 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
Behind the Red Sox Turnaround
How could a ninth-place team rise so far so fast? What were the elements that moved its fans to new peaks of-happiness in 1967? Here are the answers on the amazing Red Sox by the man who unquestionably was their most valuable player
By Carl Yastrzemski, as told to Al Hirshberg, SPORT, November 1967
How could a ninth-place team rise so far so fast? What were the elements that moved its fans to new peaks of-happiness in 1967? Here are the answers on the amazing Red Sox by the man who unquestionably was their most valuable player Maybe the 1967 Red Sox surprised the rest of the baseball world, but I wasn't surprised at all. Even though last year we were ninth, 26 games behind the pennant-winning Orioles, I knew before the end of spring training that we had a chance for this year's pennant. It wasn't just a hunch or a hope-it was a positive conviction. Our ballclub was sound, Mike Andrews and Reggie Smith, both fine rookies, filled two big gaps at second base and center field. We had in Dick Williams a new manager who knew what he wanted and how to go about getting it. And, although not many noticed because we were so low in the standings at the time, we did have a fine second half in 1966. In terms of my previous years with the Red Sox, my confidence was completely out of character. I never before had anything beyond wild hope, and wild hope doesn't win pennants. You need talent, desire, hard work and good leadership. Until this year, we were short on all four. When I first joined the Red Sox in 1961, it was a bad ballclub getting worse. I suppose it was just as well I couldn't look into the future because then I would have known that our sixth-place finish that year would be our best until now. We sure were horrible -- eighth in 1962, seventh in 1963, eighth in 1964, ninth in 1965 and 1966. We didn't finish down among the league's patsies because we wanted to. Even in our worst years, we wanted to win. But if you don't keep your nose to the grindstone you won't. We not only didn't have the talent -- we kept our noses so far away from the grindstone we couldn't even see it. Until Dick Williams came along, we were the country club of big-league baseball. The only place you found discipline around our ballclub was in the front-office dictionary. Curfews meant nothing to us. And neither did fines. In September of 1965, after letting us get away with murder all season, manager Billy Herman suddenly popped a curfew. A big deal was made of it in the newspapers, and everyone was saying, "That'll teach those guys not to fool around." It didn't teach anybody anything. Although Herman found half a dozen guys missing in a room check one night and fined them each 50 bucks, he didn't get a single one of the real playboys. Having been tipped off, they were all neatly tucked into bed when the check was made. The guys Herman caught were at the movies or visiting family friends or something. The only thing they did wrong was forget their watches. The sudden crackdown was a mockery anyhow, because we were 40 games off the pace and, with the end of the season just a few weeks away, trying only to keep out of the cellar. The curfew was a classic case of extinguishing a fire after the house has burned down. "Why did he wait until now?" we asked each other. "Why didn't he pull this in April when it might have done some good?" And the 50-buck fines were a laugh. Anybody who wanted to break curfew would gladly pay that for a night on the town. The night itself would cost more. I really shouldn't single out Herman because, from a disciplinary standpoint; he was as much the same as the other Red Sox managers for whom I played. Mike Higgins and Johnny Pesky were even easier on us. Both took the attitude that we were grown men and could be expected to act like grown men. Some of us were and did. Too many weren't and didn't.
