiful necklace. He did such a magnificent job for us. He was a quiet guy around the clubhouse. He was so invaluable, older and more experienced.”

In 1968, Jerry had a poor year at the plate for the Red Sox, batting only .216 in 74 games while filling a journeyman’s role and playing four infield positions. In the 1968-1969 off-season, he was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the American League expansion draft. He was the regular second baseman for the Royals in 1969 and batted .250 for the season. On April 8, in the first game the Royals ever played, Adair hit second and knocked in their first-ever run: Lou Piniella led off with a double, and Jerry singled him home.

In 1970, the Royals awarded the second base position to Luis Alcaraz, and Adair played sparingly. In May, the Royals abruptly released Adair as he was boarding an airplane. He had spent most of the spring with his daughter, Tammy, who died of cancer shortly after his release. Jerry resented the Royals not taking his family problems into consideration at the time of the release. Later that season, Adair played near his hometown with the Tulsa Oilers of the Triple-A American Association, the top Cardinals farm club.

In 1971, Adair joined the Hankyu Braves in Japan and batted .300 for the season. The Braves won the pennant in the Pacific League, but were defeated by the perennial champion Yomiuri Giants of the Central League in the Japan Series. In 1972 and 1973, Jerry earned World Series rings as a coach under his friend, manager Dick Williams of the Oakland Athletics. Williams quit as manager of the A’s after the 1973 World Series. Jerry earned another World Series ring in 1974 as a coach for manager Alvin Dark of the A’s, who won their third straight World Series. In 1975 and 1976, Jerry was a coach for manager Dick Williams of the California Angels. The major league coaching doors were closed to Jerry after the Angels fired Williams during the 1976 season.

Jerry’s wife, Kay, died of cancer in June 1981. Personal and financial problems forced Jerry, always an introvert, into a shell. A cancerous mole was removed from his arm in 1986. Prior to gall bladder surgery, it was discovered that the cancer had spread to his liver. As the former OSU basketball players were making plans to have a Saturday night banquet in Stillwater, Oklahoma, honoring Henry Iba, Jerry was out of the hospital and optimistic for a new treatment for his disease. Friday night he was readmitted to the hospital. At the very hour of the event that Iba called the happiest of his life, Adair’s condition worsened. He died Sunday morning, May 31, 1987. Jerry was survived by his sister, Joyce; his half-brother, Dennis; and three children, Kathy, Judy, and Michael. Graveside funeral services were held at Woodlawn Cemetery in Sand Springs.

Sand Springs friend Ron Dobbs helped perpetuate Jerry’s memory by displaying Jerry’s sports memorabilia at his pizza restaurant in Sand Springs. Many of the items were still on display years after Dobbs owned the restaurant. Jerry’s fierce competitive nature was evident early on, according to Dobbs. Like the Dodgers’ Pee Wee Reese, Jerry was regarded by his friends as a world class marbles shooter in grade school. He was said to have more marbles at his house than any other kid in Lake Station. Dobbs and one of Jerry’s former Sand Springs teammates, Oklahoma State Representative David Riggs, helped get the Sand Springs Little League complex named in his honor. In 1992, Jerry was inducted into the Sand Springs Sandite Hall of Fame. In 2001, he was inducted into the OSU Baseball Hall of Fame.

Author’s Note

An updated version of this article appeared in Mustaches and Mayhem: Charlie O’s Three Time Champions: The Oakland Athletics: 1972-74 (SABR, 2015), edited by Chip Greene. It originally appeared in SABR’s The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium On The Field (Rounder Books, 2007), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers.

Sources

I interviewed Jerry Adair’s only surviving sibling, Joyce Bachus, and a close friend, Ron Dobbs, both of Sand Springs, Oklahoma. They also reviewed and provided helpful comments as to my draft of this article. Like Jerry, I have a Cherokee heritage and was a student at OSU when Jerry was making his records in basketball and baseball.

In addition, I made use of the following sources:

Bischoff, John Paul. Mr. Iba: Basketball’s Aggie Iron Duke. Oklahoma Heritage Association, 1980.

Burke, Bob; Kenny A. Franks, and Royse Parr. Glory Days of Summer: The History of Baseball in Oklahoma. Oklahoma Heritage Association, 1999.

Coleman, Ken and Dan Valenti. The Impossible Dream Remembered. Stephen Greene Press, 1987.

Crehan, Herb with James W. Ryan. Lightning in a Bottle. Branden Publishing, 1992.

Echohawk, Rodney. “Jerry Adair, Sandite Athlete Without Equal,” Sand Springs Leader, May 31, 2001.

Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. Doubleday, 1988.

Hankins, Cecil. “Adair” in Sand Springs, Oklahoma: A Community History. Sand Springs, Oklahoma Museum, 1994.

King, Richard. “Jerry Adair” by Royse Parr in Native Americans in Sports, Sharpe Reference, 2004.

Parr, Royse. Allie Reynolds: Super Chief. Oklahoma Heritage Association, 2001.

Reynolds, Bill. Lost Summer. Time Warner, 1992.

Woodward, Grace Steele. The Cherokees. University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.

Prepared by the Commission and the Commissioners of the Five Civilized Tribes. The Final Rolls of Citizen and Freedman of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory, 1907.

1957 Redskin and 1958 Redskin, yearbooks of Oklahoma A&M College.

Press book, Oklahoma State 1999 Cowboy Baseball.

Numerous articles and game reports from the sports section of the Tulsa World on microfilm at the Tulsa City-County Library, particularly writings by its sportswriters Bill Connors and John Cronley, 1956-1987.

Boston Globe, August 7, 1967, with articles about Kay Adair by Laura Holbrow and about Jerry Adair by Ray Fitzgerald.

Internet sources last viewed for Jerry Adair information in January 2006 included www.findagrave.com, www.baseballlibrary.com, www.thebaseballpage.com, www.thedeadballera.com, and www.attheplate.com/wcbl. 

As chairman of the Jimmy Fund of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, located less than a mile down Brookline Avenue from Boston’s Fenway Park, Andrews spent 30 years before his 2009 retirement helping to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for research and treatment into childhood and adult cancers. Rather than spin tales of his athletic feats during his many public appearances, he spoke of the dedicated scientists, caregivers, and patients engaged in the cancer fight at Dana-Farber — “true heroes” whom he first encountered as a rookie.

Andrews was the perfect man for the job. The Jimmy Fund has long been a favorite charity of the Red Sox, and Mike was accustomed to quietly turning in clutch performances that helped others shine. All Red Sox fans worth their weight in Big Yaz Bread know who led the club in hitting down the stretch of the 1967 American League race, but it’s a forgotten footnote that rookie Andrews was second to Carl Yastrzemski among regulars with a .342 batting average during that pressure-packed September.

“Just today, I had an electrician at my winter house in Florida, and when he found out who I was, he named the entire starting lineup from ’67,” Andrews recalled in 2006.. “That happens all the time. It was just a magical team; 2004 was great, but I’m not sure everybody will remember all the individuals the same way because players move around so much now. Plus, the Red Sox are always contending, whereas the team had been bad for years before we came along — and the excitement kept building each month. That season brought baseball back in New England.”

Andrews was in the region so long with the Red Sox and the Jimmy Fund that many likely assume he is a New England native himself, but he’s in fact a Southern California boy. Born on July 9, 1943, in Los Angeles, he grew up in nearby Torrance rooting for the Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Angels and Hollywood Stars.

Andrews got his early big-league fix from television’s Game of the Week, and after the Dodgers fled Brooklyn for the West Coast during his teenage years, he followed the exploits of their pitching aces Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. His athletic genes came from his father, Lloyd, who played football and basketball at the University of Montana and owned Callahan’s Bar in nearby Hermosa Beach. Mike starred in football, baseball, and basketball at South Torrance High.

The 6-foot-3, 195-pounder initialy chose the gridiron — accepting a full scholarship to UCLA that required his attending one year of junior college to complete the necessary foreign-language requirement. Andrews earned JC All-American honors as a split end at El Camino College, but then came a life-altering decision for the 18-year-old.

The Pirates and Red Sox had scouted him, and he wanted to marry his high-school sweetheart, Marilyn Flynn, and start a family. Several more years of college football without a paycheck seemed like forever, and Boston scout Joe Stephenson was offering him a cash bonus of $12,000 plus $4,000 more if he made the big-league roster. Andrews took it in December 1961, got engaged early the next spring, and shortly thereafter reported to Boston’s Class A club in Olean, New York. (Stephenson’s son, Jerry, would later be one of Mike’s teammates on the Red Sox.)

Up the ladder

Like many young prospects, Andrews’ first taste of professional baseball was humbling. All around him on the ’62 Olean squad were other former high-school hotshots, and as he later recalled for the Boston Globe: “I didn’t think much of my chances. So all I could do was give it everything I had.” Perhaps this self-deprecating attitude took the pressure off at the plate, as Andrews hit .299 with 12 home runs and 89 runs scored in 114 games as the club’s starting shortstop.

Moved up the chain to Winston-Salem for 1963, he hit just .255 there, but .323 after a midseason switch to Single-A Waterloo. He cut his error total at shortstop by (more than 50 percent, and the Red Sox boosted him again the next year, to Double-A Reading. There he batted .295, raised his fielding percentage again, and in 1965 — while still just 21 years old — earned an invitation to Red Sox spring training in Scottsdale, Arizona, from new manager Billy Herman.

Farmed out for the regular season to Triple-A Toronto, the top of Boston’s minor-league ladder, Andrews had a disappointing year (.246, 4 homers) toiling for a fiery young manager named Dick Williams. It was Williams who played a part in Andrews’ winter-league switch to second base (Rico Petrocelli already held the starting shortstop slot in Boston), and Mike excelled when he returned to Toronto for a second season in 1966. He played solid defense at his new position, boosted both his batting average (to .267) and home-run output considerably (to 14), and led the International League in runs scored with 97.

The performance earned Andrews a September call-up to the ninth-place Red Sox, where he started five games in the waning days of the season. He batted seventh in his first major-league contest, against his hometown Angels at Fenway Park on September 18, and went 0-for-4 with a run scored. His next action came a week later at New York, and on September 24 he notched his first big-league hit, a single off Fritz Peterson at Yankee Stadium in a 1-0 Sox loss.

“Mickey Mantle was one of my idols,” Andrews recalled of the event. “When he said, ‘Nice job, Mike,’ that was terrific.” Overall Andrews was 3-for-18 in the trial, with his other two safeties coming in the season finale at Chicago.

After Herman was fired and Williams named Red Sox manager for 1967, the new skipper announced before spring training that the starting second base job was “Andrews’ to lose.” Mike had hurt his lower back lifting weights in the offseason, however, and the lingering injury affected his defensive range in exhibition play. The tough-talking Williams was not sympathetic.

“We can’t wait any longer,” the manager stated flatly after two Andrews errors on March 26. “He has a bad back and he can’t bend. If he can’t bend, he can’t play.” Even though Mike had notched a five-hit game and was batting close to .400 in the exhibition season, Williams announced that day that he was moving fellow Southern Californian rookie Reggie Smith from outfield to second base and putting Andrews on the bench.

This was still the arrangement when the regular season started two weeks later, but it didn’t last much longer. Smith had his own defensive troubles at second, while the center field platoon of José Tartabull and George Thomas that replaced him was batting less than .200. On April 19, with Andrews’ back improving, Williams reinstated Smith in center and Mike at second. With very few exceptions, Mike Andrews would be the Red Sox’ starting second baseman for the next four years.

Key contributor

Once he got his chance, Andrews made the most of it. He hit .321 during the rest of April, and settled in with Petrocelli to provide strong middle-infield defense for the surprising Red Sox. On April 25 he hit his first major-league home run, a three-run shot off the Senators’ Pete Richert in a 9-3 Boston victory at DC Stadium. Later in the same contest, he had his first big-league stolen base and scored on a Carl Yastrzemski double.

A solid May (.281, including a 17-for-37 stretch) followed for Mike and featured the team’s first trip to his home state for a series with the Angels. A contingent of 90 family members and friends made the 45-minute drive to Anaheim on two buses originating from his dad’s bar, and Andrews received rousing applause from the sign-waving group even when he drew a walk in one of the games — thus earning him several weeks of ribbing from his teammates. A home run followed the next day, however, and Mike went on to enjoy several more clutch performances in front of his biggest fans over the years (including another homer at Anaheim later in the season). Briefly in May, the rookie was among the American League’s top ten in hitting.

Andrews’ batting average dropped off as the season wore on, but even while hitting below .240 each month from June through August, he was consistently in the thick of things as the Red Sox and their fans enjoyed Boston’s first true pennant race in more than a decade.

Most often used as a leadoff man in front of players like Tony Conigliaro, Yastrzemksi, and George Scott, he also hit quite often in the second, seventh, and eighth slots.

July offered a prime example of Mike’s value; he batted just .236 but scored 18 runs in as many games to help the team to a 15-3 stretch. He was a key man in a ten-game winning streak July 14-23 that many signaled as the turning point of the season, with two hits (including a three-run homer) in a 6-4 win at Baltimore July 19 and three more safeties (with another homer) in a 4-0 shutout at Cleveland on July 22 that drew Boston to within a half-game of the first-place Chicago White Sox. Happy with Andrews’ contributions, owner Tom Yawkey quietly gave him a midseason salary boost from $11,000 to $15,000.

Making Andrews’ performance all the more impressive were two factors — he was a 24-year-old rookie playing 3,000 miles from home, and (unbeknownst to all but his teammate and close friend Russ Gibson), he was the subject of a death threat late in the season. A Chicago fan who had apparently wagered a bundle on the White Sox winning the pennant sent Andrews and fellow AL second basemen Rod Carew and Dick McAuliffe (all from contending teams) menacing letters threatening their lives.

“Dick Williams called me into his office,” Andrews recalled, “and (general manager) Dick O’Connell and an FBI guy were in there. The FBI guy says, ‘We don’t think it’s a valid threat, but there have been one or two correspondences, so we want to watch it closely.’ I believed that there probably wasn’t anything to worry about, so I didn’t even tell my wife right away. But I remember looking around the stands at Fenway when I first ran on the field for the next game.”

By August, with a four-team scramble under way for the AL lead, every game was a huge one — and Andrews continued to deliver. August 1 through 3 he went a combined 7-for-12 with two homers, five RBIs and five runs scored in three games (the Red Sox won two), and, all told, had eight multihit games during the month. This was just a warm-up for September, when he hit .342 (25-for-73) and along with Yastrzemski and Dalton Jones kept the team in the hunt while others slumped. Mike was actually well over .400 for the month until an 0-for-9 skein, and after this manager Williams — who liked to go with the “hot hand” whenever possible — sat him in favor of veteran Jerry Adair for several games down the stretch.

Then, with the Sox needing to sweep Minnesota in two games on the season’s final weekend for a chance at the pennant, Andrews came through again. On Saturday he was 2-for-3 in the leadoff slot with a key infield single ahead of Yaz’s game-breaking three-run homer, and after starting on the bench in Sunday’s finale, he played a significant defensive role subbing for Adair, who had suffered a spike wound to his leg while turning an eighth-inning double play. Two straight Minnesota hits immediately brought the tying run to the plate in a 5-2 game, and Bob Allison hit a hard liner off Jim Lonborg into the left-field corner for what looked like a double and two RBIs. The shot did score one run, but it also became the inning’s third out when Yastrzemksi threw a bullet to Andrews just in time for a sweeping tag on the sliding Allison.

Now down 5-3, the Twins got the leadoff man on in the ninth, but Andrews turned a clutch “tag ’em out, throw ’em out” double play on a Rod Carew grounder to set the stage for Petrocelli’s catch of Rich Rollins’ popup and the bedlam that followed. Andrews and Scott were the first to reach pitching hero Lonborg, and managed to hoist him to their shoulders for a few moments before thousands of charging fans turned the team’s celebration into the city’s.

Andrews finished the regular season with a .263 average, 8 homers, and 40 RBIs in 142 games after his late start. He led the league with 18 sacrifice hits, and was runner-up to Rookie of the Year Carew among second basemen in voting by major-league players, managers, and coaches for the Topps All-Star Rookie Team. As the Red Sox readied for the World Series, the Boston Record American featured a huge front-page photo of Marilyn Andrews and the couple’s 2-year-old son, Michael, in the window of their Peabody home, waving a “GOOD LUCK RED SOX” banner.

It’s unclear if Dick Williams saw the newspaper and photo, but he again benched Andrews in favor of Adair during the first four games against the St. Louis Cardinals. Adair went 2-for-16, however, and after two pinch-hitting appearances (and one hit) Andrews was back in the starting lineup for Game 5 — where he remained the rest of the Series. He wound up batting .308, but the Red Sox and a weary Lonborg lost to Cardinals ace Bob Gibson in the seventh game. “The script was there, but it just wasn’t meant to be,” Andrews said of the setback. “It was like, ‘You guys have had your fun, now welcome back to the world. Here’s reality.’”

Shining on field and off

Reality hit hard in 1968, as the team fell to a distant fourth place and the offensive output for many Boston hitters dropped off markedly. Andrews was an exception. In the Year of the Pitcher, during which Yastrzemski was the only everyday AL player to hit .300 for the season, Andrews battled for the league batting lead until Labor Day before finishing at .271 (12th in the circuit) with 7 homers and 45 RBIs. He topped his rookie totals with 22 doubles and 145 hits, and his tiny dip from 79 runs scored to 77 was much more a factor of Tony Conigliaro’s yearlong absence due to his horrific ’67 beaning and George Scott’s anemic .171 average than a sophomore slump. After a few crucial errors early in the season, Andrews was steady on defense, and he was developing into a team leader. Boston sportswriters named him the club’s “Unsung Hero” for the season.

None of this was lost on Red Sox coach Bobby Doerr, then the top second baseman in the team’s history, who told New York Times columnist Arthur Daley of Andrews: “This kid will be around for a long while. What I like best about him is that he’s a natural athlete who won’t fall apart when he has a bad day. He has the ideal throwing arm for a second baseman, whipping it across his body. He’s capable of .285 with 20 homers once he gets settled.” Daley was similarly impressed, writing, “The Bostonians have been searching for a second baseman of Doerr’s superlative skills ever since Bobby retired in 1951. It could be that Mike will become that long-sought successor.”

Off the field Andrews was shining as well. During his rookie year, he had become aware of the Jimmy Fund’s status as the team’s official charity — its billboard in right field was the only one allowed at Fenway Park by owner Tom Yawkey for years — and along with his teammates voted a full 1967 World Series share to the charity. Like other players, he also periodically met with young cancer patients brought to Fenway by Jimmy Fund executive director Bill Koster. One day such a visit gave him a reality check of a different kind.

“I was busy warming up, but I spent a few minutes with the kid, who was a Little League star looking forward to playing the next year after his treatment was done,” recalled Andrews. “I wished him luck. Bill came up to me afterward and said, ‘Thanks, Mike. That meant a lot. There isn’t much we can do for that boy. We’re sending him home.’ That made me realize that an 0-for-4 day at the plate really doesn’t mean too much in the scheme of things.”

Andrews became a Jimmy Fund regular and in 1968 was named Man of the Year by the BoSox Club (the team’s official fan club) for “contributions to the success of the Red Sox and for cooperation in community endeavors.” He didn’t know it at the time, but the seeds of his future career had been planted.

Mike made Doerr and Daley look prophetic in ’69. Now batting second in Boston’s lineup more often than leadoff, he firmly established himself as one of the most productive second basemen in the majors when healthy. He had a .293 average (tenth in the league), 15 homers, and 59 RBIs despite missing nearly 40 games in midseason after being hit in the hand by Minnesota pitcher Dave Boswell and suffering a blood clot that required extensive treatment. When a bad back kept Baltimore’s Davey Johnson from going to the All-Star Game, Mike took his place and backed up starting second baseman Rod Carew. (Andrews played the last four innings for the American League and grounded out off Jerry Koosman in his only plate appearance.) The Red Sox were again unable to recapture the magic of two years earlier, and with a third-place finish assured, Dick Williams was fired in the waning days of the season.

