“I don’t care where people say we’re going to finish,” grunted new Red Sox manager Dick Williams. “Let them pick us for 10th. But I know there are some great players around here, and they are ready to play ball.”1 Williams had managed Toronto, Boston’s Triple-A affiliate in the International League, to back-to-back Governor’s Cup championships in 1965 and 1966. The Red Sox, meanwhile, had endured eight straight losing seasons, never finishing higher than sixth. “A good way to go broke would be to bet that Boston will be the terror of the American League,” the Boston Globe sarcastically wisecracked, but then it expressed the familiar springtime desire, “it’s the crack of the bat that matters.”2 But fans would have to wait an extra day to hear that crack, as the Boston weather forced postponement of Opening Day to April 12. “Another first for our club,” declared Williams. “We were the first team to call off a game this year, weren’t we? Now if we can just continue to be first in things.”3

The Northeastern University band was the main attraction before the game, with a rendition of “Spanish Flea” on that cold, crisp spring day. One of the performers even dropped her baton every fifth bar, leading a man in the right-field stands to say, “It’s got to be part of the act,” part of the “universal optimism” of the day, in the words of the Globe’s Diane White.4 White also noticed these girls from the band were less interested in the game, and more interested in how this young Red Sox team was “overburdened with sex appeal. … Their interest in the game is often directly proportional to how attractive they find the left fielder.”5

Not mentioned in the discussion of sex appeal, Massachusetts Governor John A. Volpe and Boston Mayor John F. Collins were present, with Volpe throwing out the first ball. Johnny Mathis performed the national anthem. The 1967 season was under way. Jim Lonborg, the soon-to-be 25-year-old groomed as the Red Sox’ ace in spring training, was 19-27 in his first two major-league seasons. He was opposed by the Chicago White Sox’ John Buzhardt, who was 64-82 over his nine seasons, but had a 10-3 record with a 2.47 ERA in 20 previous games against Boston.

A reported crowd of 8,324 or thereabouts6 braved the chills on the 46-degree day to see Dick Williams and the new-look Red Sox. It was so chilly that the umpires didn’t think twice on whether to wear short sleeves, which were now permissible under league rules.7 “It was very warm out there as far as I was concerned,” was the contrary opinion of Williams.8

The game was scoreless into the bottom of the second. Reggie Smith doubled and Rico Petrocelli ripped a line drive over second on the first pitch and Smith scored. Boston led 1-0. Perhaps Petrocelli was inspired by the “Go Rico!” sign displayed from an airplane flying over Fenway Park in the second inning. “The company I work for in the winter (Gibbs Oil of Saugus, Massachusetts) did that. I had no idea they would,” a smiling Petrocelli said.9

In the third, with George Scott on second and two outs, Smith walked. (He should have been the final out, but catcher Jerry McNertney misjudged a foul popup.) Petrocelli again swung at Buzhardt’s first pitch and stroked it into the left-field screen for a three-run home run. Petrocelli had seen two pitches, taken two swings, and had four RBIs. “It was a curveball,” he said. “I wasn’t going for the homer. I was trying to go up the middle. It was off-speed. I guess I got a little in front of it.”10 The White Sox got a run back when Tommie Agee walked and scored on a Lonborg wild pitch, and Boston led 4-1 after four innings. Buzhardt lasted only four innings, allowing only four hits but walking five, contributing to four earned runs. “I was trying to be too fine,” he said, “and my control was bad. But I was plenty loose. The weather was not a factor.”11

The Red Sox got their four-run lead back in the sixth inning. Jose Tartabull singled on a high chopper to the mound, and then stole second. Ron Hansen fielded Carl Yastrzemski’s grounder, but his throw sailed into the Red Sox dugout, and Tartabull scored. “I don’t mind losing,” Hansen said, “but I don’t want to give the game away, and that’s what I did.”12

Besides Tartabull and Smith, Joe Foy also stole a base, a rare scene for Red Sox teams of the era. “We’re the ‘Go-Go’ team now,” fans were heard yelling.13 Boston did finish third in stolen bases for the season (68), a giant leap from its league-worst 35 the year before.

The White Sox rallied for three runs in the seventh. Pete Ward doubled to right and Ken Berry singled just past the dive of Scott at first. With runners at first and third, Lonborg again threw a wild pitch, Ward scoring. Hansen hit a long fly ball to right. Tony Conigliaro drifted back, but lost the ball in the sun for a two-base error. Berry scored. “Worst sun I ever saw out there,” Conigliaro said. “I just put up my hands, hoping.”14 “Glasses are no good when the ball gets in the sun,” he added.15 Jerry Adair singled, scoring Hansen and making the score Boston 5-4. Dick Williams came to the mound and called in John Wyatt from the bullpen. Smoky Burgess hit a sharp liner to deep right that Conigliaro caught against the bullpen wall in right. Walt “No Neck” Williams sent Conigliaro running in instead of back, catching the short fly to end the inning.

Wyatt got into trouble in the eighth. With one out, Agee and Ward drew walks on 3-and-2 pitches, and Tommy McCraw ran for Ward. The runners performed a double steal, and the frozen Fenway faithful must have been fretting. But Wyatt rallied by striking out Berry and J.C. Martin on 3-and-2 pitches, and the tenuous Boston lead was preserved.

Wyatt led off the bottom of the eighth and was hit by a pitch from Bob Locker. Curiously, while Wyatt was allowed to bat for himself, he was run for by Mike Andrews. Wyatt wanted to stay in. “I can beat Andrews running,” Wyatt said.16 “I didn’t care if Wyatt was faster,” Williams retorted. “Speed isn’t everything in a situation like that. I wanted a baserunner on there, someone who’d know what to do.”17 Nevertheless, Boston failed to add an insurance run.

Don McMahon came on to pitch the ninth for the Red Sox. Hansen’s liner to right was caught by a streaking Conigliaro. Adair’s grounder was backhanded by Scott at first, who flipped to the pitcher for the out. McMahon fanned Ed Stroud to end the ballgame and give the Red Sox the win on Opening Day. The win was Boston’s ninth straight win at home against Chicago.

“I’ve been waiting a whole year for this one,” Lonborg said. “We challenged the hitters. I relied mainly on my fastball. We jammed a lot of right-hand hitters, kept the ball down. My sinker was only fair, and I threw only a few breaking pitches. You don’t know how good this feels.”18

Lonborg finished with 6⅓ innings pitched and three earned runs allowed on seven hits. “I got a little tired, but it was so cold that sometimes I couldn’t feel the ball,” he said. “I used rosin on my hand to grip it. I kept warm some by running the bases in the sun, and Buddy (Leroux, Red Sox trainer) kept putting ‘hot stuff’ on my arm to make it feel warm.”19

“Wasn’t that a great finish?” asked the new Red Sox manager, who would see plenty more great finishes in the 1967 season.20 Petrocelli was the batting star of the game, going 3-for-3 with four RBIs. “Three hits. I guess that’s as many as I had for April and May my first two seasons,” he joked. Petrocelli had been a slow starter in the early years of his career, batting .156 (7-for-45) in April the year before, and .125 (4-for-32) in 1965. He made good on his promise to the Globe’s Will McDonough in spring training. “I’m going to get off to a better start this year. I just know I am. I have confidence in myself.”21 A .333 April with a .438 on-base-percentage was maybe even more than he could have imagined.

Eddie Popowski made his major-league debut that day as the Red Sox’ third-base coach. “Pop,” having served in the Red Sox minor-league system since 1937, was a mentor and father figure to many of the young Red Sox players. He remained with the organization for 65 years in total, until his death in 2001. It was appropriate that Pop would be along for the ride of the 1967 Red Sox Impossible Dream season.