Williams has given us something else that no manager in my time ever did -- respect for ourselves and each other. In the old days, everybody laughed at mistakes, even when they cost ballgames. One day a few years ago, I tried to throw a man out at the plate directly from deep left instead of throwing to the cutoff man, who might have been able to get him. The throw was high and the winning run scored. When I walked into the locker room, somebody yelled, "Great parachute throw, Yaz," everybody laughed, and that was the end of it. Today I'd walk in with my head down and there wouldn't be a sound. And I'll guarantee that before the day ended the manager would be blistering my ears. We all used to laugh at Dick Stuart, who was with us in 1963 and 1964, the two years Pesky managed. Stuart was one of the world's worst fielders. Whenever he kicked away a ball, we'd come into the locker room laughing, and somebody was sure to yell, "Good old Big Stu. You can always trust him to blow one in the clutch." Instead of getting mad, Stu would yell back, "I'm not getting paid to field. I'm getting paid to hit" -- and everyone would laugh and laugh and laugh. Dick Williams, who was with us as a player those same two years, laughed with the rest of us, but that was yesterday. Today he wouldn't stand for a Stuart either on the field or in the locker room. Williams says Stuart defied Pesky time and again, drawing him into pointless arguments that sometimes developed into shouting matches. He got as sick as any of us at Stu's constant bragging about his home runs and RBI, and at Stu's don't-give-a-damn attitude about the ballclub. Much of Williams' success this year came out of those two seasons as a Red Sox player. At spring training, one of the first things he said was, "I was around here when all anyone thought about was himself. We'll have no more of that. Anybody who plays for me will put the ballclub first and himself second." And that was just what happened. Whenever we needed a run, we went after it any way we could. No matter who came up, it was his job to move a base-runner up and forget his personal records. This went for everyone, sluggers and banjo-hitters alike. Tony Conigliaro, a righthanded pull hitter, followed me in the batting order. We've got a short left-field fence at Fenway Park, which Conigliaro loves because he can rattle base hits off it and belt homers over it. But six times this year he tried to push the ball behind me to move me from first base to second, or from second to third. In Chicago last August, I hit two homers in the first game of a Sunday ,doubleheader that climaxed a big series. That put me in a tie with Harmon Killebrew for the league home-run leadership and added to my RBI leadership. Any other year I would have gone for the fences the rest of the night, but Gary Peters was hot in the second game and all any of us worried about was getting on base. In the ninth inning I came up with the score tied, nobody out and Jerry Adair on first. When I got the bunt sign, I bunted-badly, I might add, since I forced Adair at second-but it never occurred to me to question the sign. My job was to try to move Adair up so somebody else could drive him home. Before this year I would have tried to do it myself. But before this year everybody was trying to do things himself. Big Stu really was no worse than the rest of us. We weren't winning games, so we just salvaged what we could for ourselves. In 1963, for example, I led the league in batting and Stuart in RBI, but we finished seventh, so how much good did either of us do the team? Yet I didn't consider the season a total loss, and neither did Stu. That 1963 club looked better than it really was. We had youth -- Dick Radatz, Earl Wilson, Dave Morehead, Lu Clinton, Chuck Schilling, Gary Geiger, Bob Tillman, myself. We had Stuart at first, Schilling at second, Eddie Bressoud at short and Frank Malzone at third. Clinton, Geiger and I were the outfielders. Tilly and Russ Nixon shared the catching, and besides Radatz, Wilson and Morehead, the pitching staff included guys like Monbouquette, Ike Delock and Gene Conley. Not a great team, but not a bad one. When the season began, I thought we had a chance. And for the first half it looked as if we might. Pesky, a rookie manager, had us hustling and working together so well that even Stuart got into the act. He was talking pennant along with the rest of us right up to the All-Star break. Then, suddenly, we collapsed, really collapsed. I never saw a ballclub lose it so fast. It was unbelievable, one of the mysteries of my baseball career. To this day I don't know what happened. All I know is that we interrupted two long losing streaks with one or two wins and nosedived deep into the second division. By Labor Day, we were completely disorganized, hopelessly bogged down, with every one going his own way. Pesky never could pick up the pieces and put them together again. Pesky and I got along all right that season, but we had a massive misunderstanding the following fall. Just before the season ended, Pesky had been quoted as saying he had made a lot of mistakes as manager. Some weeks later, I was asked what I thought of the Red Sox chances in 1964. "Well," I said, "in order to improve, the ballclub will have to improve, I'll have to improve and, as Pesky himself said, he'll have to improve." I think everything would have been all right if I had been quoted word for word, but the story came out that I had originated all three criticisms -- of the club, of myself and of the manager. Actually, I had originated only two. As far as the manager was concerned, I had simply paraphrased his own quotes, and said so. But the damage had been done, and from then on, relations between Pesky and me were always strained. Despite our coolness towards each other, there was only one unpleasant incident. I woke up in Cleveland one morning with a temperature of 102, and went to the ballpark not knowing whether I could play or not. I told coach Harry Malmberg I'd start the game, but didn't know how long I'd last. My first time up I could hardly swing the bat, so I asked the coach to tell Pesky to take me out. When Pesky left me in, I took a burn that built up as the game progressed. I was sure Pesky was taking advantage of me. I was so mad I didn't run out a groundball in the eighth. Back in Boston, Pesky benched me. When I asked him why, he said, "Because you didn't hustle in Cleveland." "How could you expect me to hustle with a