A change of Sox

The young lineup that was expected to lead the Red Sox to several pennants was still quite potent — Boston’s 203 home runs in 1970 led all big-league clubs — but without the pitching to compete with the Baltimore Orioles, it was not enough. Back atop the batting order exclusively, Andrews reached new offensive heights himself that summer. He had 28 doubles, 17 homers, and 65 RBIs, and led off four games with homers — giving him eight leadoff clouts in his career. He topped AL second basemen with 19 errors, but even if management had big changes in store after a second straight third-place finish, Mike’s spot with the club seemed safe.

On December 1, 1970, however, one day after Dick O’Connell was quoted as saying “Andrews is not available for trade,” Mike and backup shortstop Luis Alvarado were sent to the woeful Chicago White Sox for Luis Aparicio, a future Hall of Famer. Aparicio would be slated to play short alongside newly acquired second baseman Doug Griffin in Boston, with Petrocelli moving to third. “The way I understood it, O’Connell was looking either for a shortstop or a third baseman,” said Andrews. “If they got a third baseman, they’d leave Rico at short and me at second. But Aparicio became available, so they went that route.”

He would later joke in his self-deprecating style that “at least I was traded for a Hall of Famer, even if he was 55 at the time” (Aparicio was actually 36), but the move “crushed” Mike — who had a wife and three young children happily settled in the suburb of Peabody. The majority of fans interviewed were also upset, both because of Andrews’ reputation as a heady, tough athlete and Aparicio’s age.

Like Fred Lynn and Mo Vaughn in later years, Mike was a popular ballplayer whose career and luck never seemed the same after he left the Red Sox. He made headlines in Chicago by holding out during his first spring training, but won Comiskey Park fans over with his grittiness. He homered in his first series back at Fenway Park as a visiting player, but suffered from arm, shoulder, back, and wrist injuries at various points during 1971.

When Andrews inexplicably developed problems with his throws to first base as well, he tried playing through the struggles; after that didn’t work, he moved to first himself. “I never figured out what caused it,” Andrews said. “It was identical to what Chuck Knoblauch and Steve Sax later went through, and I just couldn’t work my way out of it.” Despite these travails, Mike’s hitting was better than ever during a late August spree in which he tallied four homers in a seven-game stretch. But then on September 1 he fractured his left wrist in a collision at first with Harmon Killebrew, the fifth time that year he had been knocked from a game by injury. Out for the season, Andrews finished with a .282 average, 12 homers and 47 RBIs in 109 games to help the team improve from 56-106 to 79-83.

Things looked promising for Andrews and the White Sox the following spring training. Manager Chuck Tanner gave him back his second-base job when the club picked up slugging first baseman Dick Allen, and Andrews said he felt better than ever after dropping some weight and giving his body time to heal. The White Sox shot out to a fantastic start and suddenly found themselves fighting with the Oakland A’s for the AL West crown. It was a baseball revival on Chicago’s South Side much like that experienced at Fenway Park five years before, with Comiskey Park attendance reaching its highest levels in 20 years amid the excitement of Allen’s MVP season and a 24-win performance from knuckleballer Wilbur Wood.

Andrews could not match his team’s resurgence. He batted just .200 in April, and after rebounding in May (.291), never hit higher than .245 in any other month. He was part of some big moments, most including Allen, but his final average of .220 (with 7 homers and 50 RBIs) was the worst of his career. In the field he was vastly improved, but still led AL second basemen in errors for the third straight year. Of some consolation was that the White Sox wound up with a fine 87-67 record, just 5½ games behind World Series champion Oakland.

Oakland odyssey

Still just 29 years old going into the 1973 season, Andrews looked for a bounce-back year at a position new both to him and to baseball: designated hitter. The first DH in White Sox history, he seemed to thrive in the role with a .417 start (15-for-36) through 10 games. A dreadful slump followed, however, and by July 4, Mike’s average had fallen below .200.

On top of this, Andrews was engaged in a heated dispute with general manager Stu Holcomb. The GM had wanted to cut his $60,000 salary a full 20 percent before the season, and Mike was still playing without a contract when on July 10 he asked to be released. Holcomb complied, and later that same month he himself resigned amid controversy over this and other player squabbles.

Here Dick Williams — by then manager of the A’s — resurfaced in Andrews’ life. Williams had reportedly attempted to trade for his former rookie standout upon first taking the Oakland job back in 1970. Now, with his defending champs trying for another pennant, he picked Mike up as a free agent on July 31. Andrews hit just .190 in 18 games, but the A’s won the West and Williams saw fit to leave the veteran on his club’s playoff roster.

Mike was hitless in two official pinch-hit appearances against Baltimore in the AL Championship Series (although he did lay down a sacrifice bunt in a third time up), and then was given the same task in the eighth inning of Game Two of the World Series against the New York Mets at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on October 14. Grounding out for Ted Kubiak, he stayed in the game at second base. Then the nuttiness began.

The score was 6-6 in the top of the 12th when the Mets scored four runs, due largely to two straight errors by Andrews — the first on a bad-hop grounder by John Milner, the second (one batter later) on a low throw that appeared to cause first baseman Gene Tenace to pull his foot off the bag. Replays indicated the umpire missed the second call, and Dick Williams thought Tenace deserved an error, but the damage was done. A rally in the bottom of the inning fell short, and New York won, 10-7.

Even before the game was over, meddling A’s owner Charlie Finley was on the phone with the team physician, Dr. Harry Walker, and behind closed doors in the locker room after the contest Andrews received an impromptu medical exam from Walker. Mike was then asked to sign a document stating that he had a “chronic” shoulder injury and was going on the disabled list. Feeling pressured, he signed it.

Andrews flew home to Boston as Finley schemed to add rookie Manny Trillo to the roster, but teammates who had seen Finley meeting with Mike rightfully suspected something was up. The story made national headlines, and prompted A’s players to affix Andrews’ No. 17 to their uniforms with athletic tape as a sign of solidarity. Within a few days Andrews said in a press conference that he had been forced into signing the document.

“Finley told me, ‘If you want to help this team, the best thing you can do is step aside and let us put Manny [Trillo] in there,’” Andrews recalled. “He kept beating me down, and finally I just signed it.” Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ordered that Andrews be reinstated for Game Four, and he earned a standing ovation at Shea Stadium when he came up as a pinchhitter in the eighth. After grounding out to third, he received another one.

Now pitching for Jimmy

That would be Andrews’ last at-bat in the major leagues. He didn’t expect the A’s to keep him after the ’73 season, and once Dick Williams quit after Oakland’s World Series victory, Mike’s fate was likely sealed. Released on October 26, he failed to catch on with another club. He spent that year working around his Peabody home and then took a big-money offer to play in Japan during 1975 with the Kintetsu Buffaloes. “I was one of two gaijin [non-Japanese] players on the team, along with our top slugger, Clarence Jones. Even though we were both starters and playing well, they cut us before the playoffs with no explanation.”

At this point, Andrews quit pro ball for good. Still popular in New England, he took a position as an agent with the Mass Mutual Insurance Company and followed the big-league exploits of his brother Rob, a second baseman with the Astros and Giants from 1975 to 1979. Then he received a surprising phone call from Ken Coleman, the Red Sox broadcaster who also was executive director of the Jimmy Fund.

“Mike had always been helpful to the Jimmy Fund during his days with the Red Sox, and he was the type of intelligent and personable individual whom I thought could be a great asset as we attempted to grow our fundraising program,” Coleman recalled shortly before his death in 2003. “We needed more people, and he was at the top of my list.”

Signing on as Coleman’s part-time assistant director in 1979, Andrews needed just a few months to realize “this is what I wanted to do” and gave up insurance altogether. He succeeded Coleman as the charity’s director in 1984.

For the next 25 years, Mike was often seen at Fenway Park for Jimmy Fund events and check presentations. He participated in both the Ted Williams memorial in 2002 (which benefited Dana-Farber) and the World Series ring ceremony on Opening Day of 2005, and delighted in showing off his own 2004 championship ring to young Jimmy Fund Clinic patients. The 18-hour WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon became an annual staple of New England’s summer fundraising calendar, and in his last year as chairman, the 2009 event raised more than $3.3 million. His popularity as the public face of the charity led to Boston Sports Review magazine naming Andrews one of the city’s most powerful sports figures.

Mike and Marilyn sold their Peabody home late in his Dana-Farber tenure, but they stayed in the Boston area. His boyish good looks and California smile remained intact, with only a full head of white hair hinting that this grandfather many times over couldn’t be just a decade or so removed from the majors. When Andrews started talking about the rapidly improving survival rates for various children’s and adult’s cancers, he seemed younger still.

“When Mike Andrews hung up his baseball cleats, he took his talent and competitive spirit and applied it to beating a foe much more formidable than any Fenway Park will ever see,” said Larry Lucchino, Boston Red Sox president/CEO and a two-time cancer survivor, upon Andrews’ retirement. “Through his tenacity and vision over the last 30 years, he has had a gigantic impact on the lives of countless adults, children and families who have been treated for cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.”

More than 40 years after his rookie exploits, Mike Andrews was still helping make Impossible Dreams come true.

Last revised: July 1, 2015

An updated version of this article appeared in “Mustaches and Mayhem: Charlie O’s Three Time Champions: The Oakland Athletics: 1972-74″ (SABR, 2015), edited by Chip Greene. It originally appeared in “The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field” (Rounder Books, 2007), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers.

Sources

Mike Andrews quotes from author interviews of March 2006 and earlier, unless otherwise noted.

Ken Coleman quotes from author interview, 2003.

Coleman, Ken, and Dan Valenti, The Impossible Dream Remembered (Brattleboro, Vermont: Stephen Greene Press, 1987).

Boston Globe and Boston Herald, 1966-1973.

Chicago Tribune, 1971-1973.

Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press articles, 1966-73.

Wisnia, Saul, “The Impossible Dream Team,” Red Sox Magazine, 1992.

Wisnia, Saul, Andrews profile, Red Sox Magazine, 2004.

Interview with Andrews on Red Sox Nation website (redsoxnation. net), 2005.

Interview with Andrews on White Sox fan website (whitesoxinteractive. com), 2002.

Larry Lucchino quote from Jimmy Fund press release by author, 2009 (jimmyfund.org/abo/press/pressreleases/2009/former-red-soxplayer- mike-andrews-to-retire-as-jimmy-fund-chairman.html).

His parents, Doris and Bill Bell, settled in San Antonio, Texas, in the 1930s. “My mom was the strength in our family. She was a hard-working gal from Kansas,” says Bell. “My dad was a hell-raiser, liked to run around drinking and stuff, while she took charge and ran the house. He was always in the car business. During the Depression years when everyone was struggling and in World War II he sold cars and had a salvage yard. They would buy old cars and sell the parts, and then in World War II that was a good business since there were no new parts to be had.”

The Bells raised twin boys, Billy and Bobby, plus Gary, who was seven years their junior, coming along on November 17, 1936. Although Gary was subject to the roughhousing ways of his elder siblings, they taught him to play baseball. There was no Little League in their area so “they worked with me until I got older,” Bell says of his brothers’ influence. “They showed me how to pitch, how to do everything.”

Bell moved on to YMCA baseball, but Burbank High School in San Antonio did not have a baseball team. “I played football, basketball, and golf in high school. It’s funny they had golf, but they didn’t have baseball. I was shooting in the 70s when I was 14-15 years old,” Bell explains. His best sport was basketball and he made all-conference basketball in junior college.

But a future in baseball beckoned when Bell was playing in American Legion ball. After beating out a base hit in one game, he took his lead off the bag. The first base umpire was a fellow named Ed Tech. “The umpire, he was a sort of bird dog scout. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘how’d you like to go up to University of Texas and play professional baseball?’ Of course I said yes.” Tech had thought to hook Bell up with Bibb Falk, the coach at UT who had been a major league player. In the end, though, Bell ended up spending one year at San Antonio Junior College before the major league scouts moved in.

In 1955, Bell landed with the Indians, despite the interest of several other teams. (This was in the days before the amateur draft.) “I know the Red Sox and Yankees were [among four or five teams interested],” he said. “If I’d been smart, and thought about the Yankees winning the World Series every year, I should have signed with them. But the scout that really scouted me the most was a Red Sox scout and he was the nicest one, and if I had any brains I would have gone with them, because they paid better than anybody else. But I signed with Cleveland, because all their big time pitchers were getting older–Feller, Lemon, Garcia, Early Wynn–so I figured that would be a good place to go, because by the time I was ready they would be on the way out That’s pretty much how it worked out.”

The Indians shipped him to Sherbrooke, Quebec, in the Class C Provincial League in 1955. “I did not do too well [0-4, with a 3.43 ERA],” Bell recalled. “I got banged around, and I was wild, nervous, scared, and young. I was only 18 years old. After a few weeks there, they sent me down to [Class D] Vidalia and I finished up pretty good.” That winter he married Barbara Ann Jahn, his high school sweetheart. “We got married when I came home that winter, and she was with me my whole baseball career — then we went our separate ways. We got married too young and it’s hard on baseball wives. They have to do all the packing and everything while you’re doing your thing. School and all that stuff. It wasn’t a good life for the wives.”

In 1956 he was assigned to Reading, Pennsylvania, in the Eastern League, where he was teammates with Jim “Mudcat” Grant. Bell finished 13-8, 2.84, and led the league with 192 strikeouts, a season that earned him induction into the Reading Baseball Hall of Fame. He was on the way to repeating the strikeout feat in Double-A Mobile, Alabama, in 1957 when he was bumped up to San Diego in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League. The PCL was the big time as minor leagues went, though the San Diego Padres were far from the cream of the crop then.

“We probably sucked a little bit,” Bell admits. “That was some league. San Diego, L.A., Hollywood, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. (The Padres finished 89-79, good for fourth in the eight-team league.) I got banged around pretty good [1-5, 4.95] the end of that year. [In Triple A,] the guys I was facing either had been to the major league or were going there. They whacked me around pretty good.” Nevertheless, in the spring of 1958, he found himself invited to spring training with the big club, and then opened the season with San Diego again. By the end of May he was 6-2 and leading the league with both a 1.56 ERA and 60 strikeouts in 75 innings and the two losses came courtesy of low run support, 1-0 and 2-0.

A Los Angeles Times story proclaimed “Padres’ Bell No. 1 in PCL” on May 28. The next day, the Indians released the injured Mike Garcia and called Bell up to take his place.

Bell still remembers the phone call. “I was on a golf course in Seattle playing with our manager — George “Catfish” Metkovich — and a couple other players. We had finished nine holes, and he got a phone call. He comes out and he says ‘I have some bad news. You’re going to the show.’ It was bad news for him because he was losing one of his best pitchers. I went right to the Seattle airport and joined the team on the road in Kansas City.”

That heady time as a rookie is still vivid to Bell. “The day I joined the team we were leaving after the game, flew from there to Boston, and then Baltimore, and back home. What a thrill. I was supposed to room with Herb Score in Boston, but he had a sore arm and stayed back in Cleveland so I had the room to myself at the old Kenmore Hotel right there on Commonwealth Avenue. Boston University owns it now. We could walk to the ballpark.” Bell had his debut in relief on June 1 in Kansas City, in which he pitched three innings, struck out six, but gave up one run. Four days later he made his first start, in Boston, lasting only 5 1/3 innings, giving up two home runs and leaving the game with the score tied 3-3. (Hoyt Wilhelm earned the loss after giving up two more runs in the eighth.) Bell did a bit better in his next start on June 10, and so did the Indians. Cleveland banged out 14 hits, including Minnie Minoso’s eighth homer of the year, to sink Baltimore, 10-2. Bell worked six innings, allowing only three hits and two runs. He joined a rotation that included Ray Narleski, Mudcat Grant, and Cal McLish. Bob Lemon was on the downside of his career and with Garcia gone, Bell stepped in.

At that time he relied on his fastball and was considered a star phenom. He finished 12-10 his first season, good enough to place third in the 1958 Rookie of the Year voting, and the Indians finished fourth in the standings.

In 1959, the Indians had a better team and “that was the year we should have gone to the World Series,” according to Bell. But the White Sox were better, and Cleveland slumped back into mediocrity after that season. Bell himself won 16 games, but with a 4.04 ERA. In 1960 Rocky Colavito was traded away, and the offense dwindled. During Bell’s ten seasons in Cleveland he pitched under at least nine different managers. “We weren’t that good, you know, so somebody is going to get fired and it ain’t the players,” Bell says to explain the revolving door. “Great managers have great teams, you know. When great managers have lousy teams, they aren’t considered great.”

“We always had good pitching. Most of the years I was there we had real good pitching but not great defense and didn’t score enough runs,” Bell says. He himself was shifted in and out of relief and starting roles, and meanwhile the front office would spend little to shore up the team’s weaknesses.

With no shot at the postseason, Bell’s biggest thrills in Cleveland came in the regular season.

“There was one game where Rocky Colavito hit four home runs in a game and I was the winning pitcher,” Bell remembers. It was June 10, 1959, the anniversary of his first win, again facing Baltimore in Memorial Stadium. This time Bell needed the run support as the Indians won it 11-8. “Another time I got four hits myself and that was kind of a fun thing to remember. You know we pitchers like to talk about our hitting. My best year I hit .240 and got like 70 plate appearances [Actually 75 at bats –Ed.] –for a pitcher that’s pretty good.” His only career home run was hit on May 23, 1965 off Jim Lonborg.

But then came the fateful trade of June 1967, which sent Bell to Boston. “I was 1-5 before the trade and then I went 5-1 in the first few weeks after,” he recalls. “I was not having a very good year in Cleveland and I wasn’t too unhappy to be traded, but little did I know what was coming.” He always felt he pitched well at Fenway, despite what other pitchers said. “Nobody really wanted to pitch there because the fence was so close, but it was just a beautiful old park.”

Bell moved right into a brownstone in the Kenmore Square area and walked to the ballpark every day. “That was pretty exciting stuff. Every game was a drama, it seemed like, and new heroes all the time. Lonborg had a phenomenal year, Yaz too. Yawkey had traded his favorite boy for me, Tony Horton, but it turned out good.” Bell ended up winning 12 games down the stretch. “We only won by half a game or what have you, so I guess those 12 wins helped a bit,” he says.

After beating Minnesota on the final day of the season, the Red Sox went to the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. Bell was beaten 5-2 in Game Three, but nailed down the save in Game Six to insure the Sox would live for one more day.

In 1968, Bell pitched well, with a 3.12 ERA, but the magic of the “Impossible Dream” had dissipated. “Lonborg had gotten hurt chasing Jill St. John down the slopes,” Bell remembers. “That was a big part of it.” Despite his good ERA and nine complete games, his record stood at 11-11. The next winter came the expansion draft, and the Seattle Pilots snatched up Bell, who had been left unprotected by Boston.

“I pitched Opening Day in Seattle, the first major league game in that city,” Bell recalls proudly. “I pitched a shutout against the White Sox.” But it was all downhill from there. “My ability to pitch was not that good anymore. I had lost something over the winter. I don’t know where it went but it was gone. It was the beginning of the end for me.” The Pilots traded him, he ended up finishing the year with the White Sox, and then thought about hanging up his spikes. “There weren’t any injuries or anything, but as you get older you lose speed, and that’s not good. A lot of other guys could depend on their other pitches. My curve was just average so when my fastball went, that was the end of me.”

“But that winter I got a call from the fellow who owned the Hawaii Islanders. I wasn’t going to play anymore, but they offered me a pretty nice deal. Didn’t last the year there, though, but it was a nice experience. When your fastball disappears, so do you. Know what I mean?”

Life after baseball took Bell into two careers that seem apropos for a Bud-pounding ex-pitcher, the beer business and sporting goods. “I went to work for a Miller beer distributor in Phoenix, for eight years or so, doing everything from driving trucks to delivery to heading a department, a little of everything. Never made any money, but it was good times.” In 1978 he married a Phoenix native named Rhonda. Then a childhood friend who owned a sporting goods store contacted him about moving back to San Antonio. He went into sales there for about five years before Rhonda felt homesick, so Bell returned to the beer business in Arizona.