“They got good spirit,” Popowski said. “If we keep ’em that way, we’re gonna have a little fun around here.”22

And they certainly did.

This article appears in “The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers. To read more stories from this book, click here.

Sources

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

McElreavy, Wayne. “Eddie Popowski,” SABR BioProject. http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/3505bc5c

Notes

Little was expected of archrivals Boston and New York as the 1967 season kicked off. Never had the two clubs finished last and next-to-last in the same year as they had in 1966. Boston had posted eight consecutive losing seasons and lost 100 games in 1965. Their rookie skipper, 38-year-old former Red Sox utility player Dick Williams, hoped to instill a new winning tradition. Boston won its season opener against Chicago, and had a 1-1 record as they arrived in New York for a three-game series. Since winning the pennant in 1964, their 14th flag in 16 seasons, the aging Yankees had posted consecutive losing seasons for the first time since 1917-1918. In 1966 they landed in the cellar for the first time since 1912 when they were known as the Highlanders. The Yankees (1-1) also won their season opener behind a sparkling two-hit shutout by ace Mel Stottlemyre against Washington.

Taking the mound for New York was a pitcher who, like The Babe, was known to even the casual baseball fan by just his nickname, Whitey. Whitey Ford, starting his 11th home opener, was no longer the standout hurler who posted a hard-to-fathom 207-83 record from 1953 to 1964 and winning 10 more in 11 World Series, including six championships. Rather, he was a 38-year-old coming off two shoulder operations, looking for his last moment of glory.

Boston’s Billy Rohr was as unknown as Ford was famous. After Boston acquired him from the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1963 first-year draft, the 6-foot-3, 170-pound hurler progressed through the Red Sox farm system, posting a 14-10 record with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Triple-A American Association in 1966. Dick Williams, who had skippered Toronto to league championships in 1965 and 1966, hoped to keep Rohr calm by starting his Maple Leaf batterymate, 28-year-old Russ Gibson, who made his first big-league appearance after 10 years in the minors.

New York’s home opener on Friday, April 14, 1967, drew a disappointing crowd of just 14,375 to the “House that Ruth Built,” a far cry from the 40,006 in the previous year. The game started out with a bang when rookie Reggie Smith, who had 26 at-bats as a September call-up in 1966, led off by sending a 2-0 slider from Ford over the left-field fence for his first career home run. Boston appeared to have Ford on the ropes when Joe Foy walked and moved to third on Carl Yastrzemski’s single. But after Tony Conigliaro hit a sharp grounder to third baseman Charley Smith who threw to catcher Howard to erase Foy at the plate, Ford retired the next two to escape a potential disaster.

After Rohr set down the side in order in the first, Ford yielded a leadoff single to Rico Petrocelli. A soft grounder by Russ Gibson resulted in a 5-4-3 double play. The crafty veteran, with 234 wins in his 16-year career, went on a roll retiring every batter he faced through the seventh inning, save for Conigliaro, who reached a bunt on the fourth.

As well as the “Chairman of the Board” pitched, so, too, did Rohr, who also got some help from his teammates. First baseman George Scott ended the second by digging out a poor throw by shortstop Petrocelli on Charley Smith’s sharp grounder. After Rohr walked Bill Robinson and Joe Pepitone in the fourth, Howard hit a long fly to center. According to sportswriter Larry Claflin of the Boston Record American, center fielder George Thomas overran the ball but caught it awkwardly before crashing to the field.2

Rohr was lucky to survive the sixth inning. After Yaz made a nifty one-handed grab of Horace Clarke’s line drive, Robinson smacked a screaming shot back to the mound, whacking Rohr on the left shin right below the knee. “I never saw the ball come back at me,” said Rohr.3 Foy fielded the ricochet barehanded and heaved a bullet to Scott for an out. Williams and trainer Buddy LeRoux rushed to check on Rohr, writhing in agony on the mound. “He limped from there to the finish,” wrote Henry McKenna of the Boston Herald.4 After walking off the pain, Rohr issued a walk to the next batter, Tom Tresh, who was subsequently forced out on Pepitone’s grounder to end the frame. “After he got hit he actually got better,” mused backstop Russ Gibson. “He amazed me.”5

Receiving ice-pack treatments between innings, Rohr set down the side in order in the seventh. He claimed after the game that the shin injury did not affect his pitching. Williams monitored him closely, making sure that he did not tax his shoulder overcompensating for his leg. Had Rohr not been working on a no-hitter, it’s likely he would have been relieved.

Ford seemed to be tiring in the eighth. He hadn’t gone that deep in a game in almost a year, since holding Kansas City to five hits over eight innings in a loss on May 1, 1966. Gibson led off with a single, and moved up a station on Rohr’s sacrifice bunt. After Reggie Smith grounded out, Foy smashed a two-run homer. Yastrzemski followed with a single, but was forced at second on Conigliaro’s grounder to end the frame.

With tension mounting on the field and in the stands, Yankees skipper Ralph Houk played to win, but also harbored a time-honored tradition with regard to no-hitters. “We wouldn’t bunt on him when the game got into the late innings,” said the old-school skipper before there was an old school. “It was going to be a clean hit or nothing.”6 Houk sent in sore-legged Mickey Mantle to pinch-hit for light-hitting John Kennedy. The Mick popped up harmlessly to right fielder Bill Robinson. Pinch-hitting for Ford, Lou Clinton, who had hit a career-high 22 round-trippers for the Red Sox in 1963, hit a tapper back to the mound. Grabbing what was described as an “easy chance” by beat writer Henry McKenna, Rohr threw wildly to first for the game’s only error.7 The situation became critical when Rohr issued his fifth and final walk of the game, to Clarke. While the Yankee faithful held their breath for the kind of comebacks that had characterized the team for generations, Robinson hit into a soul-crushing 6-4-3 twin killing to end the inning.

After rookie right-hander reliever Thad Tillotson worked through a rough ninth, loading the bases on two walks and a hit in his big-league debut, Rohr had a date with destiny. Throughout the game, he kept knocking his cap off with his overhand delivery, like former Yankee 20-game winner Jim Bouton. “He’s a herky-jerky type of pitcher,” said Williams, “[W]hen his head is bobbing right, off falls his hat.”8 Tresh led off with a powerful blast to deep left field. Yastrzemski, playing shallow to prevent a cheap single, made what Bill Liston of the Boston Traveler described as a “near miracle” catch.9 Rohr called it the “greatest catch” he ever saw.”10 Yaz made a lunging grab at full speed, somersaulting on the grass as he secured the ball. After Pepitone flied out to right, Rohr had a 1-and-2 count on Howard. Just a strike away from a no-hitter, Rohr threw a heater which many Boston sportswriters claimed was a strike. “[It] missed by an inch,” said Gibson.11 After another ball, Howard lined a “flat curve” over second baseman Reggie Smith’s head, evoking a hefty round of jeers from the crowd.12 “That’s the first time in my life I ever made a base hit and was booed,” said Howard.13 Rohr retired Smith on a popup to right field to end the game in 2 hours and 11 minutes.

“Russ called a perfect game,” gushed Rohr, who struck out two. “He knew what I was trying to do and I think I only shook him off twice. We were thinking together.”14 There was a feeling of déjà vu for Rohr, who had tossed 8⅔ innings of no-hit ball against Toledo the previous year before yielding a single to Mike Ferraro, coincidentally the property of the Yankees. “I think my fastball had them guessing,” said the pitcher, “since it was breaking away from the right-handed hitters, and I had a good change that I got guys out on.”15

For a brief moment, Rohr was cast in the national spotlight. Two days after the game he appeared on television’s Ed Sullivan Show.

