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Happy 80th Birthday, Yaz!

With today’s post, Paul Doyle helps us celebrate the birthday of one of the all-time greats, who just happens to be his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski:

“I was lucky enough to have the talent to play baseball. That’s how I treated my career. I didn’t think I was anybody special, anybody different.” -Carl Yastrzemski

We all remember our boyhood heroes. It is one of the reasons we love the game. On August 22nd, one of the 79 living members of Baseball’s Hall of Fame celebrates a milestone birthday by turning 80.

Carl Yastrzemski certainly had big shoes to fill when he made the roster of the 1961 Red Sox. He replaced the legendary Ted Williams, who many consider the greatest hitter in the history of the game (Williams thought so, too, without shame). His rookie year was a promising one. He hit .266 with 11 home runs and 80 RBI for an awful Red Sox team. There was no indication that this son of a potato farmer from Long Island was headed towards greatness. Over the next five years, he followed up with a batting title and another year where he hit .312. The highest home run total in his first six years was a far-from-fearful 20 in 1965. Granted, this was a different era – vastly different from today’s game – in which pitching was dominant.

Then came the winter following the 1966 season. Yaz was approaching his prime, and almost everybody considered him to be a good ballplayer on a lousy team. Over that winter, he hired a personal trainer and dedicated the offseason to getting himself into the best shape of his professional career. His hard work would pay off immediately.

The 1967 season started with a new Red Sox manager, Dick Williams. He brought a little swagger with him from Toronto, where he had managed the Red Sox Triple-A farm team. It also didn’t hurt that the Sox system had finally started to show some signs of life in 1966, despite the team losing 90 games. New call ups such as Rico Petrocelli, George Scott, and Joe Foy began to pay dividends in the second half of that season. A teenaged Tony Conigliaro had shown promise in the previous three seasons with power that was setting records for fastest to 100 home runs.

Dick Williams seemed to be overstating his case when, in spring training, he boasted: “We will win more games than we lose.” The team didn’t alert anybody’s antenna that a special year was in the offing. Yet, they did at least show signs that things were different.

Led by Yaz, the Sox were winning games that the previous years they would have lost. A week into the season, a lefty rookie named of Billy Rohr took a no-hitter into the ninth inning of his first major league start against the Yankees and Whitey Ford at Yankee Stadium. After Rohr got the first out of the inning, all seemed lost as the second batter hit a vicious line drive to left. Yastrzemski came in and made a diving, unbelievable catch for out number two. Alas, the next batter, Elston Howard, hit a soft liner to break up the no-hitter; but it was the catch by Yaz that seemed to be the harbinger of better things to come.

As the long season unfolded, it soon became apparent that Yaz was having a truly amazing year. He ended up hitting .326, with 44 home runs, 121 RBI, and won the American League Triple Crown and MVP award. He became baseball’s last Triple Crown winner for 45 years until Miggy Cabrera in 2012.

Yaz was a one-man force that year, with clutch hitting throughout the entire season. The Sox were one game behind as the pivotal last series of the year approached with the team in front of them, the Minnesota Twins. Yaz had pretty much a “Ted Williams series,” going 3-for-4 with a home run and four RBI in the penultimate game. He followed that up with a 4-4 game and two RBI in the finale. With the victory, the Sox had at least clinched a tie for the pennant; and with the Tigers losing their last game to the Angels, the Red Sox were in their first World Series since 1946. Unfortunately, the fairy-tale season ended here. The Sox lost to the Cardinals in seven games in the Fall Classic. They came close again in 1975 and Yaz never had a year like he had in 1967.

Carl Yastrzemski was truly one of the premier players of his era. Over his 23-year career, he hit .285, with 3419 hits (ninth all-time), 452 home runs, 1844 RBI (14^th all-time), 646 doubles (ninth all-time), and a .379 on-base percentage. He was an 18-time All-Star, three-time American League batting champion, American League home run and RBI champion once each, and earned seven Gold Gloves.  

The “Impossible Dream” of 1967 saved baseball in Boston in the “Summer of Love.” Yaz became one of the 132 players voted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame on his first year of eligibility in 1989. His No. 8 has been retired by the Red Sox.

A boy’s love of the time matures into forever. Yaz and I share the same birthday and he was a young boy’s favorite player. Ironically, Yaz’ grandson got his chance in “The Big Show” earlier this year, as he was picked up from the Orioles organization by the Giants. He played his first big league game this past May and has remained in the line-up, hitting .282 with 17 home runs and 47 RBI as of yesterday. His feats include a three-home run game against Arizona last week and a 477-foot blast against the Rockies a week earlier.  Great stories like this are what keeps the game eternal.

Happy Birthday, Yaz! 

Paul Doyle

Photo Credits: All from Google search

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