Four years later it was back to Texas and sporting goods, where an associate had a business in Fort Worth. “I wasn’t there a year and the guy I went to work for died, that business went down the tubes, and I had to leave,” Bell explained. “Then I was offered a job in San Antonio with the Double-A team here, owned by a friend of mine, Ethan Blackaby. I stayed with him a couple of years doing PR and that kind of stuff. But he ended up having to give up the club, so I went back to work for the original guy I was with in sporting goods again. Then HE ended up going out of business and I was starting to think it was me.”

By then it was 1987 and Bell decided it was time to be his own boss. “I went out and borrowed $15,000 from the bank and started a sporting goods business of my own, calling on the same customers we used to. It’s turned out good, I’ve been doing it for 19 years now. All I do is deal with coaches and schools and stuff like that.”

Bell has five children, three from his first marriage, all daughters, Garriann, Cindy, and Lisa, and two children from his second marriage, daughter Casey and son Cody.

Author’s Note

This biography originally appeared in SABR’s The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium On The Field, edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers, and published by Rounder Books in 2007.

Sources

Personal Interview conducted March 15, 2006

www.baseballlibrary.com

ww.baseball-reference.com

ProQuest newspapers

Dennis John Bennett was born in Oakland, California, on October 5, 1939, to parents George and Ruth, of German-Dutch descent. There were ultimately five boys and a girl in the Bennett family. The family moved to Yreka, a heavily wooded town in Northern California’s Siskiyou County, when Dennis was 10 years old. (His father liked to hunt and fish, and when a job with the phone company opened up nearer his beloved streams and forests, he took it.) The elder Bennett started the boys’ baseball program in Yreka, and Dennis soon became a star first baseman and hitter. He played Little League and Babe Ruth League baseball before entering high school.

At Yreka Union High School, Dennis lettered in baseball, basketball, track, and football. In his senior year, he won 15 of 16 decisions on the mound and hit .458, playing first base when not pitching. He was, however, not fond of rules. “I can’t remember a single season where I wasn’t suspended for at least one game,” he later recalled.1

Dennis’s off-the-field activities in his youth were atypical. Firefighting was a vital and lucrative occupation in his region, so he often skipped school to go off and join a fire crew (lying about his age). If that wasn’t dangerous enough, he and some friends made extra money in the summers traveling around Northern California to various rodeos, riding saddleback and bareback bronco events. He later recalled, “Sometimes I was hit over the head with bottles or cut up in a fight at a dance, but I was lucky. All those rodeos, I never got banged up.”2

Bennett did not throw particularly hard as a teenager, and few scouts showed any interest in watching the hurler. He garnered a partial scholarship to pitch for Mount Shasta Junior College, pitching a single season for its baseball team. At that point, Bennett was offered a contract by Eddie Taylor, a scout for the Philadelphia Phillies. He was no bonus baby– he would get $500 if he stayed in the organization for 90 days, and $250 a month.

Bennett’s professional career began in Johnson City, Tennessee, in the Appalachian League, where the 6-foot 3-inch, 192-pound left-hander finished 7-3 and led the league with three shutouts and a 1.52 earned-run average and struck out 92 in just 77 innings. The next year he finished 13-13 for Bakersfield in the California League, before spending the 1960 campaign with Asheville, North Carolina (South Atlantic League), where he finished 8-7.

He spent the start of 1961 in Chattanooga (4-2, 4.37) before tearing up his knee. The circumstances surrounding the injury typify the personality of Bennett, always a free spirit. “There was a big hill in right field in Nashville. A bunch of us were standing around, and I challenged John Boozer to a somersault race downhill. It was for $10 and a steak dinner.”3 He lost the bet and jammed the cartilage in his knee. An operation ended his season. He told his manager he got hurt jogging in the outfield.

The next spring Bennett was invited to major-league camp, likely because the Phillies wanted to see how his knee was. Not only was his knee fine, the rest had added several miles per hour to his fastball. He was sent to Triple-A Buffalo (International League), and started 3-1, 2.00 before his recall to Philadelphia in May.

Bennett’s first major-league appearance took place at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on May 12, 1962. The Phillies were leading 8-5 when he took the mound to start the bottom of the fourth inning. He walked his first batter, Lou Brock, before inducing a double-play groundball. After three scoreless innings, Bennett could not escape the seventh, allowing three hits and a walk before being relieved. (Bennett was charged with three earned runs. He was credited with a hold in the 9-8 loss. The pitcher who followed Bennett, Chris Short, was given a blown save.)

After three mediocre starts, Bennett’s first major-league victory was a four-hit shutout that snapped the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 13-game winning streak on June 2. He finished the season 9-9, leading the team with a 3.81 ERA and two shutouts. From August 12 to the end of the season, his ERA was 1.66, highlighted by three consecutive five-hit complete games. Bennett later recalled, “I figured I had a great career ahead of me. I knew I could throw. I wasn’t a complete pitcher or the smartest guy out there, but at that time if you threw hard enough you learned as you went. I was real happy the way everything was going at that point.”4

The Phillies sent Bennett to Arecibo, Puerto Rico, that winter to get ready for a big season. On January 7, 1963, returning to Arecibo from a team picnic, he was involved in a car accident that killed the driver. Bennett was thrown through the windshield, breaking his left ankle, pelvis, and left shoulder blade, and leaving severe lacerations all over his face. He had been sitting with his back against the door and leg up on the seat, talking to the people in the rear seat. According to Bennett, this was his fifth serious car accident and the third time he had been thrown through the windshield. This was the first time he was seriously hurt.

The Phillies were most concerned with Bennett’s ankle, but it was the shoulder injury that would linger, and cause problems throughout the remainder of his career. The doctor in Puerto Rico suggested he would never pitch again, and might not walk. After months in the hospital, Bennett was working out by the end of May and, miraculously, joined the Phillies in late June. By July he was in the rotation, and he pitched very well the rest of the season, finishing 9-5, with a 2.64 ERA. For his efforts he won a local award as the most courageous athlete on the team. The shoulder seemed fine—for now.

Bennett was cocky when assessing his chances for 1964: “There’s no way they can stop me from winning 20. I have always done real well early in the year, but my first two years in the big leagues I haven’t been out there.”5 He elaborated in a July profile Stan Hochman wrote for Sport: “You can’t go out there wondering whether you are going to win or lose. You can’t look at the hitter and say, ‘Geez, that’s Henry Aaron … or geez, that’s Willie Mays.’ Now, I don’t care who’s up there.”6

Bennett’s manager, Gene Mauch, was also unconcerned: “He’s got a big-league fastball and two breaking balls that are better than the average major leaguer. And he believes in himself about 130 percent.”7 Bennett later named Mauch as his favorite manager, a brilliant man that people loved playing for.

Dennis was beginning to acquire a reputation as a free spirit, who enjoyed the nightlife. He was single and spent his evenings doing what single men are wont to do. “You’ll never catch me out the night before I pitch. But I figure a pitcher has two nights to fool around.”8

Bennett started strong in 1964, winning eight of his first 12 decisions through June. His personal highlight took place on June 12 in a game in which he was knocked out of the box by the New York Mets in the third inning. Later in the game, his brother Dave Bennett made his major-league debut, pitching the ninth inning for the Phillies in what turned out to be an 11-3 loss. Dave was just 18 years old, a 6-foot-5 right-hander who possessed none of his older brother’s swagger or brashness. Alas, this was to be Dave’s only major-league appearance.

In the second half of the 1964 season, Dennis’s shoulder, and its still undiagnosed injury, started to bother him and the pain never really went away again. He managed just a 1-7 record in July and August, ironically as his team started pulling away in the pennant race. On September 7 he beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-1, and followed with a 1-0 victory over Juan Marichal and the San Francisco Giants. After he followed with a 1-0 victory over the Houston Astros on the 15th, the Phillies had a six-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals with 17 games to go. Bennett started three more times, losing two, and the Phillies lost a heartbreaking pennant race. By season’s end the pain in his shoulder was constant and tremendous. Bennett finished 12-14, with a 3.68 ERA.

The 1964 Phillies are one of the more famous teams in Philadelphia history, and Bennett’s injury was likely the biggest cause of their collapse. He was the club’s Opening Day starter, and an ace hurler for the first half of the season before the sore shoulder took over. Bennett said he believed the team would have won the pennant “hands down” had his arm stayed healthy, and listed it among his biggest disappointments. He later recalled his shutout of the Giants in September as the best of his career, a game notable for his three strikeouts of Willie Mays. Mays hit just .111 (3-for-27) off Bennett in his career, and Willie McCovey was 0-for-8 with five strikeouts, while their teammate Jim Ray Hart, whom Bennett recalled decades later as a nemesis, managed a more robust .533 with three home runs.

On November 29, 1964, the Phillies dealt Bennett to the Boston Red Sox for slugger Dick Stuart. Bennett was angered by the deal because he felt the team had promised him he would be back with the club. More than that, he knew he was hurt and felt the Phillies knew it. Bennett was speaking at a banquet in Boston that winter and surprised the assembled media and team personnel when he casually mentioned that his sore arm might not be ready for the opening of the season. The Phillies offered to nullify the deal, but the Red Sox were happy to be rid of the enigmatic and controversial Stuart and left it alone.

As a left-hander moving to Fenway Park, Bennett acknowledged, the wall in left field “messed with my mind a little.”9 Balancing that, he believed there were far fewer tough outs in an American League lineup compared with his National League opponents. Bennett pitched adequately for the 1965 Red Sox, starting 18 games and relieving in 16 others, finishing 5-7 for a team that lost 100 games. He started the season on the disabled list, joining the club in early May. During his recuperation, he vowed to host a champagne party for the writers after his first victory, a promise he kept after topping the Kansas City Athletics at Fenway Park on May 31. The thankful writers allowed that they would return the favor after his first shutout.

Bennett’s reputation for zaniness grew. For one thing, he carried several guns with him on the road, and often on his person. He told the story of shooting off several rounds with a gun one quiet spring just over the head of Boston Globe writer Will McDonough, who had written a story Bennett did not like. “So me and Will didn’t see eye to eye for the rest of my time there,” he recalled.10 Then there was the time Bennett shot out the lights in his hotel room, to save getting up and turning the switch.

After the 1965 season Bennett finally underwent shoulder surgery, which kept him on the disabled list until mid-July. A doctor finally isolated the problem— calcium had built up in a crack in the shoulder blade caused by his 1963 accident. Bennett recalled that pitchers tended to throw through such problems back then, but the Red Sox supported his decision to have surgery. Upon his return, he was actually one of the more steady members of the rotation, finishing 3-3 with a 3.24 ERA in 13 starts for an improving club that played .500 ball in the second half.

The next spring Bennett was involved in an incident in Florida that was part of a sad lineage of race relations with the Red Sox. He entered a club in Lakeland with pitchers Dave Morehead and Earl Wilson. While Bennett and Morehead were asked for their drink orders, the bartender turned to Wilson, an African-American, and said, “We ain’t serving you. We don’t serve niggers here.”11 The players left, but word of the incident soon leaked out. The club did not strongly back Wilson, who was traded in June. He won 13 games in the latter half of the season for the Tigers, and 22 the next year.

Bennett later related to Peter Golenbock what these Red Sox teams were like: “You’d have four or five players and some girls, and you’d have a party. And it might go until six, seven in the morning, and maybe you had a day game that day. And the thing was, you’d get on the bus, and [manager] Billy Herman would be sitting in the front seat, and everybody would talk about the party the night before, and Billy would sit there hearing it all, but there wasn’t too much he could do about it because some of your stars were the ones doing the talking, and he didn’t have any control over the ballclub whatsoever.”12

The new manager for 1967, Dick Williams, was different. When Bennett and another pitcher showed up late one day in the spring, Williams publicly called them out and fined them. When Bennett blamed the hotel for failing to give him his wakeup call, Williams ridiculed the players, and Bennett never got out of the new skipper’s doghouse.

Dennis continued to pitch well early in the 1967 season. He started the fourth game of the season, following Billy Rohr’s one-hitter in Yankee Stadium with a five-hit, 1-0 loss to the same Yankees on April 15. On May 1 in Anaheim, he shut out the Angels with a six-hitter, and also hit a three-run home run off Angels starter Jorge Rubio. After surrendering the round-tripper, Rubio hit Reggie Smith with a pitch, then was removed from the game. This was his 10th major-league game, and his last. Bennett was doubly happy about the shutout, as the local writers had promised him a champagne party two years ago with his first such gem. They came through, holding it at the Playboy Club in Boston.

When Bennett beat the Indians’ Gary Bell on June 3, he brought his record to 4-1, with a 2.97 ERA. After a couple of rough starts, he fell to 4-3, and his relationship with Williams deteriorated further. On June 24 the Red Sox traded Bennett to the Mets for minor leaguer Al Yates, who would never pitch for the Red Sox. According to Bennett, Williams had not spoken to him in a few weeks prior to telling him he had been dealt. The pitcher expressed disappointment at the trade, telling the New York writers that he thought a good team was coming together in Boston.

Bennett split two decisions with the Mets, also spending time with their Jacksonville affiliate in the International League. After two appearances for Jacksonville in April 1968, he was sold to the Chicago Cubs organization, which placed him with Tacoma in the Pacific Coast League. He was 9-8 in 19 starts out west, and at the end of July was sold to the California Angels. He finished the season, and his big league career, by dropping all five of his decisions for the Angels.

But Bennett wasn’t through pitching just yet. He spent the next five years in the Pacific Coast League, much of it far removed from the continental United States. He played for Hawaii in 1969 and 1970, tying for the league lead each year in victories (13 and 18) and making two All-Star teams. These Hawaii clubs were great teams, filled with ex-major leaguers. The 1970 team finished 98-48, and was led by Bennett, Gary Bell, Juan Pizarro, and several other former big leaguers.

Bennett spent a year and a half with Salt Lake City before returning to Hawaii for parts of the 1972, and 1973 seasons. At the conclusion of the latter campaign, he finally walked away from the game.

Bennett married Terry, whom he had met in Boston, on January 3, 1970, and the two raised nine children. Having settled in Klamath Falls, Oregon, Bennett operated a restaurant and bar for a few years, worked for several years in a mill, operated another bar, and finally opened a more elaborate club with banquet rooms in 1998. In 2010 he and his wife owned a four-story commercial building in town that housed a boutique, an interior decorator shop, and a hall for banquets and parties.

In the 1990s Bennett was the victim of identity theft – a man in Texas successfully passed himself off as the former major-league pitcher, sticking the real Bennett with tens of thousands of dollars in bills, including $77,000 for open-heart surgery. As he later told researcher Todd Newville, “It caused me a lot of misery for several years. It’s all water under the bridge now, but for about five years, I couldn’t even buy a pack of gum on credit. That’s how bad that guy ruined it.”13

Klamath Falls is a small community when compared with the big metropolises in which Bennett spent his pitching career. His businesses and big family kept him at home most of the time, but he attended many reunions and fantasy camps over the years. He kept many dear friends from his playing days, including Gary Bell, Dave Morehead, Jim Lonborg (his roommate with the Red Sox), and Chris Short, his best friend on the Phillies, who died too young in 1991. He valued all his old baseball memories, and loved getting together with his old teammates and opponents. He returned to Fenway Park in 2007 for several events honoring the 1967 team.

“Baseball was the best time of my life,” Bennett later recalled. “I couldn’t throw without pain for most of the time after the wreck. If I hadn’t cracked my shoulder blade in the accident, I think I would have had one hell of a career.”14 Asked many years later to recount the highlight of his big-league career, he said simply, “Just being there was the highlight. Playing against all those great players.”15

Dennis Bennett passed away on March 24, 2012, at home in Klamath Falls, surrounded by friends and family.

Author’s Note

A version of this biography originally appeared in SABR’s The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field (Rounder Books, 2007), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers. It was updated and included in The Year of the Blue Snow: The 1964 Philadelphia Phillies (SABR, 2013), edited by Mel Marmer and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

Born on July 8, 1940 in Nacogdoches, Texas, Brandon had what he called “a good childhood, always playing sports.” He primarily followed the Yankees, who made regular appearances on The Game of the Week, and the Cardinals, whose games he heard via the strong signal of St. Louis radio station KMOX. Turn the dial ahead to 1967, and Brandon would be part of a New England Summer of Love that saw the airwaves filled with both the Beatles and the voices of Ned Martin and Ken Coleman on WHDH. It was a long and winding road that brought him from the Lone Star State’s oldest city to his place in Red Sox history.

After graduating from Nacogdoches High School in 1958, Brandon signed with the Pirates and began an eight-year journey to the big leagues the following season. “I made it through perseverance and faith in myself,” said Brandon. “Starting out as an outfielder, and getting released a few times, I almost should have given up.”

Primarily a shortstop in high school, Brandon spent 1959, his first professional season, in the outfield. He appeared in only one game as a pitcher, allowing seven runs in five innings for Salem in the Appalachian League. He was subsequently released, but signed with the Cardinals the following year after attending a tryout camp in Tulsa. He played the entire 1960 season with Dothan in the Alabama-Florida League, again mostly as an outfielder. He got into five games as a pitcher, allowing eight earned runs in 10 innings. The next year, in spring training, he asked if he could pitch full time, but the Cardinals weren’t interested. Instead, he found himself released for the second time in two years.

Out of organized baseball in 1961, Brandon pitched on a semi-pro team near his home in Texas and worked as a milkman to earn his living. “I actually did that in the off-season for three or four more years,” explained Brandon. “In those days, I made more money driving a milk truck than I did as a minor leaguer.”

But driving a milk truck wasn’t Brandon’s career goal, and a good showing at another tryout camp landed him a job in the farm system of the expansion Houston Colt 45s in 1962. It was there that he acquired the nickname that would stay with him throughout his baseball career.

“When I was in class D ball,” Brandon explained, “there was this little Indian kid from California on the team, and he had buck teeth. He had “Bucky” carved into his glove, and I ended up buying it from him. A few years later, when I went to spring training with Houston, I had it with me. It was really beaten up, so the guys on the team gave me a hard time about it and started calling me “Bucky.”

Along with a new nickname, Bucky Brandon also went into the 1962 season with a new position. Finally given an opportunity to pitch full time, he posted a record of 9-5 in 17 games with Modesto in the California League, establishing himself as a legitimate prospect. He followed that by going 14-6 for Durham in the Carolina League in 1963, 15-7 for San Antonio in the Texas League in 1964, and 13-6 for Oklahoma City of the Pacific Coast League in 1965. When his Triple-A season in Oklahoma City came to an end, Brandon was told he would be getting called up to Houston for the final month of the season. However, “See You in September” by The Happenings wouldn’t hit the Top 40 until the following year, and Brandon’s big league debut would likewise have to wait.

“I was told to report to the Astrodome,” Brandon explained, “which meant I was going home to play in the big leagues. But while I was loading my trailer, I got a call saying I had been traded to Boston for Jack Lamabe. That was disappointing, because I barely knew where Boston was at the time, and they didn’t bring anyone up from the minor leagues that year.”

The Red Sox were coming off a 100-loss season when Brandon reported to spring training in 1966. One of several new faces on the team — George Scott, Joe Foy, Reggie Smith, and Mike Andrews all saw their first big league action that year — he pitched well, earning himself a spot as a reliever. On April 19 at Fenway Park, wearing the number 27 on his Red Sox uniform, he made his major league debut against the Tigers.

“We were losing 6-0 when the phone rang in the bullpen,” Brandon remembers, “and the first hitter I’d be facing was Bill Freehan. Dick Radatz was the bullpen spokesman, and he told me Freehan likes the ball out over the plate, so I should pitch him inside. That’s what I did, and Freehan hit my first pitch off the wall in left. Afterwards, Radatz said, ‘I meant high and inside, not inside at the belt.'”

Brandon proceeded to strike out the next batter, Denny McLain, recording the first out of a career that would see him pitch in 228 major league games, 43 as a starter and 185 in relief. The following month, in his 13th appearance of the season, Brandon again pitched in relief as Lamabe, now with Chicago, pitched a one-hitter at Fenway Park in an 11-0 White Sox win.