The St. Louis Browns’ Bobo Holloman remains the only big-leaguer (as of 2016) to toss a no-hitter in his first start, against the Philadelphia Athletics on May 6, 1953. It came after four relief appearances.

This article appears in “The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers. To read more stories from this book, click here.

Notes

The Yankees’ fall from grace was quick and steep. In only two seasons the then 20-time champions went from 99 wins and a seven-game loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1964 World Series to 70 wins and a last-place finish in the American League in 1966. The Red Sox, on the other hand, had been perennial doormats since finishing third in 1958 and had lost 100 games in 1965 for the first time since 1932. No one knew it at the time, but heading into the 1967 season the teams were going in opposite directions.

Pushed by rookie manager Dick Williams, a hard-nosed taskmaster who toiled in the majors for 13 years as a versatile utilityman, the Red Sox were competitive early on, though they were in the middle of the pack and sat in a fourth-place tie with the Twins at 32-31 after beating the Yankees on June 20.

The Yankees, meanwhile, were led by tough-as-nails Ralph Houk, a former catcher who earned his nickname “The Major” after he reached that rank with the Army during a tour that found him on Omaha Beach in 1944 and later at the Battle of the Bulge. He was in his second stint as Yankees manager, having led them to World Series titles in 1961 and ’62, and a pennant in ’63 before stepping down, but was on the verge of a second straight terrible season. After play on June 20, the Yanks were 28-34 and only a half-game ahead of the lowly Washington Senators.

Taking the mound for the Red Sox was ace Jim Lonborg, a gangly 25-year-old Californian who was coming into his own in his third big-league season. Going into the game, Lonborg was 8-2 with a 3.30 ERA and a league-leading 98 strikeouts. He also paced the circuit in hit batters with eight and it’s no coincidence that his success came around the same time he decided to take back the inside half of the plate.

Opposing Lonborg for the Yankees was 26-year-old rookie right-hander Thad Tillotson, who was making only his fifth major-league start after 13 straight relief appearances. He’d been very good to that point, going 3-2 with a save and pitching to a 2.78 ERA, but had been knocked around in his last two starts, against the Chicago White Sox and Senators.

Boston struck early and often, plating four runs in the top of the first. Mike Andrews led off with a single to third and went to second on third baseman Charley Smith’s error. Foy walked and Yastrzemski scored Andrews with a hit to center that sent Foy to third. Yastrzemski moved to second on a Jake Gibbs passed ball before 22-year-old slugger Tony Conigliaro belted a three-run homer to stake the Red Sox to a 4-0 lead.

Tillotson settled down and struck out Rico Petrocelli, got George Scott on a grounder to short, and coaxed Bob Tillman to loft a fly to right to end the onslaught. The Yankees fought back in the bottom of the inning and had runners at first and second with no outs thanks to consecutive singles by Horace Clarke and Ruben Amaro to lead off the frame. Lonborg fanned Mickey Mantle for the first out, then faced the dangerous left-handed bat of Joe Pepitone, who was coming off a career-high 31 homers in 1966.

Pepitone lofted a fly ball down the left-field line that looked as if it might drop in for extra bases, but Yastrzemski made a long run from left-center field and backhanded the ball in front of the stands for the second out. Lonborg got out of the jam by retiring Steve Whitaker and the teams went into the second with Boston still up 4-0.

The Red Sox extended their lead to 5-0 and could have plated more but for a Pepitone assist. Reggie Smith led off the frame with a single to center and tried to stretch it into a double, but Pepitone fired a strike to Amaro to nab Smith for the first out. Lonborg fanned, but Andrews walked to keep the inning alive and that brought Foy to the plate, setting off a chain reaction that would eventually escalate into a brawl.

Foy took a Tillotson fastball off his helmet and fell to the ground, but was able to stay in the game. Yastrzemski followed with another base hit and knocked in Andrews again to push Boston’s lead to 5-0 before Conigliaro flied to left to end the inning. Tom Tresh led off the Yankees’ second with a hit, Gibbs flied out to center, Charley Smith grounded into a force play that erased Tresh from the bases, and that brought up Tillotson.

With a five-run lead and two outs, Lonborg wasted no time exacting revenge and promptly drilled the Yankees hurler between the shoulder blades with a pitch. Tillotson said something to home-plate umpire Cal Drummond, then began motioning to Lonborg and pointing to home plate as he walked up the first-base line as if to warn, “You have to bat, too.” That brought both teams out of their dugouts and an enraged Foy started toward Tillotson to protect his pitcher. “Come after me, not Lonborg,” Foy yelled.1Pepitone countered with “never mind him, I’ll fight you.”2

Petrocelli and Pepitone, who grew up in the same neighborhood and played for rival high schools, began jawing at each other and Petrocelli had to be held back by Scott, who later admitted he thought the two were just joking around.3 But the argument escalated as both tried to get to each other amid a swarm of bodies, prompting both bullpens to join the fracas. “Next thing you knew,” wrote the White Plains Journal News, “there were Pepitone and Petrocelli going for each other’s jugular vein.”4

Legendary sportswriter Red Smith described the scene as only he could. “One Thaddeus A. Tillotson, a refugee from the Dodger chain, started the dust-up by bouncing a pitch off the plastic Yomulka [sic] of Joe Foy, the Red Sox third baseman. When Tillotson came to bat, Boston’s Jim Lonborg, an excellent marksman, retaliated by potting the Yankees’ pitcher between the shoulder blades. There was an exchange of compliments, a massing of troops, and for the next five minutes members of both squads were kicking, gouging, and rolling on the grass.”5

In the ensuing melee Scott got the better of Pepitone, who left the game with a sprained wrist. According to reports, it took 12 New York policemen, one of whom was Petrocelli’s brother, to restore order. When the game commenced, Lonborg fanned Clarke to end the inning. Then, as if to rub salt in the Yankees’ wounds, Scott homered in the top of the third to give the Red Sox a 6-0 lead. Tillotson continued to take aim at Red Sox hitters and threw one at Reggie Smith’s ankles, rankling the Red Sox center fielder before he grounded out to end the inning.

Lonborg stepped to the plate in the fourth and Tillotson brushed him back with a high and tight fastball before fanning him. Andrews walked and Foy singled to center, which poignantly ended Tillotson’s stint. Former Red Sox darling and Massachusetts native Bill Monbouquette stepped into the fray and was immediately greeted with another run-scoring single by Yastrzemski followed by an RBI single by Conigliaro that had Monbouquette and Houk steaming mad.

Conigliaro bounded a dribbler down the third-base line and appeared to beat Charley Smith’s throw to first, but Monbouquette begged to differ and pleaded his case with first-base umpire Bill Haller. Houk came out of the dugout to argue the call and was ejected from the game with his team down, 8-0.

The Yankees went down in order save a two out single in the bottom of the fourth, but not before Lonborg sent some chin music at Charley Smith before striking him out. Then Lonborg fired another shot in the bottom of the fifth when he felled pinch-hitter Dick Howser with a pitch to the head. Howser was able to make his way to first base before he collapsed and was replaced by pinch-runner John Kennedy.

The umpires had had enough and warned both managers that ejections would be forthcoming if the beanballs continued. Walks to Clarke and Mantle sandwiched around an Amaro force out and an error by Andrews gave the Yankees their first and only run of the game as Lonborg cruised to an easy 8-1 complete-game victory that ran his record to 9-2 and dropped his ERA to 3.03.

