Grossfeld: How the 1967 Red Sox ignited baseball fever in Boston
From Stan Grossfeld at the Boston Globe on February 17, 2017:
In the basement of a Canton home is a dusty yellow Kodak box that hasn’t been opened in half a century. Inside it lies buried treasure, the 1967 Red Sox “Impossible Dream” season captured in 4,000 black-and-white negatives, some of them never before published. Frank O’Brien was just a rookie Globe sports photographer then — skinny as the Pesky Pole — and not the award-winning photojournalist who still responds to the name “Fenway Frank.”
When he pulls out a magnifying loupe and focuses on 1/500th of a second from 50 years ago, he smiles broadly, looking for a moment like a kid again. “There’s never been anything like it,” he says. “Absolutely the most important year in the history of the Boston Red Sox. It put them back on the map here in New England. It was the most fun I had covering sports.”
Memories of the year that forever changed baseball in Boston come pouring out. All of a sudden “Yaz” (Red Sox left fielder Carl Yastrzemski) is the definition of clutch. “Gentleman Jim” Lonborg is a Cy Young Award-winning pitcher, and, at 22, “Tony C” (outfielder Tony Conigliaro) is the youngest player in American League history to hit 100 home runs.
Read the full article here: http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2017/02/17/remember-and-impossible-dream/Ao1fa6f8x3vdFesWPlGouO/story.html
Originally published: February 17, 2017. Last Updated: February 17, 2017.