Moved to the rotation on July 1, Brandon pitched well, finishing the season with a record of 8-8, 3.31. After his inaugural win against the Yankees on July 5 — a complete game in which he contributed to his own cause with two hits, including a triple — he threw another complete game on July 9, beating Gary Peters and the White Sox, 4-2.

He went on to earn wins in four of his last five starts on the season, one of them a 5-4 decision against Lamabe at Fenway Park. He threw two shutouts in September, one in his final appearance, and went into 1967 with high expectations. His ERA was the best on the team amongst pitchers with 100 innings pitched.

Going into the season, Brandon was considered to be one of the set members of the rotation, along with Jim Lonborg and Jose Santiago. While a solid contributor to the ’67 pennant winners, Brandon was unable to replicate his promising rookie season, finishing a disappointing 5-11, 4.17. He began the year in the starting rotation, but was inconsistent and by early August pitched only in relief.

“I pitched well in spring training,” Brandon remembers, “but then didn’t have the year I hoped to. I made the mistake of getting cute rather than going after hitters like I did the year before. I was trying to pitch to weaknesses, and just wasn’t making the pitches like I did in ’66.”

Brandon started the second game of the 1967 season, and got a no-decision as the Red Sox lost at home to Chicago. Ironically, the winning pitcher was again Lamabe. Brandon went on to lose his first four decisions, but pitched better than his record indicated as he allowed only nine earned runs in those outings. The toughest of the four defeats came on April 30, as he lost to Jim Nash and Kansas City 1-0 on a Danny Cater home run. His first win finally came on May 21 when he out-pitched “Sudden Sam” McDowell as the Red Sox defeated Cleveland 6-2 at Fenway Park. That effort was followed, however, by a 10-0 shellacking in Baltimore that saw him give up two home runs to Frank Robinson.

“I remember thinking that I had good stuff that day,” recalls Brandon, “but Frank hit it harder than I threw it. He was probably the toughest hitter I ever faced, and I think he hit six home runs against me in my career.”

[Editor’s note: Robinson had 10 hits in 23 at-bats against Brandon, with five home runs.]

Brandon was still in the starting rotation when the Red Sox went on their longest winning streak of the season — 10 games — establishing themselves as serious pennant contenders and eliciting more than a few exclamations of “Oh Mercy!” from Ned Martin in the broadcast booth. He won twice in that stretch, including a complete game 6-2 triumph over Luis Tiant and the Cleveland Indians on July 21 that moved the Red Sox into second place. It was to be Brandon’s final big league win as a starter. He started three more times in 1967, twice losing to the Twins and Jim Merritt, and spent the remainder of the season in the bullpen.

Two of Brandon’s best relief outings came in August, a month that saw the hub gripped by pennant fever and the Buckinghams reach the top ten with “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” On the 16th, he relieved Lee Stange early in the game and pitched seven shutout innings to earn what would be his last win in a Red Sox uniform. On the 29th, he went five strong innings but gave up a run in the 20th inning to lose in Yankee Stadium, a game in which New York’s starter was former Red Sox ace Bill Monbouquette.

The low point of Brandon’s season came on September 24 in Baltimore, a game that saw Jim Lonborg win his 21st game and Jose Tartabull steal home. While throwing a pitch to the Orioles’ Boog Powell in the ninth inning, Brandon suffered a shoulder injury that ended his season and forced him to miss the World Series. Despite being unable to pitch in the fall classic, Brandon did, however, make a contribution — albeit a unique one — to the team’s effort against the Cardinals.

“A fan sent me a paper horseshoe in the mail,” Brandon explained, “and I gave it to Lonnie (Jim Lonborg) before he threw the shutout in Game Two. It worked pretty well… until Game Seven, anyway.”

The Supremes had a hit with “Reflections” as the Red Sox and Cardinals did battle in the fall of 1967, and Brandon has mixed feelings when he looks back at his role in one of the most exciting seasons in team history.

“It really hurt not to pitch in the World Series,” Brandon said. “And while it was the thrill of a lifetime to be part of the team that turned baseball around in New England, on a personal level it wasn’t as satisfying. I always tell people that I helped contribute to an exciting season, because we’d have won going away had I pitched better.”

When the 1968 season got underway, Brandon’s arm was still less than 100 percent. Unable to earn a spot on the Red Sox pitching staff out of spring training, he ended up spending most of the year with Triple-A Louisville, going 13-11, 3.32 as a starter. Simon and Garfunkel topped the charts with “Mrs. Robinson” that summer, but they could just as easily have sung “Where have you gone Darrell Brandon?” as Brandon pitched in only eight games with the big league club, all in relief, going 0-0, 6.39 in 12 2/3 innings. His final game in a Red Sox uniform came on September 24 in Washington, as he pitched two innings in a 10-2 loss to the Senators.

After the season, Brandon was truly gone, taken by the Seattle Pilots in the 1968 expansion draft.

“Sal Maglie was the pitching coach there,” Brandon explained, “and he recommended they draft me. He had been my pitching coach in ’66 and ’67, and liked me as a pitcher. A few other guys came over from here too, like Gary Bell, but going there wasn’t good. I’d have liked to have stayed in Boston.”

Brandon began the 1969 campaign in Triple-A Vancouver and won his first three games as a starter. He was called up to Seattle by the end of April, but appeared in only eight games out of the bullpen for the expansion Pilots, two of them against the Red Sox. On May 6, at Seattle’s Sick’s Stadium, Brandon gave up a home run to Syd O’Brien in the ninth inning of a 12-2 Boston win. On May 17, he pitched three scoreless innings in a game the Red Sox won 6-1 behind Mike Nagy. On July 8, Brandon’s 29th birthday, the Pilots sold him to Minnesota. He pitched in only three games with the Twins, seeing most of his action in Triple-A Denver where he went 4-2, 3.17.

Released by the Twins at the end of spring training in 1970, Brandon was signed by the White Sox and spent the entire season with their Triple-A team in Tucson. Again a starter, Brandon went 15-10 and led the Pacific Coast League in strikeouts.

“Looking back, it was hard going back and forth,” Brandon said. “These days you’re either a starter or a reliever. Back then you’d be a starter in the minors, and when you got called up they would stick you in the bullpen. That didn’t make sense to me. I should have been a starter, because I was getting the job done when I was.”

In January, Brandon was sold to Philadelphia where he spent the final three years of his major league career. Finally comfortable pitching out of the bullpen, he enjoyed two of his best seasons. In 1971 he appeared in 52 games for the Phillies, going 6-6, 3.90 with four saves. In 1972 he finished 7-7, 3.45 with two saves in 42 games. On a team that won only 59 times all season, Brandon’s seven wins were second on the team to Steve Carlton’s 27.

In 1973, Brandon returned to the City of Brotherly Love and went 2-4, 5.43 in 36 games. He also recorded two saves, which ironically came in relief of former Red Sox teammates Ken Brett and Jim Lonborg on consecutive days in July. In what was to be his last season in a big league uniform, Brandon also made eight appearances for Eugene in the Pacific Coast League. After spending 1974 with Toledo in the International League, and 1975 with Coahuila in the Mexican League, his pitching days were over.

After retiring, Brandon started a pitching school in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where his second pupil was 16-year-old Orel Hershiser, who would go on to win 204 games in the big leagues. In 1976, Brandon moved to Hanover, Massachusetts, where he continued to teach young pitchers for over 20 years. Nearly four decades after being a part of the 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox, Darrell “Bucky” Brandon now works in the insurance business.

Author’s Note

This biography originally appeared in SABR’s The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium On The Field, edited by Bill Nowlin, and published by Rounder Books in 2007.

Sources

Interview with Darrell Brandon, February 2006

www.retrosheet.org

www.baseball-reference.com

www.thebaseballcube.com

Kenneth Alven Brett was born on September 18, 1948, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the second of Jack and Ethel Brett’s four sons. All four brothers played professional baseball. Baby brother George is, of course, enshrined in the Hall of Fame. The eldest, John, and third son, Bobby, played in the minors until injuries derailed their careers.

John, Ken, and Bobby were born while the Bretts lived in Brooklyn. The family then lived for a little while in the town of Moundsville, West Virginia, hard against the Ohio River in the northern panhandle, where George was born. The family then completed their cross-country journey to Southern California, much like their old home team, the Brooklyn Dodgers – although Jack was a Yankees fan.

The Brett family finally settled down in El Segundo, California. Nestled among the Pacific Ocean, the Los Angeles airport, the 405 San Diego Freeway, and oil refineries, El Segundo is a bedroom community and home to many aerospace companies. Jack was an accountant, eventually becoming a finance director for Datsun. He had a no-nonsense attitude as a father. But as a youth, George once told Sports Illustrated, “He used to steal cars.”3 The Bretts’ paternal grandfather was a chief clerk on Wall Street, which was a pretty good job at the time. But Jack dropped out of high school and worked in a machine shop. Then in World War II he joined the Army. He was shot in the leg in France and went back home and got a business degree from Pace University.

Even when Ken was a little boy, his father was impressed with his physique. “He looked like the statue of David when he was growing up,” Jack once said. “When he was just a little boy, his stomach was so strong that you could see the plates, the muscles.” His father recalled the 10-year-old Ken hitting two home runs over a 220-foot fence.

Ken was a good student as well. He was student-body secretary at El Segundo Junior High School in 1961. And young Brett had the grades for Stanford, USC, and UCLA. Said Ken of his childhood, “Dad was stern and strict, a tough disciplinarian. He expected us to do well in school and he expected us to do our work around the house. He made me go to summer school once to improve what was a better-than-average grade to start with.”

At 15, Ken helped the El Segundo All-Stars capture the 1964 Babe Ruth League national championship. In that tournament, the lanky left-hander no-hit a team from New Orleans. Although he walked seven, he struck out 10 and did not allow a ball to be hit out of the infield.

Kemer (pronounced “kemmer,” a family nickname derived from his brother James’s pronunciation of Kenneth) had a 33-3 record in high school, to go along with a .484 batting average. He played first base and shortstop (despite being a lefty) in Little League, but later switched to the outfield when he wasn’t pitching. He was a Los Angeles Dodgers fan and admired Sandy Koufax, and not just because he was also a lefty from Brooklyn, but because he was a dominating type of pitcher. He had a friend whose elder brother would take the two boys to Dodger Stadium several times a year. Kemer would sit in the cheap seats and use binoculars to watch Koufax warm up.

Ken played football and basketball in high school until he broke a leg in his junior year, but his first love was always baseball. He was the California Interscholastic Federation Player of the Year in 1966, drawing the attention of many baseball people. Casey Stengel, Yogi Berra, Carl Hubbell, and Bobby Doerr were among the parade of those who went to see him play. Dad Jack dreamed of Ken’s replacing Mickey Mantle in the Yankees’ center field. But Ken was selected by the Red Sox with the fourth pick of the June 1966 amateur draft.

The other organizations interested in Brett would have selected him as an outfielder, but the Red Sox, still mired in the second division, needed live arms. Jack Brett negotiated for his son, in these days before agents. He talked to the father of Steve Chilcott, who was the number-one pick that year (by the Mets), to get an idea of what Ken’s signing bonus should be. The Red Sox sent scout Joe Stephenson to the Brett house to make an offer. Jack refused, as Ken had an out – he could go to college. But Ken really wanted to play and he signed a contract after the scout’s third visit. He received a $100,000 bonus, plus money for college.

Brett got lost on his way to Oneonta, New York, his first pro baseball destination. The team had to send out the police to look for the southpaw. He struggled that first season in the New York-Penn League, going 1-4 with a 5.81 ERA in 62 innings pitched. He went on to play winter ball in the Florida Instructional League.

In 1967 Brett pitched for Winston-Salem of the Carolina League and Pittsfield of the Eastern League, putting up some strong numbers – 189 innings pitched, a combined 14-11 record with 219 strikeouts and an ERA of 1.95 – before the left-handed fireballer was a late-September call-up to the Red Sox. Even though Brett had only turned 19, the big leaguers were already impressed with his fastball. Carl Yastrzemski told a reporter, “That’s the new Sam McDowell. Russ Gibson says that kid throws harder than anyone he’s ever caught.”4 Elston Howard said, “This boy Brett is as fast as Bob Turley was in his prime. I also think that he’s as fast as Koufax was.”5 On September 27 he made his major-league debut, pitching two innings to finish up a game against the Cleveland Indians. He gave up one run on three hits, walking none and striking out two in his only appearance during the regular season.

The Red Sox were involved in what many consider the greatest pennant race of all time. They prevailed, and faced the St. Louis Cardinals in a rematch of their previous World Series appearance 21 years earlier. Because he was a September call-up, Brett wasn’t expected to be on the postseason roster. But one bullpen lefty (Bill Landis) went into the service, while another (Sparky Lyle) developed late-season arm trouble. So the Red Sox got approval from both Commissioner William Eckert and the Cardinals to put Brett on the roster, using the same loophole used by the California Angels for Francisco Rodriguez (K-Rod) 35 years later.

Brett pitched twice in the World Series, becoming, at 19 years and one month, the youngest pitcher to ever appear in the fall classic. He pitched 1⅓ innings, with no runs, one strikeout, and one walk, but even that short stint was enough for the opposing manager to praise the phenom. “Where has he been?” said Cardinals skipper Red Schoendienst after his first appearance. “With the kind of stuff he showed us, you wonder why he isn’t starting the Series. But don’t let me give the Red Sox any ideas.”

Brett was a teenager in the spotlight, dubbed “the next Lefty Grove,” but this was the Vietnam era and not two weeks after the World Series, he started a six-month tour of duty with the Army. “That was a humbling experience,” he later recalled. “Those guys in the Army didn’t care about the World Series. They wanted me in the kitchen with a shovel in my hand.”6 In his hilarious biography The Wrong Stuff, Bill Lee placed Brett in the same unit as himself, Dalton Jones, and Jim Lonborg.7 Lee was a clerk-typist while the other three served as medics.

After he finished his military duty, Brett returned too quickly and hurt his elbow, an injury that plagued him the rest of his career. He sought relief through a variety of methods, including drug therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic therapy, and finally surgery in 1974. He threw only 29 innings at Triple-A Louisville in 1968, striking out 20, and finishing with a 3.10 ERA. Despite the injury, the Red Sox protected him in that winter’s expansion draft, hoping he would fulfill his potential.

The year 1969 saw Brett open the season with the Red Sox, but he was sent down to Louisville after three rocky starts, and was not called back up until the rosters expanded in September. The International League adopted the designated-hitter rule that year, so Brett didn’t get to show his prowess with the bat. He did fall just a triple short of the cycle in a September 12 game against the New York Yankees, while garnering his first big-league victory. His pitching at Triple A was solid, with a 7-5 record, 81 strikeouts, and a 3.28 ERA in 129 innings pitched. His major-league statistics were decidedly more lackluster: 2-3 with 23 strikeouts, 22 walks, and a 5.26 ERA in 39⅓ innings. But on September 24 against the Yankees in Fenway Park, Brett carried a shutout into the 10th inning, in a game won by the Red Sox 1-0 in 14 innings. He went back to the Florida Instructional League that winter to work on his curve and changeup to complement his fastball.

In 1970 Brett spent the entire year on the Red Sox major-league roster, but spent more time in the Army Reserve. He started 14 games and also worked out of the bullpen, pitching 139⅓ innings in 41 games, compiling an 8-9 record with 2 saves, 155 strikeouts, 79 walks, and a 4.07 ERA. On September 8 Brett hit an eighth-inning home run to break a 3-3 tie with the Indians, giving the Red Sox the victory.

Brett again played winter ball, this time in Puerto Rico for the San Juan Senators, skippered by Roberto Clemente, and was named to the Puerto Rico All-Star team.

Brett’s winter-ball success failed to carry over into the 1971 major-league season. He found himself in manager Eddie Kasko’s doghouse, and appeared in only 29 games, starting two, going 0-3 with one save and a 5.34 ERA. He devoted another two weeks to Army Reserve duty.

The Red Sox finally gave up on Brett, trading him to the Brewers in October as part of a 10-player deal that saw 1967 Cy Young winner Jim Lonborg, first baseman George Scott, Billy Conigliaro, Joe Lahoud, and Don Pavletich go to the Milwaukee Brewers for speedster Tommy Harper two seasoned pitchers, Lew Krausse and Marty Pattin, and minor leaguer Pat Skrable.

Brett pitched one season for the Brewers, mostly as a starter, finishing with a 7-12 record, 133 innings pitched, 74 strikeouts, 49 walks, and an ERA of 4.53. On April 30 he carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning, and hit an RBI single and scored the deciding run in a 3-1 victory over the Oakland Athletics. He spent three weeks on the disabled list with a lower back pain in July and August. He also twirled a three-hit shutout against the Athletics on May 10. (His other complete game was in an October game against the Yankees.)

On October 31, 1972, Brett was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, along with hurlers Lonborg, Ken Sanders, and Earl Stephenson, for Don Money, John Vukovich, and Bill Champion. The last-place Phillies were looking to rebuild their pitching staff. Brett and Lonborg joined Steve Carlton in the Phillies rotation. “We had to improve our pitching staff,” general manager Paul Owens said, as Carlton’s 27 victories were nearly 50 percent of the Phils’ wins in 1972.

Brett’s 1973 season with the Phillies was one of his best in the major leagues. He started the year in the bullpen, but soon replaced Lonborg in the rotation. He pitched a shutout on May 19 against the Cubs in his second start of the year. Brett ended up with a 13-9 record and a 3.44 ERA in 211⅔ innings pitched, striking out 111 while walking 74. That was the season he set the major-league record for a pitcher by hitting home runs in four consecutive games. He said it should have been five except for a blown call that turned a home run into a double (but in fact his next double was not until August 4). He missed a couple of weeks after hurting his shoulder in a collision with St. Louis catcher Tim McCarver while being used as a pinch-runner on June 26, a move manager Danny Ozark later said he was “kicking myself” over.8 Brett also led the league in fielding, handling 52 chances without an error.

Despite his solid season, the Phillies traded Brett to the Pittsburgh Pirates on October 18, 1973, getting slick-fielding second baseman Dave Cash in return. Said Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh, “Brett is a good [arm] who can step right into our starting rotation.” Phillies pitcher Steve Carlton, though, said of the trade, “When you talk about Brett, you’re talking about a pitcher going on 25 years old with a questionable arm. … If Kenny’s arm never bothered him I wouldn’t have liked the deal. A lot of times he went out there and his arm wasn’t 100 percent. His elbow swells up like Woodie Fryman’s does. Kenny has a lot of courage. He’ll battle you. But a chronic elbow can be a factor as a pitcher gets a little older.”9

The 1974 Pirates were picked by many preseason prognosticators to win the National League East, with newly acquired pitchers Brett and Jerry Reuss anchoring the staff. Kemer went on to have another excellent season, finishing 13-9 with 10 complete games and three shutouts while starting 27 games. He struck out 96, walked 52, and had an ERA of 3.30. He also contributed two home runs (in consecutive games) and led all major-league pitchers with 15 RBIs and a .310 batting average.

On May 27 Brett set down the first 24 San Diego Padres to face him until Fred Kendall, a former California high-school football and baseball opponent, lined a solid single to open the ninth inning. The Pirates ended up winning, 6-0. “I was thinking about a no-hitter after the fifth inning,” Brett said. “You sit on the bench and think about what it means. You realize what you’ve got to do to get it.” But after Kendall’s single, Brett broke into a half-hearted smile and shrugged his shoulders. “I just told myself, ‘Forget it, that’s all you can do.’ That’s a shining achievement. But I didn’t get it, and I can’t do anything about it now.”10 And in the nightcap of the doubleheader, he drove in the tying runs with a two-run pinch-hit triple in the bottom of the seventh, in a game the Pirates went on to win 8-7.

Brett was named to the All-Star team that year. He pitched two innings in front of the Pittsburgh crowd, giving up no runs and getting credited with the win. Though he called the game “one of the biggest thrills of my life,” later in the season he blamed that appearance for his elbow woes, saying, “I got out of my normal routine because of the All-Star Game. Then when I got into the game I was all tensed up. Consequently, I think I overthrew the ball. I think that’s what messed me up.”11 He missed more than a month of action, from August 6 to September 10, as the Pirates clawed their way back into pennant contention.