• Related links: Click here to read more articles about the 1967 Boston Red Sox at the SABR Games Project. Find biographies of the entire team in The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the notes, the author consulted Retrosheet.org and Baseball-Reference.com.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA196706210.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1967/B06210NYA1967.htm

Notes

At less than full strength, Tiant nevertheless started strongly, fanning Mike Andrews and Joe Foy. A single by Carl Yastrzemski brought up Tony Conigliaro, but he fouled out to strand Yaz.

Unlike Tiant, Bell got in immediate trouble. A double by Lee Maye, a wild pitch by Bell, and the first career sacrifice fly by Vern Fuller put Cleveland up 1-0 two batters into the home half of the first. Bell induced two more fly outs to escape additional damage.

Consecutive walks to George Scott and Jerry Adair gave Boston a promising beginning in the top of the second, but Reggie Smith failed to advance the runners when he fanned, and Tiant got infield popups from Mike Ryan and Gary Bell to preserve the narrow lead.

Neither team had another man on base until the top of the fourth. With one out, Scott reached on the 11th error of the season by Indians third baseman Max Alvis. Adair advanced Scott to second with a single, and Smith scored Scott with the tying run on another single. Both runners advanced on the throw from right field, so the Red Sox had men on second and third with one out. “On a pitch in the dirt, Adair tried to score and was thrown out, with Smith going to third base. After Ryan walked, the Indians went to sleep again,” a Boston scribe wrote.1 Before this game, Boston had played 91 times, and Ryan (1) and Smith (5) had combined for just six stolen bases. They each added to their totals with a shocking double steal (“on a play the Lynn English High School team of 1927 would have broken up,” according to one knight of the keyboard)2 that put the Red Sox up 2-1. Bell hit a comebacker to end the exciting inning, but Boston had taken a lead that it would not relinquish.

Bell retired 12 in a row after Maye’s double, and the Red Sox got two more runs in the top of the fifth. With one out, Yaz singled for his second hit of the game and Conigliaro hit his second homer of the day (he had homered in game one), 17th of the season, and the 101st of his career3 to put Boston up 4-1. Scott followed with a triple, but Adair fanned to end the inning.

Bell extended his streak to 15 in a row to close out the fifth, and Boston scored for the third straight inning in the top of the sixth thanks to a single by Smith and a double by Ryan to take a 5-1 lead. (The throw from the outfield retired Ryan trying to return to second after rounding the bag.)

Maye reached again with a single in the bottom of the sixth to snap Bell’s streak at 17 straight batters retired. Bell then hit Fuller to put two on with two out before retiring Rocky Colavito on a fly to left to squelch the threat.

Over the final three innings, the Red Sox would manage just two more singles (by Yastrzemski in the seventh and Ryan in the ninth); each time, a Boston batter (first Conigliaro, then Andrews) hit into a double play to end the inning.

The Indians had three hits over the final three frames. Fred Whitfield’s pinch-double with two outs in the eighth proved harmless. In the ninth Colavito singled with one out, and Alvis advanced him to second with a single, Cleveland’s fifth and final hit of the game, with two outs. Tony Horton came to bat with two on base and the tying run on deck. With a rested bullpen that did not work in the first game thanks to Jim Lonborg’s herculean 149-pitch complete-game effort,4 Williams stayed with Bell and got a result that rewarded his faith — a fly that Smith secured in center to extend the Red Sox’ streak to 10 games, the team’s longest since May 1951.5

While Cleveland general manager Gabe Paul blamed his team, blasting the bats of the Indians as ineffectual as “banana stalks,”6 Mike Ryan credited Bell for turning in a stellar start in favorable conditions: “Today he had pretty good stuff, though he had a little edge with the shadows the way they were.”7

The lateness of the hour after the doubleheader did nothing to diminish the enthusiasm of the energetic Boston faithful. Ecstatically, they came by the thousands to greet the team after its flight landed in Boston. “They told us on the plane that there’d be fans at the airport,” said Williams as he tried to push his way through the large crowd.8 Said a Massachusetts State Police officer: “It’s a good thing that plane didn’t taxi into the regular terminal. Someone might have been killed.”9 The raucous gathering sensed something special with this squad; after years of placid play, the rollicking 1967 Boston Red Sox would reward New England with an especially memorable baseball season.

This article appears in “The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers. To read more stories from this book, click here.

Notes

On August 18, 1967, in the midst of what would become to be known as the Boston Red Sox’ “Impossible Dream” year, a brilliant career was derailed and a life nearly taken when favorite son Tony Conigliaro was unable to escape a wayward fastball thrown by the California Angels’ Jack Hamilton.

The Red Sox, who had not won an American League pennant since 1946, entered that night in fourth place, but just 3½ games behind the first-place Minnesota Twins.

Hamilton, the Angels’ starter, was a hard-throwing right-hander who had beaten the Red Sox 2-1 in Anaheim the weekend before, outdueling Boston righty Gary Bell, who was again his opposite number in this game.

After Bell set the Angels down in order in the top of the first, Hamilton, who entered the game with an 8-2 record and a 2.77 earned-run average, walked Boston leadoff batter Mike Andrews but retired the next three batters in order—including a strikeout of Carl Yastrzemski, who would win the American League Triple Crown that year.

In the bottom of the second the Red Sox got their first hit off Hamilton, a one-out single to center by Conigliaro, who had been mired in a 1-for-23 slump that had dropped his batting average from .302 to .284. It was only his second career hit off Hamilton in eight at-bats.Nothing came of the hit, and the two pitchers continued to put up zeroes.

George Scott opened the Boston half of the fourth with a single to center, but was gunned down trying to stretch it into a double. Reggie Smith followed with a fly out.

That’s when Conigliaro stepped into the batter’s box for the second time that nightand the last time for more than a year. Conigliaro was just 22 years old but had already hit 104 big-league home runs; on July 23 he had become the youngest American Leaguerat 22 years, 197 days,to reach 100 round-trippers when he homered off Cleveland’s John O’Donoghue. Two years earlier, at 20, he was the youngest player to lead the AL in homers for a season, belting 32. And the season before that, at 19, he had set a record for teenagers with 24 circuit blasts, a mark that still stood at this writing in 2016.

As much as those of any player who had not yet turned 23, Conigliaro’s achievements seemed to portend even greater things to come. But all of his potential for greatness was lost in the blink of an eye.

Before Hamilton could pitch to Conigliaro, someone in the stands hurled a smoke bomb onto the field, and the resulting cloud of black smoke delayed the game for nearly 10 minutes.1When play resumed, a thought briefly crossed Conigliaro’s mind.

“Just before he made his first pitch,” Conigliaro recalled years later, “I wondered if the delay had caused his arm to stiffen. It was the last thought I had before he hit me.”2

Hamilton, who had a reputation for doctoring the ball,3 fired a fastball that suddenly started to break toward Conigliaro’s head.

“The ball came sailing right toward my chin,” said Conigliaro. “Normally a hitter can jerk his head back a fraction and the ball will buzz by. But this pitch seemed to follow me in. I know I didn’t freeze. I definitely made a move to get out of the way of the ball.”4

To no avail. The ball smashed into Conigliaro’s left cheekbone, dislocating his jaw and damaging the retina in his left eye.

