With the Red Sox having won three World Series since 2004, this is widely viewed as the ‘Golden Era’ of Boston baseball. For anyone under the age of 50, there are no memories of the team’s decades-long struggles that followed its early successes.
At the turn of the last century, the Red Sox were a juggernaut, winning five World Series Championships in a 16-year span from 1903-1918.
Then, quite famously. team owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season for $100,000 — the largest sum ever paid for a baseball player.
The Red Sox subsequently became a bad team for many years thereafter; the club never won more than 75 games (1921) in the 1920s, as the Yankees rose to dominance.
Boston peaked at 89 wins in the 1930s and won as few as 43 that decade. The team did not win another pennant until 1946, yet that year Boston lost the World Series to St. Louis in seven games.
Boston averaged 81 wins in the 1950s, a time when interest in the club waned considerably across New England. The team drew just 1.15 million fans to Fenway Park in 1957, the highest total of the decade.
Ted Williams was the star of the Red Sox in the 1940s and 1950s, when the club suffered through mediocrity and obscurity. Williams, widely viewed as the “greatest hitter who ever lived,” played in just one World Series during his glorious 22-year career.
Williams retired after the 1960 season and was supplanted in left field by a rookie named Carl Yastrzemski, who became the club’s next great star.
But Yaz’s early career with Boston was also marked by frustration and disappointment. From 1960-1966, the Red Sox finished, on average, 29 games out of first place. In 1966, Boston ended the season with a 72-90 record, second worst in the AL, behind only the Yankees.
The team was so bad in the early and mid-‘60s that they routinely played before home crowds of just a few thousand, sometimes only in the hundreds. Imagine that. Dick Williams, the manager of the '67 club, was Boston’s eighth skipper in as many years. Yeah, they were that bad.
That all changed in 1967, when the Red Sox went from perennial cellar dweller to first place, winning the American League Pennant and returning to the World Series for the first time in 21 years. That’s when the real passion for the Red Sox was born across New England. Fans came to adore the Yastrzemski-led “Impossible Dream” team, which won 92 games that season — the most by the club in 17 years.
Yaz won the Triple Crown that year, leading the league in batting average (.326), home runs (44) and runs batted in (121). His performance, quite deservedly, earned him the AL MVP Award.
No player in baseball would win the venerable Triple Crown for another 45 years, until Miguel Cabrera achieved the feat in 2012.
Yaz went 7-for-8 in the final two games of the regular season, helping Boston edge Detroit and Minnesota by just one game.
The Red Sox came out of nowhere in ’67. No one saw them coming. Their achievement made Boston a true baseball town again for the first time in decades. They were vast underdogs and great overachievers, whose stunning season changed the trajectory of baseball in New England for the next five decades, and counting.
Despite all he did, Yaz, of course, didn’t win the pennant all by himself.
Through August 18, 22-year-old outfielder Tony Conigliaro hit .287, with 20 home runs, 67 RBI and a .517 slugging percentage. Then he was hit in the face by a pitch from Angels’ pitcher Jack Hamilton. It changed the course of Tony C’s skyrocketing career and may have cost the Red Sox the World Series (Bob Gibson notwithstanding).
First baseman George Scott batted .303, with 19 homers and 82 RBI.
Shortstop Rico Petrocelli hit 17 homers, 24 doubles and drove in 66 runs.
Outfielder Reggie Smith hit 15 home runs, 24 doubles and had 57 RBI.
Second baseman Mike Andrews scored 79 runs, second best on the team, behind only Yastrzemski.
Then there was Boston's pitching.
Jim Longborg led the team with 39 starts, 273.1 innings, 246 Ks and 22 wins (against nine losses), while posting a 3.16 ERA and 1.14 WHIP.
Righty Gary Bell went 12-8 with a 3.16 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP.
Righty Lee Strange posted a 2.77 ERA and a 1.12 WHIP, despite his 8-10 record.
The Sox bullpen was outstanding in 1967. Four relievers had ERAs of 2.60 or better, led by lefty Sparky Lyle, who posted a 2.28 ERA and a team-leading 1.08 WHIP.
Righty John Wyatt led the club with 20 saves, but also had 10 wins, a 2.60 ERA and a 1.18 WHIP.
After so many years of failure and futility, no one had great expectations for the ’67 Red Sox. In the preseason, even manager Dick Williams would only predict that they’d win more than they’d lose.
The 1967 Red Sox did a whole lot more than that. They sparked a passion for baseball in New England for generations to come. They created an expectation for winning and that ownership should field a highly competitive team each season.
Though they again lost the World Series to St. Louis in seven games, the Sox still ended up as winners in the long run.
The ’67 club gave birth to one of the most popular franchises in American sports over the past half-century. Most of all, they gave Red Sox fans hope.
That is worth remembering and celebrating.