Brett didn’t pitch all that well upon returning the starting rotation, giving up 18 earned runs in 22⅔ innings. The Bucs did make it to the postseason, losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers, three games to one, in the NL Championship Series. Brett pitched in one game, giving up two earned runs in 2⅓ relief innings.

Brett’s 1974-75 offseason was a busy one. He took courses at Boston University. He also had surgery to remove chips and a bone spur from his left elbow. He signed back on with the Pirates for the 1975 season. However, his elbow continued to be a problem, as he reinjured it during a spring-training game and began the season on the disabled list. He had a very successful season debut, though, hurling six shutout innings in a 5-0 Pirates victory on April 20. But he went on to appear in only 23 games, going 9-5 in 118 innings pitched, with 47 strikeouts and a 3.36 ERA, while the Pirates repeated as the NL East Division champions. The Bucs once again lost in the opening round of the postseason, falling to the Reds in three straight games. Brett pitched in two games, both in relief, giving up no runs while striking out one during his 2⅓ innings pitched.

Brett was involved in a controversy that year when a book, The Best Seat in Baseball But You Have to Stand, was published. Written by Lee Gutkind, this look at umpiring in the major leagues created troubles for umpire Harry Wendelstedt for his disparaging remarks about current players. He was quoted as calling Brett and teammate Richie Hebner “quarter-wits, two of which make a half-wit,” which, of course, didn’t go over too well in the Pittsburgh clubhouse. Legal action was considered by the players, but never pursued.

Brett was traded to the New York Yankees on December 11, 1975, along with starting pitcher Dock Ellis and rookie second baseman Willie Randolph, for pitcher Doc Medich. With the designated hitter in the AL, Brett’s hitting prowess would go to waste. He did finally get to go up against his younger brother, future Hall of Famer George. In their first meeting, a spring-training game, George took older brother Kemer long and deep with a booming 425-foot home run. Ken began the season in the Yankee bullpen but was traded to the White Sox on May 18 after appearing in only two games. He immediately joined the White Sox’ starting rotation.

All this moving around was getting to Brett. “I became a pitcher instead of a thrower. And I still got traded three times. I’m a little bitter about that,” he said in an interview after the White Sox trade. When asked about becoming a full-time hitter, he said, “I think about it all the time. If something were to happen to my arm I wouldn’t mind going to the minors for a year and trying to make it as a hitter. I’m single and have no ties, and I’d do it just for the fun of playing just to see if I could do it.”12 The trade also upset brother George, who said before the Royals faced the Yankees in the 1976 playoffs, “I have a killer’s instinct against that team. I want to beat them bad every time I play them, not only for the team but for my brother, too.”13

Brett’s 1976 season for the White Sox was solid if unspectacular. Appearing in 27 games (26 starts), he finished the season with a 10-12 record in 200⅔ innings, with a 3.32 ERA and 91 strikeouts. His year in Chicago also included 16 complete games (a career high), one shutout, and one save, as well as 12 at-bats, with only one hit, though. The 12 at-bats are the most by an American League pitcher in a single season since the DH began in 1973, even including interleague play.

The season highlight came on May 26, when Brett mowed down the first 23 Angels he faced and took a no-hitter two outs into the ninth inning before giving up a controversial single to Jerry Remy. Remy’s half-swing, half-bunt bouncer to third was misplayed by charging third baseman Jorge Orta, who let the ball get by him. It was ruled a hit by the official scorer, bringing down the ire of Brett, who later said, “I think the call on me was brutal, I think it stunk, but I understand the guy who made it is short, so maybe he couldn’t see out of the press box. But what the hell, we won.”14 It did take 11 innings for the White Sox to win the game, 1-0, with Brett pitching 10 innings and getting credit for the victory, while giving up one more hit in the 10th. Even brother George got into the discussion the next day, threatening to send diminutive teammate Freddie Patek after the official scorer, who was roughly the same size.

Fellow White Sox hurler Steve Stone became one of Brett’s closest friends. Bachelors who both enjoyed great reputations as ladies’ men, they also shared an unusual (for baseball players) joy of reading. With a mutual fondness for authors like Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins, Stone introduced Brett to the world of Robert Ludlum thrillers.

After beginning 1977 locked in a contract battle with the White Sox, the player representative Brett struggled on the mound, finishing with a 6-4 record but a 5.01 ERA. He started the first regular-season game played in Toronto and lasted less than four innings in the 32-degree, snowy weather at Exhibition Stadium, as the White Sox lost to the fledgling Blue Jays, 9-5. His left elbow continued to bother him, and he was forced to leave his third start of the year with elbow problems. “It’s an ache, and it’s more than slight,” he said after the game, but he missed just one start.15

On June 15, 1977, the trading deadline, the still unsigned Brett was traded once again, this time to the California Angels, for three players – pitchers Don Kirkwood and John Verhoeven and minor-league utility infielder John Flannery – plus cash (rumored to be as much as $400,000) as maverick owner Bill Veeck continued to clean house in Chicago. “I have mixed emotions,” said Brett after the trade. “I’m sort of in complete turmoil. My entire family is in LA and I have a ton of friends there. I wouldn’t have been unhappy to stay in Chicago but I don’t think they were going to sign me. If they could afford to lose anyone it was me (they would have lost him to free agency in the winter). I can understand why they did it and I’m surprised it didn’t come sooner.”16

Brett took a regular turn in the rotation for the struggling Angels, finishing the season with a combined 34 starts, a career high. His record for the California team was only 7-10, but included five complete games. His strikeouts were down once again, totaling only 80 for the year, while his ERA was a respectable 4.25 for the Angels. He was in the top 10 in all the wrong lists for the year, though: sixth in hits allowed, fourth in earned runs, seventh in home runs against, and seventh in walks per nine innings.

The 1978 season opened with Brett in the starting rotation as part of an optimistic California Angels club. His first start was a five-hit shutout of the Minnesota Twins, but as the fifth starter in a four-man rotation, he didn’t get a regular turn. He alternated between starting and relieving for the entire season, appearing in 31 games while starting 10. In 100 innings pitched, he struck out 43 while walking 42, finishing with an ERA of 4.95.

Brett’s position as a team leader was emphasized when he spoke for the Angels at the funeral for teammate Lyman Bostock, the gregarious outfielder who was killed by a shotgun blast during the season. “There’s only one consolation: We’re all better persons for having had him touch our lives,” he concluded, struggling for his composure.17 He later participated in Bostock charity baseball games.

During the winter of 1978, Brett took instruction from the great Warren Spahn in throwing the screwball. He began the spring rumored to be either traded or released. His balky back, which limited his spring-training playing time, didn’t help any, and the Angels waived him in April. Later that month, Brett signed with the Minnesota Twins. He appeared in only nine games with the Twins, all in relief, throwing 12⅔ innings, striking out only three and walking six, and was released on June 4.

Brett was back in the Los Angeles area later that month when he signed with the Dodgers on June 11, his ninth major-league team. “I’m happy to be here and I’m going to go out and pitch as well as I can. This is not the end of the world for me,” Brett said of his precarious roster spot as a middle reliever. He pitched out of the bullpen for the Dodgers, going 4-3 in 30 games with a 3.45 ERA, throwing 47 innings with 13 strikeouts, 12 walks, and two saves. He once again went into the trivia books, as he was lifted for pinch-hitter Manny Mota, who went on to get his record 144th pinch-hit.

Brett remained active in the community during this twilight of his career. He continued to appear in charity baseball games, was a grand marshal at parades, and helped other charitable causes and baseball clinics.

He began 1980 as part of the Dodgers bullpen plan, but was released in March. Brett hurt his arm in his first spring outing and was released before pitching again. “I tried to throw too hard (in his first game). My elbow locked so badly I couldn’t move it,” Brett said later, describing his short spring. “I’m tired of all the traveling,” he said. “I’m going home to California to rest. I’ll have an operation on my arm and then go back to college to study business.”18

Brett was out of major-league baseball for most of the summer, playing for the semipro Orange County A’s, until he signed to play with his brother George in Kansas City on August 11. He began at Triple-A Omaha, but joined the Royals on August 29 and pitched in eight games to finish out the season with them. He didn’t allow a run in 13⅓ innings pitched, striking out four, walking five, and saving one game.

The brothers Brett enjoyed their time together in Kansas City. George by now was a big star, as 1980 was his big push to batting .400 (he ended up at .390), but Ken wasn’t above needling his younger brother, saying, “If it hadn’t been for the DH rule, I’d have been the first in the family to hit .400.” George was particularly candid in discussing how much an influence Ken had on his career, saying, “I decided to make baseball my goal when we went to see Ken pitch in the ’67 World Series between Boston and St. Louis. I was 14 and Ken 19. It was a real thrill. He could really bring it then. And he’d always come home with … a new girl and a new roll of bills. I said to myself, ‘That’s for me.'”19

Ken helped George with the media pressure during his drive to .400, but he didn’t want it overstated. “People think I’m here to have a mature influence on George,” said Ken, unused to being a “good influence.” “George doesn’t need me. He’s been grown up for a long time. If anything, I just hope I’m not a hindrance to him.”20 One time, Ken even pretended to be George for a bit with one clueless writer. “I must have talked for eight or 10 minutes on how I was starting to really get nervous about the whole thing (batting .400). I didn’t say anything that would have embarrassed George, but I was pretty good. I never heard it, but it had to be on the radio the next day. Wouldn’t you do that for a brother you love?”21

The 1980 Royals went on to sweep the Yankees in the AL Championship Series, 3-0, but lost to the Phillies in the World Series, 4-2. Ken was on the roster for both the Championship Series and the World Series, but didn’t appear in a game during the postseason.

Ken Brett finished his major-league career with the Royals in 1981, appearing in 22 games as a lefty specialist. He pitched 32⅓ innings, with a 4.18 ERA but an unimpressive 14-7 walks-to-strikeouts ratio. He won one game, lost one and had two saves. He was waived by the Royals in November 1981, ending his pitching career. He did try to hook back on with Pittsburgh the following spring, but the effort came to an end when he was released by the Pirates on March 22, 1982.

Ken went on to a varied career after baseball that included co-owning a minor-league baseball team (Spokane Indians) and a minor-league hockey team (Spokane Chiefs), being a TV baseball color commentator for the Seattle Mariners and the California Angels, as well as appearing in beer commercials. One took advantage of his much-traveled career. In it, he stood at a bar, confused as to what city he was currently in, finally guessing “Utica.” Brett later visited Utica and was given the keys to the city, saying it was as close as he would ever get to Cooperstown. This appearance led to a year as the manager for the New York-Penn League Utica Blue Sox.

Brett married Teresa Smogyi, who worked in movie production, in 1985. He was also involved in restaurants with his brothers. He appeared in the 1994 movie The Scout as himself.

Ken Brett died on November 18, 2003, at the age of 55 of brain cancer, the same disease that took his father’s life.

Author’s Note

A version of this biography originally appeared in SABR’s The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field (Rounder Books, 2007), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to pass along his appreciation to Jon Daly for help received with the initial work on this biography; to Harvey Frommer for his 2003 interview of Ken Brett; and to J. Thomas Hetrick for the interview transcription.

Sources

In addition to sources cited in the Notes, the author also relied on Retrosheet, Baseball-Reference.com, baseballlibrary.com, contemporary newspapers, and SABR member Fred Worth’s research on AL pitcher at-bats since the DH.

Notes

Galen Bernard Cisco was born on March 7, 1936, to Beryl and Esther Cisco in St. Marys, Ohio, a town of about 8,000 near the Indiana border, halfway between Dayton, Ohio, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. The Ciscos owned a farm, and Galen and his three brothers and one sister spent hours working in the family business. “We kind of had a really great family life,” Cisco recalled. “We were brought up on the farm. … Everyone had their chore and we all did the things that we needed to do growing up on the farm.”1

When young Galen wasn’t taking care of livestock, he squeezed in time playing sports, namely football and baseball. At Memorial High School in St. Marys, he played both sports. His football coach was Jack Bickel, who had been a running back at Miami (Ohio) University for Woody Hayes. Cisco recalled that many of the plays in the Memorial playbook were the same ones Hayes later ran at Ohio State.

Like most young Buckeyes, Cisco dreamed of playing for The Ohio State University. After graduating from high school in 1954, he enrolled at Ohio State with a major in education. Freshmen were not allowed to play on varsity teams in that era, so the pride of St. Marys spent a year practicing with the varsity. Once Cisco got the chance to play, he excelled in both sports. He sported a 12-2 collegiate pitching record and was named a third-team All-American in 1956. But he gained greater acclaim in football, as a running back and linebacker.

In his senior year Ohio State went to the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day 1958. Before a big game, many athletes focus strictly on the showdown, but that wasn’t true for Cisco. Preparing for the biggest (and final) gridiron game of his college career, he made a life-changing decision. Coach Hayes told his players that anyone who was married could bring their wives free to Pasadena to attend the Rose Bowl game. Cisco was engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Martha. With this Rose Bowl-colored carrot dangling over their heads, Galen and Martha decided there was no reason to wait until after the football season to tie the knot. “She married me and got a free trip to the Rose Bowl,” Cisco recalled.

The 8-1 Buckeyes were a 21-point favorite over 7-3 Oregon, Cisco recounted, but the Ohio State offense just couldn’t get started that day. Oregon gained more yards and collected more first downs than the favorites. Ohio State still prevailed, 10-7, thanks to a 34-yard field goal by Don Sutherin in the fourth quarter.

While some players suffered under Hayes’ rough nature, Cisco enjoyed playing for him. “He was a very, very fundamentally-minded coach. He didn’t get too fancy. He didn’t pass a lot. He seemed to think that if you take a few plays and play them better than anyone else, you’re going to be successful,” said Cisco. “He was a no-nonsense guy. He probably was one of the most prepared people I have ever been around.”

Cisco’s collegiate career was coming to an end in 1958, but he didn’t need any help choosing which sport to pursue. He recalled that a few professional football teams called Hayes about the two-way star, but were told he was interested in throwing baseballs – not throwing tackles. “The closer I got to the latter years in college, I thought baseball would have more longevity than football. I had an opportunity to sign so I did,” said Cisco.

Signed in 1958 by Red Sox scout Denny Galehouse, Cisco wasted no time hurling the horsehide in the minors. He pitched in 32 games for Corning of the Class-D New York-Pennsylvania League and Raleigh of the Class-B Carolina League that summer, with a composite record of 6-12.

Since he still was two quarters short of receiving his bachelor’s degree, Cisco spent the 1958-59 offseason back in Columbus to finish his schooling, and Hayes hired him as the backfield coach for the freshman football team. He stayed in that position for four offseasons, coaching future NFL stars Paul Warfield and Matt Snell, among others.

While teaching young running backs how to find holes each autumn, Cisco spent his springs and summers becoming a more accomplished pitcher. Along with brief 1959 stops in Raleigh and Allentown (Eastern), he won 15 games with a Midwest League-leading 2.23 ERA for Waterloo. The next year he finished 3-7, but with a fine 2.93 ERA, for Minneapolis in the American Association, and joined the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League in 1961.

Along with teammates Dick Radatz and Don Schwall, Cisco pitched for manager Johnny Pesky in Seattle. In his nine games with the Rainiers that year, Cisco finished 6-1, compiled a 1.54 ERA, and completed five of his starts. Cisco was clearly ready for the call, and he quickly followed his teammate Schwall to Boston.

The Red Sox team Cisco joined had suffered through a decade of mediocrity, and in 1961 Ted Williams no longer patrolled left field for the team. If fans hadn’t attended games at the ballpark with the great Williams in the lineup, they surely stayed away from a team made up of unproven players like Carl Yastrzemski. “The product we put on the field was not that great,” said Cisco. “It was a tough place to play. The writers there were tough.”

Cisco’s first game was a Fenway Park start on June 11, and he allowed five hits and five runs in 2 1/3 innings against the Minnesota Twins. Six days later he won a start against the Washington Senators, but by mid-July he was out of the rotation. Cisco struggled with the second-division team (2-4, 6.71), but the Red Sox were excited about the future of their rotation with Schwall, Tracy Stallard, Bill Monbouquette, and Cisco. His former manager, Pesky, predicted that Cisco was “another Schwall,” who won the Rookie of the Year in 1961.2

Schwall himself said that the Galen Cisco who pitched in Boston was not the same guy who was his teammate in the minors. “When he came up here, he got off to a bad start. Then he began to press. He wasn’t pitching normally and as a result he didn’t look like the pitcher he was when I was with him in Minneapolis and Seattle,” Schwall told The Sporting News after the 1961 season.3

But Cisco showed great improvement in spring training before the 1962 season. In 28 innings he allowed only three earned runs for an 0.86 ERA, while scattering 23 hits. Shortly before Opening Day, Red Sox manager Pinky Higgins told the press, “Nobody can believe Cisco is the same guy who was with us for the last half of 1961.”4

But Cisco’s 1962 season with the Red Sox mirrored his struggles of the previous year. On July 27 Higgins even left him on the mound to allow 16 hits and 13 runs against the Senators, finally taking him out of the game in the sixth inning. Two relief appearances later, the Red Sox placed Cisco on waivers, and he was claimed by the New York Mets.

The right-handed pitcher went from a mediocre team to one of the worst in the history of baseball. “We had guys who couldn’t hit the ball and didn’t catch it,” Cisco recalled. Cisco now played for Casey Stengel, a learning experience for the young pitcher. After splitting two decisions in September 1962, Cisco was 7-15, 4.34, in 51 games in 1963.

While in New York, “Ohio State” (Stengel’s name for Cisco) started and relieved. Despite the team’s futility, he was able to discuss the art of pitching with teammates Roger Craig, Al Jackson, Don Rowe, Bob Miller, and Larry Bearnarth, all of whom later became pitching coaches in the major leagues. “I think everybody used to talk more [then] about the game than they did later. I’m talking about in the 1990s on. I think they talked about the game much more then,” said Cisco.

While the team did not perform well, Cisco was likely the best pitcher on the 1964 Mets’ staff. Pitching in the new Shea Stadium, the right-hander finished with a 3.62 ERA while going 6-19 for the still-hapless team. In that season Cisco’s pitching forced a future Hall of Famer to try a new pitch.

Cisco came in in the 14th inning of the second game of a doubleheader against the San Francisco and proceeded to shut down the Giants. His mound opponent late in the game was Gaylord Perry, who was struggling to stay in the major leagues, but who would ultimately win 314 games and a plaque in Cooperstown. Perry was called into the game in the 13th inning, and he later acknowledged throwing his first spitball in this game. Cisco and Perry traded scoreless innings until Jimmy Davenport tripled in the winning run for the Giants in the 23rd inning.

Undeterred, Cisco came back in his next start and four-hit the world champion Los Angeles Dodgers, 8-0, in front of 55,000 fans at Shea. Cisco’s performances made an impression on his manager. During the 1964 season, Stengel acknowledged that the Mets had debated in the spring whether to even keep Cisco on the roster. “Then he got a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better. Now he’s about as good as anyone we have,” Stengel told The Sporting News.5

The Cisco followed this fine season by limping to a 4-8 record and a 4.49 ERA in 1965. After the season, Cisco was sent to the minors, finishing his four-year Mets career with an 18-43 record and 4.04 ERA.

After starting the 1966 season with the Mets’ Triple-A Jacksonville affiliate, in June Cisco was sold back to the Red Sox, and he finished the season with their Toronto club. Dick Williams, the Toronto manager, knew Cisco was only about 60 days of service time away from his pension, and wanted to help the soft-spoken Ohioan. For the season, Cisco finished 11-6 in 157 innings in his two International League stops.

Williams, who was named manager of the 1967 Red Sox, told Cisco he would try to get him his pension. “He told me if he had a chance he would give me a look or maybe bring me up even for two years the last 30 days when teams could expand the club,” Cisco recalled. If he’d been hurting the team, Williams would have sent him down, but Williams stuck to his word in 1967 and gave him a shot. Cisco started the year with the Red Sox as a reliever. Looking back 40 years later, Cisco said the team didn’t seem special at the start.