“When the ball was about four feet from my head I knew it would get me. And I knew it would hurt because Hamilton was such a hard thrower,” Conigliaro said. “I was frightened. I threw my hands up in front of my face and saw the ball follow me back and hit me square in the left side of the head. As soon as it crushed into me, it felt as if the ball would go in one side of my head and come out the other; my legs gave way and I went down like a sack of potatoes. Just before everything went dark I saw the ball bounce straight down on home plate. It was the last thing I saw for several days.”5

“If it had been two inches higher, he would have been dead,” said the Red Sox team physician, Thomas Tierney.6

“I’ve not hit anyone all year,” said Hamilton after the game. “I certainly wasn’t throwing (at him). I was trying to get the ball over.”7

“The sound that it made, when it hit him, it was a pretty distinct sound that you don’t hear very often, but when you hear it, you know that it’s serious,” said Red Sox pitcher Jim Lonborg.8

“I remember the hush,” Boston Globe sportswriter Bob Ryan wrote years later. “The sound of silence from 31,027 people is an eerie sensation.”9

Present in the crowd that night were Conigliaro’s mother, father, and brothers Billy Conigliaro and Richie.

“The ball crashed into the side of his face with a sharp crack that I swear could have been heard clearly all over that noisy ballpark,” Red Sox shortstop Rico Petrocelli remembered. “It sounded like the ball hit his helmet, so my immediate reaction was relief that the ball had struck plastic instead of flesh. But the sound was probably his cheekbone breaking.”10

“I was never knocked out but I wish I had been,” said Conigliaro. “I rolled on the ground trying to stop the pain in my head with my hands. The impact of the ball made both my eyes slam shut and I felt a tremendous swelling in my mouth. I couldn’t see. I remember thinking, ‘I’m blind, I can’t see.’ Then I heard Rico Petrocelli’s voice saying, ‘Take it easy, Tony. You’re gonna be all right.’”11

“The swelling was so bad inside my mouth that I was worried about breathing,” Conigliaro recalled. “My mouth was filling up fast with fluid—I thought it was blood but it wasn’t. I had only a small opening that I could breathe through, and then the thought started running through my mind: Suppose this thing closes up? I won’t be able to breathe. I thought, ‘Oh, Jesus, if this thing closes up on me I’m gone.’ That’s when I asked God to keep me alive.”12

Conigliaro was lifted onto a stretcher by teammates Lonborg, Joe Foy, and Mike Ryan and taken into the locker room, where Dr. Tierney began to attend to him.“It hurts like hell,” Conigliaro told Tierney. “I heard a hissing sound, and that was all.”13

An ambulance took Conigliaro to Sancta Maria Hospital in Cambridge. His season was over.

At Fenway Park, the game resumed with outfielder Jose Tartabull pinch-running for Conigliaro.

Petrocelli drilled a triple to center off the rattled Hamilton, driving in Tartabull with the first run of the game and scoring himself when Angels’ shortstop Jim Fregosi threw wild on the relay to third.

In the sixth Boston expanded its lead to 3-0 when Bill Kelso, who had relieved Hamilton, walked Tartabull and Petrocelli and gave up a run-scoring single to Bell.

Jimmie Hall hit solo home runs in the seventh and ninth for California. But Bell finished off a strong complete-game effort by retiring Don Mincher on a liner back to the mound for the final out. The Red Sox right-hander, who had been acquired from the Cleveland Indians in a trade on June 4, ended the game with a four-hitter for his eighth win of the season in 18 decisions, the victory moving Boston to within three games of first place.

Hamilton took the loss, slipping to 8-3.

The Aftermath

Conigliaro was never again the same player. Nor, for that matter, was Hamilton.

Conigliaro, who had earned his first American League All-Star selection that season, missed the remainder of the 1967 season as the Red Sox, led by Yastrzemski, won their first pennant since 1946 and came within one game of their first World Series title since 1918. He missed the 1968 season as well, but made a miraculous recovery at the age of 24 and was the American League Comeback Player of the Year14 in 1969 when he batted .255 with 20 home runs and 82 RBIs. A year later, when he was still only 25, Conigliaro had career highs of 36 home runs and 116 RBIs.

In 1971, after he had been traded to California,Conigliaro’s eyesight suddenly deteriorated and he was forced to retire at the age of 26. He made a brief comeback attempt in 1975 as a 30-year-old designated hitter with the Red Sox, but retired again after just 21 games while hitting .123 with 2 homers. Conigliaro had 166 career home runs, 516 RBIs, and a .264 batting average.

On January 9, 1982, Conigliaro suffered a heart attack, then a stroke that left him in a coma. He died on February 24, 1990, at the age of 45.

Jack Hamilton pitched in 61 more gamesduring the remainder of his major-league career, which ended in 1969, and never hit another batter. In eight seasons he hit just 13 batters. In 1968 with the Angels and 1969 with the Indians and White Sox, Hamilton was 3-6 withan ERA that exceeded his 4.53 career mark.

“I think [hitting Conigliaro] did have a lasting effect on him,” said catcher Buck Rodgers, who was Hamilton’s batterymate that night in Boston. “Jack Hamilton had to pitch inside, and after that he never would come inside hard anymore.”15

For the rest of the 1967 season the Red Sox used four right fielders in Conigliaro’s absence— Jose Tartabull, George Thomas, Jim Landis, and Ken Harrelson. Collectively they hit .197 in 178 at-bats, with 4 homers and 17 RBIs.

In the World Series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, Landis was gone from the roster and Harrelson, Tartabull, and Thomas were ineffective at the plate, leaving Red Sox fans to forever wonder what might have been but for Jack Hamilton’s errant fastball on August 18, 1967.

Sources

In addition to the Sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites.

Notes

Gimpy-armed right fielder Jose Tartabull became the instant hero when his throw from short right field nailed speedy Ken Berry at the plate — thanks to a great tag by catcher Elston Howard — to end the game in dramatic fashion and preserve a 4-3 Red Sox win in the first game of a doubleheader at Chicago’s Comiskey Park on August 27.

With Boston holding a one-run lead going into the bottom of the ninth, Ken Berry led off with a double down the left-field line off starter Gary Bell. Sandy Alomar bunted him to third.

Boston manager Dick Williams summoned reliever John Wyatt from the bullpen to replace the tiring Bell after Duane Josephson was announced as a pinch-hitter for Chicago reliever Hoyt Wilhelm.

Swinging at Wyatt’s first pitch, Josephson roped a fly ball into short right field. Tartabull caught the liner and, with Berry tagging at third, let go an arcing throw to the plate. Howard leaped high, caught the throw, and then successfully blocked the plate while sweeping the tag on Berry to complete the game-ending double play.

An irate White Sox manager Eddie Stanky roared from the dugout to protest the call by home-plate umpire Marty Springstead, but to no avail.

Howard, a 13-year veteran with the Yankees who had joined the Red Sox earlier in the month, used his catching wiles to deftly block the plate.

“He never got to the plate. He slid into my toe and then my shin guard,” Howard said. “I had to jump for the ball and when I came down he was off the baseline. I tagged him before he could get his hand in between my legs and tag the plate.”1

“I was a bit surprised that Berry was sent in, because the Josephson fly to right was rather shallow,” Howard said. “But I suppose Stanky figured he had to go for broke in that spot.”2

Manager Williams added, “It was a terrific grab of a high throw and an out-of-this-world tag by Howard. I never saw a better one.”3

Boston Globe sportswriter Harold Kaese suggested that Howard’s play might later be looked upon as one of the keys to the Red Sox pennant stretch. “At the end of the season Howard’s left foot may go down in history as the first left foot ever to have won a pennant for the Red Sox,” Kaese wrote. “The shoe the veteran receiver wore as he kept the speedy Berry from hook-sliding into the plate should be gilded and sent to the museum at Cooperstown. (Berry) missed the plate because, as Howard explained, his hooking left foot caught Howard’s left shoe — size 12B — just as it came down in front of the plate, and deflected him wide of the five-cornered target.”4

Tartabull had been platooned in right field with George Thomas and Jim Landis since Tony Conigliaro was beaned on August 18, The native of Cienfuegos, Cuba, was not accustomed to the media attention showered upon him. However, everyone wanted to hear about the throw.