temperature of 102?" I said. "I didn't know you were sick," he said. "I told Malmberg," I said. "Well, he didn't tell me," Pesky said. "You should have told me yourself." He was right, of course, so I apologized. It was the only time all year that we reached anything approaching an understanding. We just didn't communicate. To tell the truth, I just didn't communicate with any Red Sox manager before Williams, including Billy Jurges, who managed the club in 1960 when I first went to spring training at Scottsdale. I hardly knew him because outside of a hello when I got there, we didn't exchange a word. I didn't have a chance of sticking with the club. I was a second-baseman, and Pete Runnels had that job nailed down. But when I led the club in batting, homers and RBI that spring, I thought maybe they'd take me north and play me somewhere else. Instead, they sent me to Minneapolis, which bugged me. Maybe I'd have been a little happier if Jurges had given me some word of encouragement, advice or explanation, but he didn't. I got all that, and more, from Gene Mauch, the Minneapolis manager, whom I thought was fantastic. Mauch and I got along so well I would have played for him anywhere. Dick Williams reminds me of Mauch. All that either demands of a ballplayer is his best. Neither will settle for anything less. They're both supposed to be tough, and they are -- on guys who loaf or break the rules. But Mauch certainly wasn't tough with me. He did everything he could to encourage me, to make me feel wanted, to show me he thought I had a great future. Williams won't take any nonsense, but he isn't as tough as he seems either. He appreciates a good job. He's the first one out of the dugout to congratulate a winning pitcher at the end of a ballgame, the first to greet you with a handshake on the bench after you hit a home run, the first one on the field when somebody gets hurt. When we had a rough time at Anaheim in August -- we lost three one-run games in a row to the Angels on a road trip that found us dropping seven games out of nine -- he realized we were tight as fiddle strings. After one of the losses, he walked into the gloomiest Red Sox locker room I ever saw and yelled, "Okay, gang,' no curfew tonight. Go anywhere you, want, do anything you want and come in whenever you want." Everybody cheered, the tension was broken, and two days later we started winning again. Williams had no patience with guys who let themselves get out of shape. When Joe Foy and George Scott put on weight, he benched them, gave them strict diets and wouldn't return them to the lineup until they slimmed down. That prompted manager Bill Rigney of the Angels to remark, "In the major leagues we have 19 managers and a dietician." But it worked. Scott and Foy both hit well again as soon as they were back in condition. At 215 pounds, Scott looked so svelte somebody started calling him "Twiggy." No other Red Sox manager I played for took such a tough stand. Of all Williams' predecessors in my time, I feel Billy Herman had the best managerial potential. He brought ideas into the clubhouse. He wanted to change our game, to transform us from a stodgy, uninteresting collection of guys waiting for somebody to hit the long ball into a heads-up group playing a moving game -- stealing, bunting, running, etc. His baseball was sound, but he couldn't control the ballclub. Like the others, Herman simply didn't communicate. He left too much to his coaches; in fact, he left too much to his ballplayers. Maybe he tried to be too nice a guy. Whatever it was, he didn't run the club, he let it run him. After our ninth-place finish in 1965, we went to 1966 spring training at Winter Haven hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst. One night at a barbecue sponsored by the people of the city, Dick Radatz suggested we have a private meeting, excluding even the manager and the coaches. Herman made the mistake of going along with us, and we had our meeting a day or two later. With Radatz and Earl Wilson addressing the club, we let our hair down, promising each other we would do whatever we could to change our country-club image. We were sick of losing, sick of small crowds at ball games, sick of being laughing stocks, sick of the press criticism which had plagued us for years. We were a young team, with good future possibilities, and we wanted to capitalize on our talents instead of frittering them away. It was a good enough meeting, but there was one thing wrong with it. The manager and the coaches were on the, outside, not even looking in. Everything that Radatz and Wilson said should have been said by Herman. During that Winter Haven meeting, somebody suggested we elect a captain. I objected. I thought the captain should be appointed by the manager, not elected by the players, and I said so. But later Herman himself overruled me. "I want a captain," he said "but I don't want to have to name him."
The boys took the talk very well, much better than I expected, in fact. They gave me their undivided attention, took what I said seriously, and made it clear obvious they intended to cooperate. If I had given such a talk even the year before, it might have been a disaster. Somebody would have laughed, or restlessly moved around or started reading a paper or something else embarrassing, but not this time. These boys really wanted to get the job done. Although we got off to a poor start. I was encouraged by the change of attitude. These guys wanted to win, they wanted to get out of the mess we had been in for so long. And there was new and great potential on this ballclub. Kids like George Scott and Rico Petrocelli and Jim Lonborg and Joe Foy were first-rate ballplayers. This was the most talented Red Sox ballclub I had ever seen. The men most responsible for this new look on the Red Sox were Dick O'Connell and Haywood Sullivan. O'Connell was appointed general manager in 1965 and he hired Sullivan, a former Red Sox catcher, to be in charge of playing personnel. And suddenly, the Red Sox came alive in the player market. We swapped and bought and sold and made bold shifts, which changed the whole complexion of our ballclub. By midseason of 1966, I hardly recognized this team. It was full of hard-working, gung-ho kids who were used to winning in the minors and determined to keep right on winning in the majors. Although we finished ninth, we were only half a game behind eighth and a much better ballclub in the second half of the season than we had been earlier.