“I think we thought we had a pretty good club. What it boiled down to was what kind of pitching staff you had,” said Cisco. “I don’t think anybody expected us to do anything like (the 1967 Red Sox eventually) did.” Cisco was used mostly in mop-up work. He pitched in 11 games and threw 22 1/3 innings for the Impossible Dream team. But shortly after the All-Star break, the Red Sox saw an opportunity to improve their bench by picking up Norm Siebern, and sent Cisco to the minors to free up the roster spot.

A number of players chafed under the pressure of playing for Dick Williams, but not Cisco. “I learned a lot of baseball as a player from Dick,” he said. “He was a no-nonsense guy. You didn’t have to wonder what he was thinking about.” In this regard, Cisco added, Williams was much like Woody Hayes. “He was honest with me always. I got along with him just fine.”

For the remainder of the 1967 season, Cisco pitched for Pittsfield (0.82 ERA in 11 innings) and Toronto (2.08 ERA in 65 innings). He enjoyed a renaissance in 1968 for Louisville, the Red Sox’ new International League affiliate. He led the league with a 2.21 ERA while winning 11 games for the Colonels, at one point throwing 22 consecutive scoreless innings.

After the season, Cisco was sold to the expansion Kansas City Royals, who would begin play the following spring. Unlike the Mets in 1962, though, the Royals were more mediocre than atrocious. “The Royals I think had a little bit better draft. The way the draft was set up I think the Royals had a little bit better advantage than the Mets,” Cisco said, comparing the two expansion clubs.

Despite struggling with Omaha in the early season (5.00 ERA in 10 games), Cisco was called up by Kansas City in June and the Buckeye finished the season in the Royals’ bullpen. Cisco finished with a 3.63 ERA, in what would be the last 22 1/3 innings of his major-league playing career. He was 33 years old.

The following year Omaha hired Cisco as a player-coach. The plan was to work as the pitching coach, but to take to the mound if there were injuries or if the team was in dire need of an arm. He threw 76 innings and finished his final year as a player with a 2.49 ERA. Cisco also won his final six decisions, the longest winning streak in his pro career.

Just 35 years old, Cisco became the pitching coach for Bob Lemon in Kansas City in 1971. During his tenure with the Royals, he worked with such top-notch starters as Dennis Leonard, Steve Busby, and Paul Splittorff. All three credited Cisco for their successes. “I had been dropping too much on my slider and Galen got on me about throwing more over the top,” Busby told The Sporting News in 1973, after the publication named him the American League Rookie Pitcher of the Year and a year before he won 20 games with the Royals. “I guess I was doing the same thing with my fastball. I know I felt better and threw better when I went back to the old way.”6

Mound ace Leonard told The Sporting News in 1976, “When I struggled last season, Galen worked with me. He told me I was dropping down too much and everything I was throwing was flattening out. He worked with me for hours and hours.”7

When Splittorff contemplated quitting in the minors, Cisco talked him out of it.

“I told him you’re left-handed and your time will come when you’re going to get a shot at the big leagues. You have spent three full years playing this game and you should give it one or two more years before retiring,” Cisco told the young pitcher, who won 166 games in 15 major-league seasons.

Cisco was the pitching coach for the Royals’ division championship teams in 1976-1978 before being let go when Whitey Herzog was fired after the 1979 season. The experienced pitching coach quickly found work; his old friend Dick Williams hired him to lead the pitchers in Montreal.

A few years later Cisco worked with Williams in San Diego. In 1987 the Toronto Blue Jays hired Cisco as their pitching coach, and within four years his staff included Jimmy Key, Dave Stieb, Todd Stottlemyre, and David Wells. Wells, not known for his love of management, appreciated Cisco’s assistance. “Galen Cisco helped me a lot. He would help me correct little things if he saw me doing something wrong, and we would talk pitching,” Wells said in 1990.8

Cisco led the Jays’ pitchers during their world championship years of 1992-1993, the first team to win back-to-back World Series in 15 years. In addition to Key, Stieb, Stottlemyre, and Wells, pitchers who threw for him during those two years included Jack Morris, David Cone, Dave Stewart, Tom Henke, Duane Ward, and Mike Timlin. “I have to give (Pat) Gillick a lot of credit, and the scouting department,” Cisco said. “After the first (championship), most teams would have stayed pretty much pat, but they brought in two or three key players. … Without those players, I wonder if we would have won it back to back.”

Toronto did not re-sign Cisco after the 1995 season, but the year wasn’t all bad for the Ohio State graduate. He was inducted into OSU’s Varsity Hall of Fame.

Two years later, Cisco accepted his final major-league job – pitching coach of the Philadelphia Phillies under new manager Terry Francona, who later led the Red Sox to their first World Series championship in 86 years in 2004. After being let go by the Phillies, Cisco worked in the Blue Jays’ minor-league system before retiring after 45 years in pro baseball.

Looking back on his successful career as a pitching coach, Cisco said he didn’t have one favorite hurler. “I think that two starters had as good stuff as anybody: One was Dave Stieb and one was Steve Rogers,” he said. The smartest pitcher? Busby. “He studied (hitters’) weaknesses and was a student of pitching. If this guy stayed healthy, he would have been something,” Cisco said of his former pupil, whose career was cut short by injuries.

Cisco pointed to Willie Blair as a pitcher of borderline talent stuck in Toronto’s Triple-A farm club who really worked hard on his game. Blair won 60 games in the major leagues, including 16 for Detroit in 1997. “I don’t know if I had a lot to do with it or not, but he went on and had some pretty good years,” said Cisco modestly.

In 2006 he was enjoying retirement in Celina, Ohio, only a few miles from his hometown of St. Marys. St. Marys inaugurated the Galen Cisco Award to the Little League MVP. The award has been given since 1965 and was won by Galen’s nephew, Ty, in 1980. The Cisco baseball legacy carried on. His sons, Galen Jr. and Jeff, both played minor-league ball, and his grandson, Mike Cisco, was a pitcher at South Carolina in 2006.

Last revised: January 1, 2017

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Cataneo, David. Casey Stengel: Baseball’s “Old Professor” (Nashville: Cumberland House, 2003).

Koppett, Leonard. The New York Mets: The Whole Story (New York: Macmillan, 1974).

Perry, Gaylord, and Bob Sudyk, Me and the Spitter (New York: Signet Books, 1974).

Editors of Total Baseball. Total Mets (Kingston, New York: Total Sports, 2000).

ohiostatebuckeyes.cstv.com/ (Ohio State University Athletic Department website).

ridertown.com (virtual St. Marys Ohio website).

Notes

1 Author interview with Galen Cisco, April 25, 2006. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Cisco come from this interview.

2 Hy Hurwitz, “Hub Hose Peg Kid Mound Comers to Pace ’62 Climb,” The Sporting News, January 24, 1962: 21.

3 Hy Hurwitz, “Schwall and Schilling Speed Big Rebuilding Program by Red Sox,” The Sporting News, November 29, 1961: 45.

4 Hy Hurwitz, “Cisco Kid Rides to Rescue – Fills Bill on Hub Hill,” The Sporting News, April 18, 1962: 24.

5 Barney Kremenko, “Cisco Kid Rides to Rescue; Hero of Met Mound Corps,” The Sporting News, June 20, 1964: 18.

6 Sid Bordman, “Steve’s Buzz Bomb Act Captures Tigers Again,” The Sporting News, May 12, 1973: 12.

7 Sid Bordman, “‘I Plan to Win 20,’ Says Royals’ Ace Leonard,” The Sporting News, July 31, 1976: 13.

8 Neil McCarl, “In Role As Starter, All Is Well for Wells,” The Sporting News, July 20, 1990: 9.

As if that wasn’t enough, Tony Conigliaro was a bona-fide celebrity and singer with a couple of regional hit records to his credit.

Tony C was born on January 7, 1945, in Revere, Massachusetts, a few miles north of Boston, and grew up both there and in East Boston, where he first played Little League ball at age 9. Tony and his younger brother Billy (b. 1947) were obsessed with baseball, playing it at every possible opportunity, usually with the support and guidance of their uncle Vinnie Martelli. “He used to pitch batting practice to me for hours, till my hands bled,” wrote Conigliaro in his autobiography Seeing It Through.1  In his very first at-bat for the Orient Heights Little League team, Tony hit a home run over the center-field fence. He credited coach Ben Campbell for giving him tremendous encouragement in youth baseball.

Tony confessed that at a very early age, “I discovered how much I hated to lose.”2 His teams didn’t lose that often. By the time he was 13 and in Pony League, they were traveling out of state in tournament play. Tony went to high school at St. Mary’s in Lynn, where his father, Sal, was working at Triangle Tool and Dye. Sal and Tony’s mother, Teresa, were very supportive of his athletic endeavors and were a fixture at Tony’s various ballgames.

As both a shortstop and pitcher, Tony had already come to the attention of scouts like Lennie Merullo and Milt Bolling, and by the time he graduated claimed to have had as many as 14 scouts tracking him. In his final couple of years, he recalled batting over .600 and having won 16 games on the mound, and remembered his team winning the Catholic Conference championship.  He played American Legion ball in the summers, with the same .600 batting average. The Red Sox asked Tony to come to a 1962 workout at Fenway Park, where both he and Tony Horton showed their stuff. When the Legion season ended and Tony’s father courted bids, Boston’s Milt Bolling and Red Sox farm director Neil Mahoney made the best bid at $20,000 and Tony signed with the Red Sox.3 He was sent to Bradenton for the Florida Instructional League.

It was Conigliaro’s first time far from home, and he didn’t stand out that well at winter ball. In the spring of 1963, he was invited to the Red Sox minor-league camp at Ocala. He did well there, and was assigned to Wellsville in the New York-Penn League. Before he reported, he went home to see his girlfriend, got in a fight with a local boy, and broke his thumb. He wasn’t able to report to Wellsville until the end of May. That was the end of Conigliaro’s pitching career, but the scouts were looking at his hitting more than his pitching anyway. Tony did well at Wellsville, batting .363, hitting 24 homers, and winning the league’s Rookie of the Year and MVP awards. He played that autumn at instructional league in Sarasota and was added to the Red Sox’ 40-man roster. The next spring, 1964, the Sox brought him to their big-league spring-training headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Boston’s manager was Johnny Pesky who, as it happened, lived on the same street in Swampscott to which the Conigliaro family had recently moved: Parsons Street. Pesky saw the fire in Tony Conigliaro and played him that spring; Tony hit a monster home run off Cleveland’s Gary Bell on March 22, the first day his parents came to visit him in Scottsdale. Ted Williams admired Conigliaro’s style and told him, whatever he did, “Don’t change that solid stance of yours, no matter what you’re told.” Ted told reporters, though, “He’s just a kid; he’s two years away.”4 

Johnny Pesky saw otherwise. Tony C was 19 and only in his second year in Organized Baseball, but he made the big-league club as the center fielder for the Red Sox. Pesky was taking a chance on a relatively untested player, but the 1964 Sox, frankly, didn’t have a great deal of talent.

Conigliaro’s first major-league game was in Yankee Stadium on April 16. In his first major-league at-bat, against Whitey Ford, he stepped into the box with men on first and second and grounded into a double play. His third time up, he singled and finished the day 1-for-5. The next day, April 17, was the home opener at Fenway Park. Tony was batting seventh in the order, facing Joe Horlen of the White Sox. He swung at Horlen’s first pitch and hit it over the Green Monster in left field, and even over the net that hung above the Wall. Tony Conigliaro, wearing number 25, took his first home-run trot. Tony told writers afterward that he always swung at the first good pitch he saw. “I don’t like to give the pitcher any kind of edge,” he said.5

In that same spirit, Conigliaro crowded the plate. And pitchers, quite naturally, tried to back him off the plate. He was often hit by pitches, and suffered his first injury on May 24 when Kansas City’s Moe Drabowsky hit him in the left wrist, causing a hairline fracture. Fortunately, Tony missed only four games.

Back in the lineup, back pounding out homers, Tony hit number 20 in the first game of a July 26 doubleheader against Cleveland. In the second game, he got hit for the fifth time in the season, by Pedro Ramos. It broke his arm. This time he missed a month, out until September 4. Conigliaro finished the season with 24 homers and a .290 average.

In 1965, under manager Billy Herman, Tony played in 138 games and hit 32 more homers, enough to lead the league, though his average dipped to .269. During the June free-agent draft, there was more good news for the Conigliaro family: The Red Sox used their first pick to select Tony’s younger brother, Billy. Tony was struck yet again by a ball on July 28, when a Wes Stock pitch broke his left wrist. It was the third broken bone Tony had suffered in just over 14 months. He simply refused to back off the plate. Orioles executive Frank Lane intimated that Red Sox pitchers could defend Tony a bit better by retaliating.

Suffering no serious injuries in 1966, Tony got in a very full season, seeing action in 150 games. He banged out 28 homers and drove in 93 runs, leading the league in sacrifice flies with seven. His average was .265 and the Boston writers voted him Red Sox MVP. The Red Sox as a team, though, played poorly in these years. In 1966 they were spared the ignominy of last place only because the Yankees played even worse. Boston ended the year in ninth place, 26 games out of first, and the Yankees ended in tenth, 26½ games behind the Orioles. In his first three years in the majors, the highest that one of Tony’s teams finished was eighth place in 1964.

Tony C’s brilliant play shone all the more because of the colorless team around him. The local boy made good was a teenage heartthrob and the 6-foot-3 handsome star attracted a lot of attention from local girls, and girls on the road. Assigning older players as roommates to provide a stabilizing presence didn’t do the trick. Dick Williams wrote in his autobiography, “I never saw him. Not late at night, not first thing in the morning, never. I was providing veteran influence to a suitcase.”6 In the early part of 1965, Tony Conigliaro the pop star released his first recording. He recorded a couple of singles and might have developed a career in this area, but kept his focus on baseball.

Billy Conigliaro joined his brother as the two traveled together to spring training in 1967. Tony was hit by a fastball in early workouts and he hurt his back as well. Billy was sent out for more seasoning; he first made the big-league club in 1969. Tony got off to a slow start, batting well enough but without much power. He didn’t hit his third home run until June 11. And he still crowded the plate. Johnny Pesky told author David Cataneo, “He was fearless of the ball. He would just move his head, like Williams did. A ball up and in, Tony would just move his head. He thought the ball would never hit him.”7

The Red Sox surprised everyone with their play in 1967. Conigliaro contributed as well. One game that stood out was an extra-inning affair at Fenway on June 15. Boston was hosting the White Sox and the game was scoreless for 10 full innings. Chicago took a 1-0 lead in the top of the 11th, but Joe Foy singled and then Conigliaro hit a two-run homer off John Buzhardt for a walkoff win. The win moved the Red Sox up by percentage points to put them in a tie for third place, just four games out of first, and the next day’s Boston Globe referred to the “Impossible Dream” season the Red Sox team was having for itself.

It was on July 23 that Tony hit the 100th and 101st home runs of his major-league career. The Red Sox were just a half-game out of first place. It was a tight race, with Boston hanging just out of first, but never quite making it to the top. As late as August 14, the Red Sox were in fifth place – but only three games out.

On the 17th, Tony’s partner in the music business, Ed Penney, was visiting his sons at the Ted Williams Baseball Camp in Lakeville, Massachusetts. Ted warned Penney, “Tell Tony that he’s crowding the plate. Tell him to back off.” He said, “It’s getting too serious now with the Red Sox.” Penney remembered, “I told him I would. I’d see him the next night. When we were walking across the field to get the kids, and Ted was going up to the stands to make some kind of talk, he turned around and yelled over to me and said, ‘Don’t forget what I told you to tell Tony. Back off, because they’ll be throwing at him.’”8 Penney did tell Tony, before the game the very next night. Tony was in a slump at the time, and told his brother Billy he couldn’t back off the plate or pitchers wouldn’t take him seriously. If anything, he was going to dig in a little closer.

The Red Sox were facing the California Angels the next day – August 18 – and Jack Hamilton’s fourth-inning fastball came in and struck Tony in the face, just missing his temple but hitting him in the left eye and cheekbone. Tony later wrote that he jerked his head back “so hard that my helmet flipped off just before impact.”9 He never lost consciousness, but as he lay on the ground, David Cataneo wrote, Tony prayed, “God, please, please don’t let me die right here in the dirt at home plate at Fenway Park.”10 Tony was fortunate to escape with his life, but his season – and quite possibly his career – was over. Conigliaro had been very badly injured.

The 1967 Red Sox made it to Game Seven of the World Series before the bubble burst. It had nonetheless been a tremendous year for the team, and reignited the passion for the Sox in the city of Boston. Since 1967, tickets for Fenway Park have been hard to come by. Tony, however, felt he’d let the team down. He was down on himself and downplayed his contribution in the drive to the pennant. His teammates were the first to reassure him that they never would have reached the postseason had it not been for his contributions early on. There is little doubt, though, that Conigliaro was missed in the World Series itself. George Scott was unambiguous in his assessment: “I’ve said it a million times, if Tony had been in the lineup, we would have won. He was one of those guys. Reggie Jackson was a big-game player. Tony was that kind of player.”11

There was concern that Conigliaro might lose the sight in his left eye. He tried to come back in spring training, but there was just no way. His vision was inadequate, and his doctor told him, “I don’t want to be cruel, and there’s no way of telling you this in a nice way, but it’s not safe for you to play ball anymore.”12 Tony C wouldn’t quit, though, and against all odds, his vision slowly began to improve. By late May he was told he could begin to work out again. Tony also learned new ways to see the ball. When he looked straight on at the pitcher, he couldn’t see the ball, but he learned to use his peripheral vision to pick up the ball and was able to see well enough by looking a couple of inches to the left. Tony wanted badly to get back into baseball. He spent a good amount of time in the late summer of 1968 trying to learn to become a pitcher, and started several games in the Winter Instructional League for the Sarasota Red Sox beginning on November 4, but he rolled up a record of 0-3, giving up 15 runs in one game, and developed a sore arm as well. He played in the outfield on the days he wasn’t pitching and he began to connect for a few solid hits. He gave up the idea of pitching, emboldened to try to come back as a hitter in spring training 1969.

Not only did Tony make the team in 1969, but he broke back in with a bang, hitting a two-run homer in the top of the 10th on Opening Day in Baltimore, on April 8. The O’s retied the game, but Tony led off in the 12th and worked a walk, eventually coming home to score on Dalton Jones’s sacrifice fly to right. Tony delivered the game-winning hit in the fourth inning of the home opener at Fenway Park on April 14, though admittedly it wasn’t much of a hit. He came up with the bases loaded and wanted to break the game open. Instead, he sent a slow dribbler toward Brooks Robinson at third, and beat it out as Ray Culp scored from third. Tony C was back. It was never easy, and the various books on his struggle document how hard he had to work at what once seemed so effortless, but Tony played in 141 games, hit 20 home runs, and drove in 82 runs. Tony won the Comeback Player of the Year Award. There wasn’t any question who would win it.

The 1970 season was Conigliaro’s best at the plate, with 36 homers and 116 RBIs. He also scored a career-high 89 runs. Brother Billy had made the Red Sox, too, in 1969, getting himself 80 at-bats and acquitting himself well. Billy became a regular in 1970, appearing in 114 games and batting .271. Add his 18 homers to Tony’s 36, and the resulting total of 54 set a record for the most home runs by two brothers on the same major-league club. On July 4 and September 19, they each homered in the same game.

In October the Red Sox traded Tony. Stats aside, they knew that Conigliaro was playing on guts and native talent, but may have sensed that his vision was still questionable. His trade value was as high as it likely ever would be. Not even waiting for Baltimore and Cincinnati to finish the World Series, they packaged Conigliaro with Ray Jarvis and Jerry Moses and swapped him to the California Angels for Ken Tatum, Jarvis Tatum, and Doug Griffin. Even years later, Red Sox executives neither explained nor took credit (or responsibility) for the trade. The news stunned the baseball world – and Red Sox fans in particular. As author Herb Crehan wrote in Red Sox Heroes of Yesteryear, referring to Boston’s then-mayor, “it was as if Mayor Menino were to trade the USS Constitution to Baltimore for the USS Constellation.”13 Ken Tatum may have been the key to the trade; the Sox were after a strong reliever and he’d done very well for California.