“Line drive go deep in web and I have trouble getting ball out,” Tartabull said in broken English. “I throw all the way hard as I can because nobody on bases and I don’t worry about bad throw.”5

“If I make good throw and keep it low, I feel I throw him out,” he continued. “Then I saw the throw go high and I say to myself, ‘Oh oh.’ Then I watch (Howard) jump for the ball and when I see the umpire call him out, I say, ‘Atta boy.’ I caught the ball in the webbing of the glove and I have no chance to aim the throw.”6

Tartabull’s throw and Howard’s tag would be added to the pantheon of highlights by unsung players that would define the Red Sox season. Jerry Adair’s game-winning homer to cap the comeback from an 8-0 deficit to California, Dalton Jones’s 10th-inning homer later in the season in Detroit, Norm Siebern’s three-run pinch-hit triple, and Billy Rohr’s near no-hitter were also among those nuggets on the list.

“Tartabull, nee of Cuba but Castro-converted to Caracas, Venezuela, has almost all the endowments except one — an arm,” wrote Boston Record American sportswriter John Gillooly. “He could throw the bull farther than a baseball, except he hardly says a word. Mgr. Do-Something Dick Williams has been contemplating a three-man relay to get the ball in from right field when Tartabull’s there — sort of a human train,” the writer quipped. “How can the Red Sox continue triumphant with Tartabull, who lacks power and a propellant in his arm? I have only one answer — mgr. Williams has constructed a TEAM. All for one and not every man himself.”7

The memorable play would even one day inspire a sci-fi thriller, Tartabull’s Throw by Henry Garfield (Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books, 2001).

Going into the game, the Red Sox were a half-game ahead of Minnesota and one game ahead of Chicago and Detroit. At the end of the day, Boston found itself in a virtual tie for first place, just .001 behind the Twins. Minnesota won its game over Cleveland, 6-3, that day while the Red Sox lost the second game of their doubleheader.

In the first game, Chicago got off to a 1-0 lead in the first when Don Buford drew a walk off starter Bell, stole second, and came home on Pete Ward’s single to center.

The Red Sox took the lead in the third as Mike Andrews singled off Chicago starter Fred Klages and moved to third on Adair’s double. After Carl Yastrzemski was walked intentionally, George Scott singled under third baseman Buford’s glove, scoring both runs.

Boston stretched the lead to 4-1 as Yastrzemski hit solo homers in the fifth and seventh innings, his 33rd and 34th of the year. That tied him for the league lead with Minnesota’s Harmon Killebrew; Yaz led in runs batted in with 93.

Chicago scored a pair of unearned runs in the bottom of the seventh to pull within 4-3. J.C. Martin singled off Bell’s glove and Rocky Colavito beat out a tapper to Adair at third. Berry hit a two-hop tailor-made double-play ball to second baseman Andrews, but he threw low to shortstop Rico Petrocelli and the ball scooted into left field.

While Yastrzemski was tracking the ball down, Martin scored, Colavito went to third, and Berry to second. Ron Hansen walked and Smoky Burgess popped out to short left for the first out. Buford then grounded to Andrews for another double-play chance, but Petrocelli’s relay to first was late after a hard slide by pinch-runner Sandy Alomar, and Colavito scored. Wayne Causey fanned to end the inning.

Things remained that way until Wyatt was summoned to face pinch-hitter Josephson with Berry as the potential tying run 90 feet from home.

“I threw as good a fastball as I can. It was about knee high and on the outside of the plate,” Wyatt recalled two decades later. “I think he was looking for some kind of breaking pitch. He was bending back from the plate and he just barely got the bat on it.”8

From there, it was Tartabull to Howard for one of the most scintillating double plays of the season.

“When I had to jump for the ball, I wasn’t thinking of blocking the plate, just trying to get the ball down quick enough,” Howard said. “But his foot came into the tip of my shoe and kept him from getting in, and that was it.”9

Former Chicago manager Al Lopez, who was one of the White Sox old-timers being honored between games of the doubleheader, marveled at Howard’s play.

“You rarely see the play made the way Howard did it. I always instructed my catchers to get the ball out of their mitt and make the tag with the bare hand,” Lopez noted. “It’s too risky tagging with the mitt. The ball can easily be jarred loose. But Howard had no time to shift (the ball). His only chance was to try to make the tag with one sweep of the mitt and he did it. It was a play in a thousand.”10

It was one of only four outfield assists Tartabull had in 1967. He played in all seven World Series games, starting three of them in right field.

Manager Williams summed it all up quite succinctly. “You can quote me: It’s the best throw Tartabull has made for us all year,” he said.11

This article appears in “The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers. To read more stories from this book, click here.

Notes

In Saturday’s game, the next to last of the season unless a playoff was required, the Red Sox squared off against Twins left-hander Jim Kaat, who had performed mound magic in the heat of the pennant drive that was the equal of Yaz’s batting wizardry. Kaat had started slowly in 1967 and would not come close to matching his 25 victories of the previous year, but his stretch run made up for any disappointment from the season’s first five months as he went 7-0 with a 1.51 ERA in September.2

A crowd of 32,909 was on hand for the contest. Among the spectators were such luminaries as Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy; his brother, New York Senator Robert Kennedy; their father, Joseph P. Kennedy; and Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey. The stage was set for both politicians and ordinary fans alike to learn the answer to the clichéd conundrum, ‘What happens when the irresistible force [Yaz] meets the immovable object [Kaat]?’

Veteran right-hander Jose Santiago, having his finest season in the majors, brought an 11-4 record into the game as he took the mound for Boston. On this day he immediately ran into trouble. Zoilo Versalles led off the game for Minnesota with a single to left and, after Cesar Tovar was retired, advanced to second when Harmon Killebrew drew a walk. Tony Oliva staked the Twins to a 1-0 lead with a single that knocked in Versalles, and Bob Allison followed with a hit that loaded the bases. Santiago managed to squelch the rally by retiring both Rod Carew, who would be named AL Rookie of the Year, and Ted Uhlaender.

It looked as though Boston might respond in kind in the bottom of the frame as Mike Andrews stroked a leadoff single to left, but he was erased from the basepaths when Jerry Adair grounded into a double play. Yastrzemski’s single also went for naught as Ken “Hawk” Harrelson struck out to end the inning.

The second inning was largely uneventful; Santiago retired the Twins in order while Kaat allowed a leadoff single to George “Boomer” Scott before getting three straight outs, including strikeouts of the final two batters, Reggie Smith and Russ Gibson.

Santiago worked around a one-out double by Killebrew in the top of the third via two strikeouts of his own. After Kaat struck out Santiago to start the bottom of the frame, it looked as though the game was settling into a pitchers’ duel, but this would not be the case.

As fate would have it, when Kaat delivered his 1-and-2 offering to Santiago, he “heard something pop.”3 That something turned out to be a muscle in his pitching forearm that he described as sounding “just as if I might’ve been snapping my fingers.”4 He still managed to strike out Santiago and went to a 2-and-0 count against Andrews before he could pitch no more. Kaat was replaced by Jim Perry, a veteran right-hander who had alternately started and pitched out of the bullpen that year. Perry walked Andrews, though the free pass was charged to Kaat, but held the Red Sox scoreless and even struck out Yaz to end the inning.