At the beginning of the year our toughest problems were pitching and catching. We all knew we'd have a chance if the pitching held up, but we were shaky about it. Our only real stopper was Jim Lonborg, who had never pitched better than .500 ball for us but had been extremely sharp in Florida. The rest of the staff was nursed along by a combination of shrewd maneuvering by Williams and hard work by Sal Maglie, our pitching coach, and Al Lakeman, our bullpen catcher, to say nothing of the pitchers themselves. Williams shipped Dave Morehead and Jerry Stephenson to Toronto. They were both promising young pitchers who complained of periodic sore arms. However, shook by being sent down, both did so well in Toronto that they were back with us by August as winners at a time when we needed them most. Williams practically ignored Lee Stange for about six weeks. Stange had done well for us in the last part of the 1966 season but looked ineffective in spring training. By the time Williams noticed him, he was raring to go, and, for the rest of the season. he was a solid starter. So was Gary Bell, whom we obtained in a June trade with Cleveland. Bucky Brandon was a starter and Jose Santiago a reliever when the season began, but finished the other way around, to the advantage of both and the ballclub. Our other top relievers, Johnny Wyatt and Dan Osinski, had good years. Sparky Lyle, a young lefthander, took some of the pressure off them after he came up from Toronto in August. We solved the catching problem with Elston Howard, whom we picked up from the Yankees in early August. Despite his age -- he's 38 -- Howard gave us a tremendous lift. He steadied the kids, handled the pitchers perfectly, hit well in the clutches and, maybe most important of all, brought some of that old Yankee magic into our clubhouse. He also helped make a better catcher of Mike Ryan, who shared the job with him. One of our most amazing pickups this year was Jerry Adair, whom we got from the White Sox for Don McMahon in June. Adair (he pronounces it "Ay-dair") is such a quiet guy you wouldn't know he was around, and for a while we didn't. Then he filled in for Petrocelli at shortstop for three weeks and did a wonderful job. When Andrews' hitting tailed off, he did just as well at second. When Joe Foy needed a rest, he picked us up at third. And, day after day, he came through with key hits in clutches. "He smells that World Series money," somebody said the last week of August, and I guess the guy was right. Adair missed the big potato last year when the Orioles traded him, and when he came to us the White Sox were leading the league.
But don't get me wrong. I don't mind rock-and-roll. It was a pleasure to live with the noise and the looseness, a welcome contrast to the dull days of the past. Another thing I didn't mind was losing the captaincy of the Red Sox. Right after he was appointed manager, Williams announced that the Red Sox would have no captain in 1967. That was fine with me. It turned out that all I was as captain was a liaison man between players and the managerial staff. I got no closer to the manager and I kept drawing away from the players. I'd intercede for a guy who would protest that he didn't know the curfew time had been cut from two-and-a-half hours after a game to an hour and three-quarters. Then I'd discover that the fellow I was defending hadn't blown the curfew by minutes but by a couple of hours. It was a pleasure to know we had a manager who could handle this type of situation, that we finally had a manager ready to play the part. From the moment he took over, Williams was the boss. He got rid of all the individuality, made us into a team, gave us an incentive, made us want to win. We had a happy locker room, with plenty of music and yelling and fun, but only before games and only when we won. When we lost, the place was like a morgue. The days when we took defeat as easily as victory were gone. George Scott and Joe Fay kept us loose. Scott, with his big grin and his Mississippi accent that nobody could understand, just knocked us dead. Nobody knew what he was talking about and he knew it, but he kept right on talking anyhow because he knew we loved to listen to him. We laughed with him, not at him, and he knew that, too. Foy was a marvelous story-teller, always ready with a gag to fit the occasion. We were a hard-working, talented, happy ballclub. Like Big Stu, we felt we were getting paid to hit, but unlike him we also felt we were getting paid to catch and to run and to throw and to do all the other things that make a complete ballplayer. No more did we think, "How am I doing?" When we won, we said to ourselves, "What did I contribute?" And when we lost we said, "How could I have prevented it'!" Everybody talked that way all season. And that's what's happened to the Red Sox.
|