Tony was crushed, and as Crehan noted, he “never adjusted to life as a California Angel.” David Cataneo wrote, “Tony C and Southern California just didn’t happen.”14 Conigliaro batted just .222 in 1971, with only 4 homers and 15 RBIs just before the All-Star break. His headaches had returned. He wasn’t feeling well. Cataneo mentioned a string of ailments, from a bad leg to a pinched nerve. Tony even put himself in traction for an hour before every game. Some of the Angels lost patience with him and began to mock him. Finally, fed up, he packed his bags and left the team after the July 9 game, announcing his retirement. He told reporters that he simply couldn’t see well enough, but took the Red Sox off the hook for having dealt tarnished goods. “My eyesight never came back to normal. … I pick up the spin on the ball late, by looking away to the side. I don’t know how I do it. I kept it away from the Red Sox. … I had a lot of headaches because of the strain to see. … My search for that damn baseball.”15

When he heard the news that Tony had left the Angels, Billy Conigliaro exploded in the Red Sox clubhouse, telling reporters that the reason for the trade to California in the first place had been Carl Yastrzemski, that Yaz had all the influence on the ballclub. “Tony was traded because of one guy – over there,” he charged, indicating Yastrzemski. Yaz “got rid of Pesky, Ken Harrelson, and Tony. I know I’m next. Yaz and Reggie [Smith] are being babied, and the club better do something about it.”16

Billy was part of a major 10-player trade with Milwaukee, but the trade was not made until October. Billy never rejoined the Red Sox. Tony did, but it took a while.

An eye exam Tony underwent after returning to Boston showed that the blind spot in his vision had grown considerably; his vision was deteriorating once more. Tony hadn’t given up yet and in October 1973 talked about wanting to mount another comeback with the Angels in 1974. It appears that the Angels wanted him to play for their Salt Lake City affiliate, to see how he worked out, but Tony was past wanting to play for a minor-league team and so stayed retired. Late in 1974, he wrote to the Red Sox asking for another shot at a comeback and GM Dick O’Connell said he could come to spring training, but not at financial cost to the Red Sox. If he was willing to pay his own way, he was welcome to give it a try. The Angels graciously granted Tony his outright release in November 1974. The Red Sox offered him a contract with the Pawtucket Red Sox, which he signed on March 5, 1975.

Tony took up the challenge, and he had an exceptional spring. On April 4 he got word that he had made the big-league team. Opening Day 1975 was four days later, at Fenway Park on April 8, and Tony was the designated hitter, batting cleanup. With two outs and Yaz on first, Tony singled and Yaz took third. The crowd gave Tony C a three-minute standing ovation. Perhaps Milwaukee pitcher Jim Slaton and his batterymate, Darrell Porter, were caught a little off-guard; the Red Sox scored a run when Tony and Yaz pulled off a double steal. 

Tony’s first home run came three days later, off Mike Cuellar in Baltimore. With a first-inning single the following day, he drove in another run, but his .200 average after the April 12 game was the highest he posted for the rest of the season. He appeared only in 21 games, for 57 at-bats, and was batting just .123 after the game on June 12. He was hampered by a couple of injuries; it just wasn’t working out. The Red Sox needed to make room on the 25-man roster for newly acquired infielder Denny Doyle and they asked Tony to go to Pawtucket. After thinking it over for a week, he agreed to and reported, traveling with the PawSox, but getting only sporadic playing time. Manager Joe Morgan said, “He had lost those real good reflexes,” and teammate Buddy Hunter told David Cataneo, “Any guy who threw real hard, he had trouble with.” Hunter added, “He was dropping easy fly balls in the outfield.”17 In August Tony Conigliaro finally called it a day, and retired once again, this time for good. “My body is falling apart,” he explained.18

Before too long, Tony found work as a broadcaster, first in Providence and then in the San Francisco area. He lost a nice gig in the Bay Area in early 1980, but filled in with other stations. In a life full of setbacks, even the health-food store Tony owned in California was lost to mudslides in December 1981. 

In early 1982, though, Tony learned that Ken Harrelson was leaving his job as color commentator with Channel 38 in Boston, the Red Sox station. Now there was a job with appeal! He interviewed for the position on the day he turned 37, January 7, 1982. The audition went very well, and he was told he’d got the job. Tony had a couple of other stops to make, and then planned to return to the Bay Area to pack up his gear for the move back to Boston.

On January 9, 1982, Billy Conigliaro was driving Tony to Logan Airport when Tony suffered a heart attack in the car. Though rushed to the hospital, Tony suffered irreversible brain damage and was hospitalized for two months before being discharged into the care of Billy and the Conigliaro family. He lived another eight years before succumbing at age 45 on February 24, 1990.

A version of this biography appeared in “’75: The Red Sox Team That Saved Baseball” (Rounder Books, 2005; SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and Cecilia Tan.

Sources

Cataneo, David. Tony C. (Nashville, Tennessee: Rutledge Hill Press, 1997).

Conigliaro, Tony, with Jack Zanger. Seeing It Through (New York: Macmillan, 1970).

Crehan, Herb. Red Sox Heroes of Yesteryear (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Rounder Books, 2005).

Williams, Dick, with Bill Plaschke. No More Mr. Nice Guy (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990).

Thanks to Wayne McElreavy for considerable assistance with this profile. 

Notes

Donald Lee Demeter was born on June 25, 1935, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Don’s father was a painting contractor and his mother a housewife. When he was about 10, the family moved to Denver. A little over a year later, his parents broke up and he was sent to live with his grandparents back in Oklahoma City. His mother remarried to a man from Keene, New Hampshire and Don spent a winter there but soon returned to Oklahoma City where he went through high school. During his high school years, he lived with a foster family, who instilled in him the faith that carried him for the rest of his life. His foster father, George Stevens, was a Sunday School superintendent and chairman of the deacons at a local Baptist church. “I saw their family life,” Don recalls, “That’s what I wanted for my family. He was a real witness and testimony for me.”

Don had an older brother, who became a dentist, as well as both an older and a younger sister. His own interest in baseball began around fifth grade – the first time school had offered organized ball teams. “I was always able to run faster than most of the kids. All the kids had an interest in baseball. There wasn’t any television to watch. That’s just what we did – we went from baseball to basketball to football.” Baseball was his best sport, and from an early age he knew that was what he wanted to do. “It never dawned on me that I wouldn’t play in the major leagues. If I’d known the odds….”

That self-confidence served him well. He had an uncle, Leland Enochs, who was very supportive. His mother’s brother worked at a local meat packing company but enjoyed taking in ballgames and often took Don along, later coming to see him play while he was on the Capitol Hill High School team in Oklahoma City. There was a Double-A baseball team in Oklahoma City and Don played Y League ball locally. Team members received passes to see the Texas League pro team play, so Don and uncle Leland hit all the games – seeing visiting teams from cities like Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston. “I became real interested at that point,” he says. “I got to watch a guy play that I roomed with in the major leagues. He played for Fort Worth. Don Hoak.” When they were both on the Philadelphia Phillies as roommates, the subject came up. “Don didn’t believe me but I showed him some old scrapbooks and, sure enough, I’d gotten his autograph when he was playing for Fort Worth and I was in the kids league.”

Don was a center fielder, and he had quite a high school team. The team won the state championship both his junior and senior years. A full 11 boys from the school signed pro contracts – nine of them signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers and two with the Yankees. This was during the era that most major-league clubs had extensive farm systems and hundreds of kids in the pipeline. Of the 11 Capitol High players who signed, Don Demeter was the only one to make the major leagues.

It helped that the high school coach, John Pryor, was a birddog scout for the Dodgers, but the man who signed Don was Bert Wells. Ironically, Don was the only boy on the starting high school team who didn’t make Oklahoma City’s All-City team. “Everyone but the center fielder,” he laughs.

Bert Wells of the Brooklyn Dodgers signed him in 1953 for an $800 bonus, and Don began his professional baseball career at the Class-D Sooner State League, playing for the Shawnee Hawks. A mediocre batting average of .223 did not hold the center fielder back, as he moved up to the Class-C Bakersfield Indians in 1954, where he had an excellent season, hitting .267 and swatting 26 home runs.

Demeter continued his quick ascension through the deep Dodgers system. In 1955, a strong two months for Pueblo, Texas, of the Class-A Western League (.262 in 39 games) earned a promotion to Double-A Mobile of the Southern Association, where he clubbed 11 home runs and hit .251 over the second half of the season. Don also played winter ball in Venezuela for two years, following both the 1954 and 1955 seasons. He remembers it as good competition and a privilege to be selected, offering a chance to advance in the Dodgers organization.

In 1956, he was at Fort Worth (Texas League), where his 41 home runs, 128 RBIs, and .287 average proved his was ready for the final step. Don was 21 when the Dodgers called him up to the big leagues that September.

Demeter made his major-league debut for the Dodgers at Ebbets Field on September 18, 1956. He struck out in a pinch-hit appearance that day. “I didn’t even take a swing. The next night I got to pinch hit again and the first swing I took, I hit a home run. They put me in the Ebbets Hall of Fame because I have a .500 average in Ebbets Field. I had an at-bat in Pittsburgh. I think I grounded out.” Don finished the season going 1-for-3. The Brooklyn Dodgers went on to capture their second consecutive National League crown.

He was re-introduced to a former high-school classmate, Betty Madole, that summer of 1956, and married her a few months later. They were to have two boys, Russ, born in 1959, and Todd, born in 1962, and a daughter Jill, born during the family’s stay in Boston.

He spent the entire 1957 season playing for the St. Paul Saints of the American Association, where he hit 28 home runs and sported a solid .309 batting average. It was then that Don’s father first saw him play baseball, when St. Paul paid a visit to play Denver.

Don was one of 13 players who were to have been called up by the Dodgers after the minor-league playoffs were over, but when St. Paul was eliminated on September 21, Brooklyn had just five games to play. Demeter never appeared on the parent club during the 1957 season. “I just wasn’t ready,” he says. He also fit in a stint in the U. S. Army between seasons.

In the off-season, his Dodgers relocated from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Demeter was a “highly regarded power-hitting outfielder” in the spring of 1958, and began play for the Los Angeles Dodgers after his Army hitch, on April 24, getting his first major-league start a week later on May 1 against the Pirates. He also got involved in team functions, like helping out at the Los Angeles Food Brokers Club luncheon and at various youth clinics sponsored by the team. Don remembers the move: “The guys who had been in Brooklyn – Duke Snider and Carl Erskine and Clem Labine and those guys – really, really hated to move. It was their home away from home, I guess. But they acclimated. They treated us really nice in L.A. People out there welcomed us so much.”

However, he was sent back to St. Paul on May 13, just before the Dodgers’ first transcontinental trip, so he could get more work in the outfield. He continued to display his versatility by playing left and center field, as well as a little first and third base. He was batting .283 with 14 home runs and 48 RBIs when he was recalled to Los Angeles for good on July 30, 1958, as both Carl Furillo and Duke Snider were ailing. Said his manager, the legendary Walter Alston, of the promising youngster, “Don can give you the long ball and he can also pull pretty good. As for his outfield play, there’s nothing I could fault him on. He can play all three spots out there.”2 He made his re-appearance on August 5 against the Cardinals, and played regularly for the Dodgers the rest of the year, although he struggled at the plate, hitting only .189, with five home runs.

Demeter really started getting noticed in 1959, when the press began calling him “Dangerous” and “Dazzling” Don Demeter, as well as “Big D.” This was especially true after he smacked three two-run home runs, including an inside-the-park home run, in a single game, on April 21, the last one in the bottom of the 11th to beat the Giants, 9-7. One Los Angeles paper even had a contest to give him a nickname. The winning name? “Spee-Demeter.”3 He led the Dodgers in RBIs through July, although his inconsistency led to spotty playing time as the year wore on. He did finish the year with a respectable .256 batting average, 18 home runs, and 70 RBIs.

He helped the Dodgers win the National League pennant that year, when they beat the Milwaukee Braves in a two-game playoff. He started the first game of the playoffs, going one for four, and appeared as a pinch-hitter in the second game. The Dodgers went on to capture the World Series title against the Chicago White Sox, with Demeter appearing in all six games, starting three, and going 3-for-12 (.250), while scoring two runs. He later called this his greatest thrill in baseball.

The winter of 1959 had Demeter prominently mentioned in trade talks, especially with Calvin Griffith of the Minnesota Twins. One report had Griffith backing off from a deal when it was rumored that Demeter was going to quit baseball and join the ministry. As it was, Demeter began the 1960 season with the Dodgers, but he fractured his wrist in a collision with Maury Wills on July 3, effectively ending his season. Originally thought to be only a sprain, as early x-rays failed to disclose the fracture, he wasn’t called out for the season until the end of August as the injury took longer to heal than expected. He hit .274, with 9 home runs in 168 at-bats for the year.

He also became an excellent golfer, even playing one-handed while his wrist was injured in 1960.

Demeter was once again a central figure in trade rumors over the winter, with the Milwaukee Braves, along with the Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees mentioned as possible landing spots. He opened the 1961 campaign still a Dodger, with high hopes for a successful and healthy season. After struggling at the plate, the Dodgers finally traded him along with third-baseman Charley Smith to the Phillies for hard-throwing reliever Dick “Turk” Farrell and light hitting infielder Joe Koppe. One columnist said the Dodgers had “shucked him off as an inadequate third baseman.”4 He was hitting only .172 at the time, with one home run, but he rebounded nicely once with the Phillies, finishing the year at .251 and smacking 20 more home runs. He had the second three-homer game of his career, when he cracked solo, two- and three-run jobs on September 12, driving in a total of seven runs, as the Phillies beat his old team, the Dodgers, and future Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, 19-10.

He went on to have his finest season as a professional for the 1962 Phillies, hitting .307, with 29 home runs, and knocking in 107 runs while scoring 85. He finished 12th in the MVP voting that year, leading the NL in sacrifice flies, and ranking sixth with a slugging percentage of .520.

He also began an errorless game streak as an outfielder of 266 games in September of 1962. He wasn’t to make another error until July 1965 when he was with the Tigers, and it ended in a bizarre fashion during a game in Kansas City. These were the years when owner Charlie Finley kept some mules at the ballpark. Another Finley gimmick was to have some trained dogs on the ground crew. In the fifth inning, they would run out onto the field with a base in their mouth and the crew would change the bases. “I have a line drive hit to me and I scooped it up and I guess the ground crew thought it was the last out and sent the dog on the field. I scooped the ball up and threw it to Dick McAuliffe at shortstop. The dog just shot out there and the ball went through his legs at the same time the dog went through there.” The runner advanced a base, and the scorer couldn’t charge the dog with the error so it was assigned to Demeter. He is gracious about it: “I know in my own mind there were probably some balls on which I should have been given an error but they didn’t.” He had completed a total of 449 error-free chances. His string of error-free games by an outfielder stood as the major-league outfielder record until the Giants’ Darren Lewis broke it in 1994.

Always a team player, Demeter said he didn’t pay attention to his batting average, preferring to emphasize his RBI totals, “That’s the important one as far as I’m concerned. Ask anyone. Runs win ball games.” He did most of his damage in 1962 while playing third base, stepping in when third baseman Andy Carey refused to play for the Phillies. He played 105 games at third, 63 in the outfield, and even one game at first base. His manager, Gene Mauch, went out of his way to praise Demeter’s work ethic, “… he grinds it out every day, with the best disposition in the world. And now he’s established himself in three positions – a greater value to himself and any team.”5

He traveled to Japan with Bobby Richardson in February of 1963, to spread the gospel, which he called one of the great spiritual experiences of his life. Demeter went on to have another solid season for the fourth-place Phillies in 1963, with a career high of 154 games. Once again, he played the outfield and both corner infield positions. His batting average was just .258, but he cracked 22 home runs and drove in 83 runs.

After being prominently mentioned in trade talks with teams like the Chicago White Sox, on December 5, 1963, the Phillies traded him to Detroit along with Jack Hamilton (who later earned the undying enmity of all Red Sox fans when he beaned Tony Conigliaro during the 1967 season) for pitcher Jim Bunning and journeyman catcher Gus Triandos. Chuck Dressen, the Tigers manager, was pleased to get the more “consistent” Demeter to replace Rocky Colavito, who had been traded to Kansas City the previous month. “Don is a better all-around player than Colavito. He is a better runner and a better fielder.”6

Dressen went on with more praise for Demeter. “We simply had to get a top-flight outfielder. Actually, there were only two outfielders we considered. The other was Felipe Alou. I consider him [Demeter] one of the best outfielders in the game today.”7 Bunning went on to win 74 games for the Phillies in the next four years, as well as pitching a perfect game (caught by Triandos.)

Demeter had a tough time his first year in Detroit, as his playing time was sporadic. Shirley Povich of the Washington Post chided the Tigers on the trade after Bunning pitched his masterpiece, saying Demeter “has been a bench-warmer much of the season.”8 Sid Ziff of the Los Angeles Times called Demeter a “washout and spends much of his time on the Detroit bench.”9 His manager continued to support him, though, saying in July after a big series against the Angels “…I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t have a big year now.”10 You could even buy a Don Demeter Rawlings baseball glove, on sale for $18.60. He ended up with very similar numbers to his 1963 campaign – .256 average, 22 home runs, and 80 RBIs, although his at-bats fell from 515 to 441 due to a series of nagging injuries.

Demeter continued to wear his faith proudly as a member of the “Fellowship of Christian Athletes.” No less a luminary than Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times wrote an article on Don’s calm attitude and religious convictions. Fans would send him Bibles, which he would autograph with a proverb.11

Going into the 1965 season, the Tigers showed renewed confidence in their centerfielder. “Demeter’s hitting looked better than it did in the box score,” said interim manager Bob Swift, serving due to Charlie Dressen’s heart attack, “because he drove in the tying or go-ahead run in 28 games. He’ll be getting a second-year look at American League pitching… and we still like the Demeter-for-Bunning trade.”12 Dressen, the recovering manager, said, “What we need is to get good performances … out of Don Demeter, who was hurt a lot.”13

He started the campaign strong, hitting .300 after the first couple of weeks. A highlight of the season came on August 12, when he drove in seven runs on a single, triple, and grand slam in an 11-1 thrashing of the Kansas City Athletics. He finished the year hitting .278, but once again declined in at bats, with only 389, home runs (16), and RBIs (58), splitting time between the outfield (82 games, at all three positions mostly in center and right field) and first base (34 games), as the Tigers finished fourth, 13 games behind the league-leading Minnesota Twins.

Demeter began the 1966 season as a fourth outfielder and utilityman, as the Tigers had a logjam in the outfield, with Willie Horton, Mickey Stanley, and Al Kaline envisioned as the starting trio, and Norm Cash holding down first base. He played sporadically, appearing in only 32 games, batting a mere .212 for the Tigers, before being traded to the Red Sox on June 14. He accompanied minor-league reliever Julio Navarro to Boston, as the Tigers got pitcher Earl Wilson and former New York Mets outfielder Joe Christopher, who was assigned to the minor leagues. Haywood Sullivan was glad to get the versatile Demeter, “Although we regret giving up Earl Wilson, we think we have obtained a great outfielder in Demeter who has always hit well at Fenway Park.”14 Manager Billy Herman echoed Sullivan’s praise when he said, “This gives us a solid outfield. In Demeter, we have a right-handed hitter who can hit the wall in our ballpark.”15

However, once again, the trade would prove to be a lopsided one for the team losing Demeter, as Wilson went on to star for the Tigers. One scribe went so far as to describe the trade as “the best deal Detroit has made since it got rid of the Edsel.”16 Wilson even hit a grand slam against his former teammates on August 13, 1966, leading the Tigers to 13-1 victory. The trade was linked with Billy Herman’s eventual firing as the Red Sox manager late in the season, as Wilson went on to go 18-11 (13-6 as a Tigers hurler) for the season while Demeter played only part time.