In the top of the fourth, Santiago again had to work his way out of trouble — this time in the form of a one-out triple by Uhlaender — but he buckled down and held the Twins at bay. After Perry retired the Red Sox in order in the bottom of the inning and Santiago returned the favor in the top of the fifth, the mound duel appeared to be intact, only with Perry substituting for Kaat.

Once again, however, things turned out differently than it seemed they would as Perry suddenly ran into trouble in the bottom of the fifth. Smith led off with a double and Dalton Jones, pinch-hitting for catcher Russ Gibson, singled to put runners at the corners. A determined Perry fanned Santiago and Andrews, but Jerry Adair and Yastrzemski knocked back-to-back singles to give Boston a 2-1 lead before Harrelson fouled out to end the inning.

The lead was short-lived as Santiago could not make it through the sixth frame unscathed. A one-out walk to Allison and a two-out single by Uhlaender set the stage for Rich Reese, pinch-hitting for catcher Jerry Zimmerman. Reese’s single to left field scored Allison to produce a 2-2 deadlock. Santiago then loaded the bases by walking Frank Kostro, who was batting for Perry, but he induced a fly out from Versalles to escape the inning and to preserve the tie.

George Scott greeted Ron Kline, Minnesota’s third pitcher of the game, with a leadoff home run in the bottom of the sixth that handed the Red Sox their second lead of the day, 3-2. After Santiago retired the Twins in order in the top of the seventh, Boston added to its lead in the bottom of the inning. Andrews hit a one-out single to get things started. Adair followed with what was an apparent fielder’s choice, but shortstop Versalles could not find the handle on Kline’s throw and was charged with an error that put Red Sox runners at first and second.

Jim Merritt replaced Kline on the mound to face Yastrzemski in what turned out to be a futile move by Cal Ermer, the Twins’ manager. Ermer had taken over from Sam Mele on June 9, when Minnesota had a disappointing 25-25 record, and had maneuvered the Twins into contention, but his good fortune was about to run out. Yastrzemski continued his torrid hitting and made the most of the scoring opportunity by belting a three-run homer that gave the Red Sox a commanding 6-2 lead.

After Santiago walked Allison to open the eighth inning, Gary Bell, who had been acquired from the Cleveland Indians in midseason, entered the game in relief. Bell quickly set down the three batters he faced in this frame, but he ventured to make things a bit more exciting than necessary in the ninth. He made quick work of pinch-hitter Rich Rollins and Versalles before surrendering a double to Tovar. Killebrew stepped to the plate next and clouted a home run that narrowed the Twins’ deficit to 6-4. It was “too little, too late,” however, as Oliva lined out to Adair at third base to end the game. Afterward, Santiago — the winning pitcher — presented Senator Ted Kennedy with the game ball.5

Though Killebrew’s homer was not enough to overcome the Red Sox on this day, it did put him back into a tie with Yastrzemski for the American League home run lead at 44 apiece. Yaz would go on to win the 1967 AL Triple Crown with a .326 average, 44 homers, and 121 RBIs, but he had to share the home run title with the Killer. He lamented that fact after this game when he asserted, “If the grass hadn’t been so slippery from the rains, I would have caught the ball [Tovar’s double] and ended the game. But when I didn’t, Harmon got to bat. I had an immediate premonition that he’d hit a home run. And he did.”6

Yastrzemski had come through once again to put Boston on the verge of the pennant. Kaat, on the other hand, became a forgotten man due to the injury that had forced him from the game. Thirty years later, Kaat explained, “I tore the ligaments loose in that elbow, the ulnar collateral area. We didn’t know what the heck that was back then. We do now.”7 Had medical science known how to treat the injury in 1967, the procedure now known as Tommy John surgery might be known as Jim Kaat surgery.

Kaat harbored no bitterness or regrets over the outcome of his injury and the game. Of the Red Sox, he said, “They played with a lot of heart in ’67. I’ll always admire them. It was their special time.”8 The outcome of games on October 1 would determine exactly how special 1967 would be for the Red Sox and their fans.

This article appears in “The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers. To read more stories from this book, click here.

Notes

It was a young ballclub; Carl Yastrzemski was the veteran, and he was just 27. It was a racially diverse ballclub, thanks to dealings by GM Dick O’Connell – something new in Boston.   Tony Conigliaro starred but on August 20, he was beaned, and out for the season. The Sox made moves throughout the season, adding veterans such as Jerry Adair, Elston Howard, and (after Conig went down) Ken Harrelson.

It was a tight race and as September opened, Boston was in first place, followed by the Twins, Tigers, and White Sox – all bunched within a game and a half.

With two games left on the schedule – September 30 and October 1 – the Twins were in Boston with a one-game lead. Win either of the two games, and Minnesota would eliminate the Red Sox. The Detroit Tigers, with double headers on both Saturday and Sunday, were also still alive.

Carl Yastrzemski had put the team on his shoulders offensively, and over the final two weeks of the season, he homered five times, hitting .523, driving in 16 runs and scoring 14. Yaz’s three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh provided the winning runs in a 6-4 Red Sox victory in the September 30 game.

With identical 91-70 records and just one game to play, the Twins and Red Sox faced, nearly, a single-game playoff for the pennant. (If the Tigers swept their Sunday double-header, they would tie the winner of the Minnesota-Boston game.) Right-hander Jim Lonborg was 21-9 for the season. The Twins were a bit of a bête noire for him, though; he was 0-3 against them in ’67. And Lonborg’s won/lost record at Fenway Park was only 8-5, with a 13-4 record on the road. He explained to the Associated Press why he had stayed in a Boston hotel the night before, rather than sleep at home: “Maybe I was being superstitious. I figured I’d … pretend I was on the road.”1

Lonborg got two outs, but then walked Hammerin’ Harmon Killebrew, who was tied for the league lead in homers with 44. Tony Oliva doubled in Killebrew, thanks to a George Scott throwing error, and the Twins had a 1-0 lead. (Oliva led the league with 34 doubles in 1967.) The Twins picked up another unearned run in the top of the third, on another Red Sox error, this time Yaz’s.

The Twins had their own 20-game winner on the mound, Dean Chance, who was 20-13. After five innings, Chance had given up four scattered hits and held a 2-0 lead. Then Chance gave up four singles all in a row. Lonborg was first up, and he laid down a bunt for a single. “The bunt was my own idea,” he told the AP. “It was the first thing I thought about when I went to the plate.”2 Adair singled to center. Dalton Jones showed bunt, but swung the bat and he singled, to left. Nobody out, and the bases were loaded.

Up came Yaz. A grand slam would have been magnificent, but he was careful. “I kept telling myself, don’t go for the home run, go for the base hit,” Yaz told reporters later.3 He singled to center field, driving in both Lonborg and Adair and tying the game. Jones took third base. Harrelson hit a ball to the shortstop, but it took a high bounce and when Zoilo Versalles came home with the throw to prevent Boston from taking the lead, Jones slid in safely on the fielder’s choice. 3-2 Boston.

Twins manager Cal Ermer summoned reliever Al Worthington to face The Boomer, George Scott. Like Chance, Worthington had an ERA under 3.00. And he struck out Scott – but not before throwing two wild pitches. The first saw both baserunners advance to second and third, and Yaz scored on the second one. Now Boston had a 4-2 lead, with pinch-runner Jose Tartabull on third base.

Worthington walked Rico Petrocelli. Reggie Smith grounded to first base, and Killebrew misplayed the ball. Tartabull scored on the error. It was 5-2, thanks to four singles, a fielder’s choice, two wild pitches, and an error – though all five Red Sox runs were earned runs.

Norm Siebern pinch hit and grounded out. Lonborg came up again and popped out to second base.