Demeter played mostly center field for the Red Sox in 1966, hitting .292 with 9 home runs in 73 games for them. His final statistics for the year were down once again, with only 14 home runs, 41 RBIs, and a .268 batting average. The Red Sox staggered to a ninth-place finish, a half-game ahead of the Yankees, but a whopping 26 games behind the eventual World Champion Baltimore Orioles. He ended the season by undergoing tests for a back ailment, which had contributed to his limited playing time.

Demeter was expected to compete with rookie Reggie Smith (called “the best looking rookie to come since Mickey Mantle“) and José Tartabull for playing time in center field in the spring of 1967. He played all three outfield positions, as well as one game at third for the team before being traded on June 4 with Tony Horton to Cleveland for pitcher Gary Bell, who went on to be an important hurler for the pennant winning Red Sox. His most memorable hit for the Impossible Dream team came on May 14 as his second double of the day was the 28th extra-base hit of the day’s doubleheader, breaking a 62-year-old AL record for most extra base hits, combined, while the Red Sox swept the Tigers in a doubleheader, 8-5 and 13-9. He was hitting .279 for the Red Sox at the time of the trade, with only one home run and four RBIs.

“I enjoyed playing in Boston. Mr. Yawkey had the club at the time. He was very much a players’ owner. Those were enjoyable times for us.” Naturally, looking back, there is some disappointment that he wasn’t there for the pennant run – but he believes there would probably not have been a pennant run if he’d stayed. “I tell Gary Bell this a lot when I see him at golf tournaments. Had they not traded me and got Gary, I don’t think they would have won. Gary won 12 games for them. That’s exactly the truth. He helped them far more than I would have.” Don adds, “He always shows me his World Series ring and tells me it’s mine.”

For Cleveland, Demeter continued to play all three outfield positions, as well as one game at third base. But he hit only .207 for the Tribe, with five home runs and 12 RBIs. Two of the homers came in the same game, in a 5-3 loss to the New York Yankees. It would prove to be his final season in the majors, as nagging injuries and a suspect heart led to his retirement the next spring. In his last start, on August 27, he had two hits, including a single in his final at-bat. His last plate appearance in the major leagues came the next day, when he was hit by a pitch as a pinch hitter. He was sold to Detroit on August 31 but the sale was later canceled when a physical uncovered a heart problem, called “a disturbance of the athlete’s coronary artery circulation,” causing him to sit out the rest of the season.17 It was really an irregular heartbeat, and after he had returned home, Demeter received a better diagnosis. “It turned out it was just a dietary thing. I just needed to learn to eat right. I’ve had no problems since then. When I went to Cleveland, though, I knew I was just about finished although I was only 31 years of age. I couldn’t get to balls that I used to get to. And I don’t think I had the desire. Our kids were just about the age where you had to take them out of school and put them in another school, and I wanted stability for them at home. I had thought that if I could play five years in the major leagues, that would be wonderful, and it turned out that I played twice that much.”

When he returned home and received the reassuring diagnosis, Detroit indicated they wanted to “buy me back” but he decided it was time to call it a career.

After his baseball career ended, Don went on to become an insurance agent, as well as founding a swimming pool installation company which his son Russ now runs. He appeared in old-timers games for the Dodgers, while continuing to be very involved with his church, where he became pastor. He was named the president of the minor-league Oklahoma City 89ers baseball team in November 1973, though that didn’t work out too well; the owner really knew little about running a baseball team. Demeter had an unsuccessful run for the state legislature as a Republican candidate in 1976. In 1999, he was inducted into the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame.

His younger son, Todd, was a highly sought after high school first baseman, and was drafted by the New York Yankees in the second round. He signed for $208,000 in 1979 after he threatened to go to college. Unfortunately, Todd was stuck in the minors, and never appeared in the major leagues. He went on to work in his father’s pool installation business until Hodgkin’s Disease tragically struck Todd down in 1996. The Demeters’ daughter Jill has four children, two girls and two boys. The boys played high school baseball and Don deemed them very good athletes.

In his later years, Don did some swimming pool sales for his son, but primarily devoted his life to the church. He pastored a small Southern Baptist church in Oklahoma City, the Grace Community Baptist Church, which he helped form a few years ago. Former Yankees pitcher Tom Sturdivant was a member of the church community, and a number of the boys he played high school ball with came to the church as well.

Today, many major-league ballplayers hold chapel on Sunday morning. This is a change, Don notes: “When I was playing, there wasn’t really much of that. There was a handful of guys – Bobby Richardson and myself, Dave Wickersham, Dalton Jones, Al Worthington, Albie Pearson – but it wasn’t organized like it is now.” Don spoke at chapel in Kansas City and in Arlington, Texas. He enjoyed keeping in touch.

Demeter died at the age of 86 on November 29, 2021.

Author’s Note

A version of this biography originally appeared in SABR’s The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field (Rounder Books, 2007), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the notes, the author relied on Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, baseballlibrary.com, and James C. Hefley’s Play Ball. (Zondervan, 1965).

Notes

Born in the city of Los Angeles on April 7, 1918, Robert Pershing Doerr was one of the four Sox from the West Coast who starred in the 1940s — Williams from San Diego, Doerr from Los Angeles, Dom DiMaggio from San Francisco, and Johnny Pesky from Portland, Oregon. Doerr was born to Harold and Frances Doerr. His father worked for the telephone company, rising to become a foreman in the cable department, a position he held through the Depression. The Doerrs had three children — Hal, the eldest by five years, Bobby, and a younger sister Dorothy, who was three years younger than Bobby. Doerr told interviewer Maury Brown, “If she’d have been a boy, she’d have been a professional. She was a good athlete.”2

Baseball came early. “We lived near a playground that had four baseball diamonds on it and when I got to be 11, 12 years old, I was always over at the ballpark practicing or playing or doing something pertaining to baseball. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was bouncing a rubber ball off the steps of my front porch at home.”3  Manchester Playground attracted a number of kids from the area[,] and a surprising number of them went on to play pro ball.  Bobby’s American Legion team, the Leonard Wood Post, boasted quite a team. The infield alone boasted George McDonald at first base (11 of his 18 seasons were with the PCL San Diego Padres), Bobby Doerr at second base (14 seasons with the Red Sox), Mickey Owen at shortstop (13 seasons in the major leagues), and Steve Mesner at third (six seasons in the National League.)  That was quite a group of 14-year-olds.

Bobby’s older brother Hal played professionally as well, a catcher in the Pacific Coast League from 1932-1936. It was Doerr’s father who helped bring about Owen’s transition from shortstop to catcher in the winter of 1933. The team they put together for some wintertime ball didn’t have a catcher so Harold Doerr urged Owen to give it a try. Mr. Doerr helped out in other ways, too. During these miserable economic times, rather than lay people off, the telephone company reduced many people’s hours to three days a week – which at least provided some income. “It was just Depression days,” Bobby explained. “Sometimes he would buy some baseball shoes for some of the kids, or a glove. Things were tough. Kids couldn’t afford to get it themselves, and he had a job… He tried to help when he could from time to time; some of those kids were even having a hard time having meals at home.”

Wintertime play was important– unlike Legion ball, the games included people of all ages, including some players who had played minor league ball but wanted to pick up a little extra money playing semipro on the playgrounds. “So when I was 15 and 16, I got to play against pretty good professional ballplayers.”  That gave Bobby some valuable experience. It also got him noticed.

Doerr told author Cynthia Wilber that his fondest memory as a child was winning the 1932 American Legion state tournament on Catalina Island, winning a regional tournament in Ogden, Utah, then coming within a game in Omaha, Nebraska of playing for the national title in Manchester, New Hampshire.4

Bobby played high school ball for two years at Fremont High, in 1933 and the first part of 1934, but he’d been working out some with the Hollywood Sheiks and they offered to sign both him and George McDonald.5 Both were 16 at the time, and in high school. Bill Lane was the owner of the ballclub and Oscar Vitt was the Sheiks’ manager. Hal was playing for the Portland Beavers at the time. The Sheiks offered an ironclad two-year contract guaranteeing they would not send Bobby out. Bobby’s father let him sign, “but I had to promise that I’d go back to high school in the wintertime and get my high school diploma.” He did. Bobby understands that more professional ballplayers came out of Fremont High than any other high school in the country.

Doerr played 67 games for Hollywood in 1934, batting .259, all but six of the 16-year-old’s 52 hits being singles. In 1935, Bobby acknowledges he “had a pretty good year” – he hit for a .317 average and added some power, hitting 22 doubles, eight triples, and four home runs. He drove in 74 runs, playing a very full 172-game season.

That winter, the Red Sox purchased an option on the contracts of both Doerr and teammate George Myatt, paying a reported $75,000. Bill Lane moved the Hollywood team to San Diego early in 1936, where they were renamed the San Diego Padres. In July, Eddie Collins came to look over the pair while the Padres were playing in Portland and took Doerr’s contract but declined Myatt. Collins also noticed a young player named Ted Williams and shook hands on the right to purchase Williams at a later time. Doerr improved again in his third year in the Coast League, batting .342 with 37 doubles and 12 triples, though just two home runs. He led the league with 238 hits and scored an even 100 runs.

Doerr was 18 years old when he headed east for his first spring training with the Red Sox, traveling across the country to Sarasota, Florida, with Mel Almada. Doerr made the team in 1937, batting leadoff on Opening Day and going 3-for-5. He had won the starting job and held it until he was beaned by Washington’s Ed Linke on April 26; the ball hit him over the left ear and bounded over to the Red Sox dugout. In Wilber’s book, Doerr says, “It didn’t knock me out, but I was out of the lineup for a few days and Eric McNair got back in. He was playing good ball, so I didn’t play too much that first couple of months. The last month of the season I got back in and I played pretty well for the rest of the year.”6   Eric McNair played most of the games at second but by season’s end, Bobby had accumulated 147 at-bats in 55 games.

Though he batted just .224, he took over second base fulltime beginning in 1938. The right-hand hitting Doerr (5-feet-11, 175 pounds) batted .289 in 1938, with 80 RBIs, playing in 145 games. He led the league in sacrifice hits with 22. Defensively, he helped turn a league-leading 118 double plays. Only once more did he hit less than .270 – he batted .258 in 1947, driving in 95 runs.

Doerr explained to Wilber, “I never did work in the off-season, and I never did play winter ball or anything else. I think it was good for me to get away after a full season….In those days, I don’t think anyone ever got too complacent. Even after I played ten years of ball, I still felt like I had to play well or somebody might take my place. They had plenty of players in the minor leagues who were good enough to come up and take your job, and I think that kept us going all of the time. I hustled and put that extra effort in all of the time.”7

In 1939, he upped his average to .318 and added some power, more than doubling his home run total with 12 round-trippers. Though his average slipped a bit in 1940 (to .291), he became a more productive hitter, driving in 105 runs, with 37 doubles, 10 triples, and 22 home runs. Again, he led the league in double plays, again turning 118 of them. His 401 putouts also led the AL.

Doerr was named to the first of nine American League All-Star teams in 1941; he played in eight games, starting five of them, and his three-run home run in the bottom of the second inning of the 1943 game, off Mort Cooper, made all the difference in the 5-3 AL win.

Though his RBI total dropped to 93 in 1941, he bumped it back up to 102 the following year, the second of six seasons he drove in more than 100 runs. He led the league in fielding average, too. Come 1943, he played in every Red Sox game all year long (and the All-Star Game), and though his RBI total slipped to 75 – a function of greatly weakened team offense – Doerr excelled on defense, leading the American League in putouts, assists, double plays, and fielding average.

Doerr anchored the second base slot for Boston through the 1951 season, missing just one year (and one crucial month) during World War II. The month was September 1944. When the war broke out, Bobby was exempt because he and his wife Monica had a young son, Don. He’d also been rejected for a perforated eardrum. As the war rolled on, the military needed more and more men and the pressures on seemingly-healthy athletes intensified. After the 1943 season, Doerr took a wintertime defense job in Los Angeles, working at a sheet metal machine shop run by the man who had managed his old American Legion team. When he left the defense job to play the 1944 season, he received his draft orders and was told to report at the beginning of September. By the time September came around, the Red Sox were in the thick of the pennant race, just four games out of first place — and both Doerr (.325 at the time, his .528 slugging average led the league) and Hughson (18-5, 2.26 ERA) had to leave. The team couldn’t sustain those two losses and their hopes sputtered out.

Bobby’s .325 average was second in the league, just two points behind the ultimate batting champion, Lou Boudreau, who hit .327. Doerr was named AL Player of the Year by The Sporting News.

Because of the war, Doerr missed the entire 1945 season. He had made his home in Oregon and so reported for induction in the United States Army in Portland. He was first assigned to Fort Lewis and a week later reported for infantry duty at Camp Roberts. After completing the months of training, word began to circulate within his outfit that they were being prepared to ship out to Ford Ord, and then overseas for the invasion of Japan. President Truman brought the whole thing to a halt by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan.

After the war, Staff Sergeant Doerr changed back into his Red Sox uniform and returned to the 1946 edition of the Red Sox. He drove in 116 runs, his highest total yet – thanks to the potent Boston batting order. Bobby once again led the league in four defensive categories, the same four as in 1943: putouts, assists, double plays, and fielding percentage.

The Red Sox waltzed to the World Series, but lost to the Cardinals in seven games. Doerr led the regulars in hitting, batting .409 with nine hits in 22 Series at-bats. Babe Ruth, asked who was the MVP of the American League, said, “Doerr, and not Ted Williams, is the No. 1 player on the team.”

He averaged over 110 RBIs from 1946 through 1950, with a career-high 120 RBIs in the 1950 campaign. That last full season, he led the league a fourth time in putouts and a fourth time in fielding average. His .993 in 1948 was the Red Sox record for second basemen until Mark Loretta surpassed it with a .994 mark in the 2006 season.

Doerr hit for the cycle twice (May 17, 1944 and May 13, 1947); he is the only Red Sox player to do it more than once. In a June 8, 1950 game, he hit three homers and drove in eight runs. Despite the power demonstrated by his 223 career home runs, his fielding was at least as important. He was always exceptional on defense, more than once running off strings of over 300 chances without an error. He led the league 16 times in one defensive category or another and wound up his career with a lifetime .980 mark – at the time of his retirement, he was the all-time major league leader.

On August 2, 1947, Doerr was given a night at Fenway. He received an estimated $22,500 worth of gifts including a car.

In early August 1951, in the midst of another excellent year, Bobby suffered a serious back problem. He’d hurt it a bit bending over for a slow-hit ground ball; he felt something give, but continued the game. Quite a while afterwards, he woke up one morning and found he could hardly get out of bed or put on his shoes. He got some treatment but missed nearly three weeks before returning to play. He got in only a few more games. The problem persisted, and he had to bow out after just one at-bat in the first game of the September 7 doubleheader. Fears that it was a ruptured disc proved not the case and surgery was ruled out, but Doerr was told to rest the remainder of the season.  

At season’s end, Doerr could look back on 1,247 RBIs, a career batting average of .288 and the aforementioned home run and fielding totals, and some 2,042 major-league base hits.

Bobby had played most of his career for just two managers: Joe Cronin and Joe McCarthy. He felt Cronin was “firm, but he patted you on the back; he always encouraged you in different ways. That was when I was younger, and was a big help to me.”  McCarthy was a “much firmer disposition kind of guy” who was admittedly “a little more difficult to play for” – but Bobby recognized that he played some of his best seasons for McCarthy.8

He’d played 14 seasons in the majors and had a good career. Though only 33, he didn’t want to risk more serious injury and decided to retire to his farm in Oregon. Over time, the back fused itself in some fashion and he found himself able to lift bales of hay and sacks of grain. He began raising cattle, fattening steers for resale, but there was almost no profit in it for the small herd of 100 or so that he could hold on his spread. When Bobby returned to Boston for a night to honor Joe Cronin in 1956, he was asked if he might like to manage in Boston’s system. He declined, but did take a position that he describes as “kind of like a roving coach in the minor leagues” beginning in 1957. He is listed as a Red Sox scout for the years 1957-66. He did a lot of traveling, checking out Red Sox prospects in Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, Winston-Salem, Corning, and other locations.

Doing this work for several years, Doerr came to know Dick Williams, particularly after Williams took over as manager of the Toronto farm club. “I got to know him pretty good when he was with Toronto. I have to say that seeing him operate in the minor leagues coaching and managing, and then three years at the Red Sox level, he was the best manager that I saw. Now Joe Cronin was very good. I loved Joe Cronin, to play for. But if I had to pick a manager to take a team that was potentially a winning team, Dick Williams someway was able to put something together[,] and I thought he was one of the best managers I saw.”

After he was named Red Sox manager for the 1967 season, Dick Williams asked Bobby to serve as his first base coach. He served for the three seasons that Williams managed, 1967-1969. Doerr agrees that Williams “wasn’t the most liked guy. He didn’t tolerate easy mistakes. Some way or another, though, the players never got uptight playing for him. He kept a tight ship and to take that club in ’67 and put it into a pennant winner, there were so many things he did that he was the best guy I saw.”   They did not have frequent coaches meetings. “He said what you’re supposed to do and he let you do it. You worked with the batter. Nobody ever interfered with what I was supposed to do.”  Doerr’s job was to work with the hitters, as well as coach first. He was familiar with most of the young hitters, having seen them while doing his work as a roving instructor. Eddie Popowski had the same store of experience, and both offered a stable, almost paternal influence to an exceptionally young ballclub. Dick Williams told interviewer Jeff Angus, “He helped me out quite a bit when I was in Toronto. In ‘67, he was a buffer between people, a soft-spoken guy who could help get the message across.”

Second baseman Mike Andrews of the 1967 Sox told the Boston Herald’s Steve Buckley, “Bobby Doerr was my mentor. When I was in the minors, I always seemed to improve when he came along. I had so much faith in him that if he told me I’d be a better hitter if I changed my shoelaces, I’d have done it.”9 

After Williams was fired late in 1969, incoming manager Eddie Kasko brought in his new staff for the 1970 campaign.

Several years later, Doerr was named coach for the Toronto Blue Jays, and served them for a number of years as the team’s hitting coach. “I really didn’t want to go back into baseball,” he says, “but they made it so nice for me. Pat Gillick was really good to work with. Peter Bavasi. I was there ’77 through ’81 and then I worked a couple of years in the minor leagues. More or less spring training, up to Medicine Hat with the rookie team. I didn’t do much after ’82, ’83.”  

In 1986, Bobby Doerr and Ernie Lombardi were named to the Hall of Fame by the special veterans committee and were inducted with Willie McCovey in August that year. On May 21, 1988, the Red Sox retired Bobby’s uniform number, #1. Addressing those who might have questioned his Hall of Fame credentials, Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe noted that the nine-time All-Star had a higher RBI-per-game average than players such as Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Stan Musial, as well as many others, including Ernie Banks, Orlando Cepeda, Harmon Killebrew, Mike Schmidt, and Willie Stargell.10

Bobby’s son Don Doerr later played some college ball at the University of Washington and went into the Basin League in the middle 1960’s, pitching for the Sturgis club against future major leaguers like Jim Lonborg and Jim Palmer. Bobby rated his curve ball of major-league caliber but says he “didn’t have quite enough fast ball…didn’t have quite enough to go far in professional ball.” 

In his later years, Doerr devoted his life to care for his wife Monica, wheelchair-bound for much of her later years due to multiple sclerosis. Mrs. Doerr suffered two strokes in 1999 and then a final one which brought about her passing in 2003.

Bob Doerr split his time between his two properties in Oregon and was able to enjoy more time with his son, retired himself after a successful career as a manager with the accounting firm of Coopers and Lybrand, based in Eugene. Bob visited Boston two or three times a year, such as for a reunion of the remaining 1946 Red Sox that kicked off the 2006 baseball season in Opening Day ceremonies. His last visit was in 2012 for the 100th anniversary of the opening of Fenway Park.

Doerr died at the age of 99 on November 13, 2017 in Junction City, Oregon. He had been the oldest living member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame at the time of his death, and the only remaining major-league player from the 1930s.

A version of this biography originally appeared in “The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field” (Rounder Books, 2007), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, and the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com.

Thanks to Jeff Angus, Mark Armour, Dick Beverage, Maury Brown, Dan Desrochers, Bobby Doerr, J. Thomas Hetrick, and David Paulson.

Notes