Lonborg retired three Twins batters in the top of the seventh, two of them pinch-hitters.

The Red Sox had the bases loaded on three successive singles in the seventh, and nobody out, but failed to score when Mudcat Grant induced a double play (Tartabull) and struck out Scott.

In the top of the eighth, there was a Twins single, but then a double play. Then they mounted a rally. Killebrew singled, as did Oliva. Bob Allison (who had 24 homers himself) then singled, scoring Killebrew and sending Oliva to third base, but he tried to take second base and put himself in scoring position as the tying run – only to be cut down when Yaz threw to second base for the final out of the inning.

It was 5-3 in Boston’s favor and Dick Williams stuck with Lonborg. Ted Uhlaender singled to third base to lead off the top of the ninth. Rod Carew, in his rookie year and batting over .290, grounded into a 4-3 double play. And Lonborg got Rich Rollins to pop up to a backpedaling Rico at short.

In the words of broadcaster Ned Martin, there ensued “pandemonium on the field” as thousands of Fenway fans flocked onto the playing field itself in a raucous celebration, surrounding some of the players, tearing signs off the scoreboard, climbing the netting behind home plate. Lonborg had his shirt nearly torn off by enthusiastic fans.

The Red Sox might still have to face a true single-game playoff against the Tigers, and the team remained in the clubhouse for a few hours, awaiting the final score in the second game of Detroit’s doubleheader against the California Angels.

The Angels gave the Red Sox the pennant with an 8-5 win. Lonborg’s 22nd win gave him a tie with Earl Wilson for the league lead. Lonborg won the 1967 Cy Young Award. Yaz had gone 7-for-8 in the final two must-win games, and won the Triple Crown with a .326 batting average, 121 RBIs, and his 44 home runs.

The Red Sox were headed to the World Series for the first time since 1946, with a chance to face the Cardinals again and avenge their loss in ’46.

Win or lose in the Series, for Red Sox fans everywhere, the Impossible Dream had come true. The Sox had drawn only a little over 8,000 fans for Opening Day 1967. By late August, they were selling out games and “Red Sox Nation” was born – the team had recaptured the hearts of fans in New England and beyond.

A somewhat lengthier account of this game appears in the book “The 50 Greatest Red Sox Games” (Wiley, 2006), by Cecilia Tan and Bill Nowlin. A version also appears in “The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers. To read more stories from this book, click here.

Notes

Fenway Park appeared ready as the Red Sox grounds crew hastily repaired the venue following the fans’ wild on-field pennant celebration after the October 1 clinching game over the Twins, which secured the Sox the pennant. It had indeed been, in Ned Martin’s famous phrase, “pandemonium on the field.”

Football at Fenway got a holiday as Billy Sullivan’s American Football League Boston Patriots, who played their home games at Fenway Park, shifted their Saturday night home opener against the Chargers to a Sunday evening game in San Diego. “The crowds bristled with anticipation built up over two decades in Boston and New England.”1Fans overflowed the streets around Fenway, some displaying “extraordinary feats of athleticism outside the park … as teenagers sough to scale Fenway from all approaches. Those defeated at the walls crossed Lansdowne St. and crawled and scrambled up buildings. Then they made precarious accents of steel supports to attain the heights of billboards that towered nearly 100 feet with a view of the playing field over the left field wall.”2

But while the near-perfect short-sleeve weather provided a warm setting, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and the Cardinals did not, chilling the Red Sox offense in Game One by a score of 2-1. Gibson had been 13-7 in the regular season, but out for nearly two months with a broken leg, returning to action on September 7. The Cardinals had nonetheless won 101 games.

Red Sox defense kept the score close featuring exceptional plays by Carl Yastrzemski and two sparkling double plays started by third baseman Dalton Jones, while Jose Santiago’s clutch pitching kept St. Louis to two runs, both on groundouts.Sox bats were cold and their only score came courtesy of their number nine hitter, pitcher Jose Santiago’s solo home run.

After two scoreless innings, St. Louis’ Brock opened the third with a single.Flood doubled him to third, and he scored the first run of the Series on a Roger Maris groundout to first.

In the bottom of the third, Santiago tied the score with his blast to left, barely clearing the wall before landing in the left-center-field net. It was Santiago’s second home run of the year.

Gibson was dominant, striking out nine through the first five frames — he ended with 10 Ks. His execution was near perfect, with the exception of his 0-2 pitch to Santiago. Yastrzemski, who overshadowed the Twins in the pennant-clinching games, was shut out, hitless in four at-bats. Gibson had tamed Boston bats, right from the first inning, when he struck out leadoff batter Jerry Adair, struck out Dalton Jones, and got Yaz to foul out to Orlando Cepeda at first base.

Other than Santiago, only two Red Sox runners managed to reach second, George Scott (who doubled in the fifth, the only Boston batter to get two hits, and Jose Tartabull, running for Norm Siebern, who had singled to lead off the bottom of the eighth. Pinch-runner Tartabull advance to second on a sacrifice bunt by Elston Howard but was stranded when Gibson got Adair to fly out to center and Jones to pop up to short.

Yaz hadn’t hit, but he showed dazzle in the field.He made a spectacular play in the fourth, with a rocket-like throw after Brock’s two-out line single to left field that erased Cards second baseman Julian Javier at the plate.

In the fifth, Yaz made an incredible catch, leaping high into the air to snare a Curt Flood liner over his head for the inning’s first out. Columnist Red Smith described Flood’s drive in the Boston Globe: “By the laws of God, Congress, and General William D. Eckert, [it should] have been his second straight double, if not a triple. Yaz fled to his right, leaped like a springbok with a hot foot, and flung up his gloved paw.”3

The score remained tied until the seventh when the Cards struck again.Brock opened the inning with a single — his fourth hit of the day — and the National League’s leading base-swiper stole second base. He advanced to third on a groundout by Flood.Then, with a drawn-in infield, Maris, playing in his sixth World Series, hit a shot past second baseman Jerry Adair who made a spectacular stop and, unable to make the play at home, had to settle for getting Maris at first as the lead runner scored.

Gibson allowed just two singles in the final three innings. Brock starred in the Cardinals’ 2-1 win, walking once, getting four hits, scoring two runs, and stealing two bases.

Despite all the hype and drama, the Sox lost the first game, but with Jim Lonborg scheduled for Game Two, the Sox throng remained optimistic.

Years later, Yaz stated, “Someone messed up the pregame schedule and our batting practice was cut from 45 minutes to 20. We got only half the swings we should have received. I had about a third, and felt rusty. And we needed them after the emotional turmoil we had gone through for a solid month … I just didn’t feel ready. I don’t know how many of us did.”4

A frustrated Yastrzemski left the clubhouse shortly after the game and took extra batting practice, with third baseman Joe Foy serving up pitches. Coach Bobby Doerr then pitched to Ken Harrelson and Rico Petrocelli. Harrelson had flied out twice and then popped up to the catcher. Petrocelli had struck out three times, in the second, fourth, and seventh innings, apparently never once even hitting the ball foul.5Yaz’s workout lasted about an hour; he took 47 swings and after it was over told the club photographer, “I’m going to hit two out tomorrow.”6

Yaz remained confident, though, confirming his prediction that the Sox would win in six, hoping for a chance at redemption against Dick Hughes in Game Two. Hughes (15-6) had been the winningest pitcher on the St. Louis ballclub.

This article appears in “The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers. To read more stories from this book, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, box scores for this game can be found on baseball-reference.com, and retrosheet.org at:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS196710040.shtml

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1967/B10040BOS1967.htm

Notes