Fenway Park 10/5/1967
Yaz is 78 this Tuesday, August 22. I covered him the night Dick Williams was fired in 1969, a kid in his first year at the Boston Globe, right through to that final game in 1983, when Indians pitcher Dan Spillner tried to lay in a BP fastball, missed thrice, Yaz popped it up and later bid adieu by being the first player to do a farewell, thank you tour around Fenway. Then was still signing autographs two hours later.
Carl Yastrzemski was not a man to wear his emotions publicly, although he once buried home plate in dirt. He grew up on a potato farm during World War Two, when there were famines and droughts and wartime poverty, and he was ever proud, he may have also been the last of The Depression ballplayers.
He was never flamboyant. He left whatever clothes he took on a road trip and left them at his Fenway locker, and when it was time to go the clubhouse kids, whom he always took care of, had the suitcase packed with the same clothes. One time in Seattle Dick Drago spilled salad dressing on his nice leather jacket, couldn’t remove the stain and threw it in the trash can in the visiting clubhouse.
Yaz pulled it out of the trash can, took it to the cleaners and wore it for the next three years.
He used to like me to leave my New York Times on the chair at his locker, home and away, saving him 50 cents.
In the 46 years I have regularly covered major league baseball, I can unequivocally say he was the toughest man I have ever known. And I say that with the greatest of respect. I wish I’d been there the first time the Carl faced Bob Gibson in spring training, 1968, after they’d faced one another in the previous World Series. “I remember when I came up, he walked down towards home plate and said, ‘I’m going to strike you out,” Yaz recalls. “I said, ‘no you’re not.’ He was even competitive in a spring training game.” So was Yaz. They admired one another because they were so much alike.
“I think my toughness put me in the Hall of Fame,” Yastrzemski said this April. “When I came to the plate, even though I knew I was going to get thrown at, it never bothered me. I never was hit in the head, which was fortunate. I used to think, ‘this pitcher is not going to bother me. I tried to raise myself to another level.”
One night late in his career the Red Sox were playing in Anaheim, the Red Sox had the bases loaded, with Jerry Remy on third, and Gene Mauch brought in a lefthanded reliever named Angel Moreno.
Understand, Gene Mauch loved Yaz like a son. He was the manager of the Minneapolis Millers when Yastrzemski was brought up from Raleigh, where he’d batted .377, to the Red Sox triple-A Minneapolis team for the playoffs (Haywood Sullivan was a backup catcher on that team).
Moreno threw a pitch behind Yastrzemski’s head. The next day, Remy recalled “Carl was like an assassin—don’t get even, get revenge. He stepped out, gathered himself, took a few deep breaths, seemingly ground part of the bat into sawdust, then got in the box.”
The line drive actually ticked Moreno’s ear as it went through the box and into center field, tying the game. Mauch came up, straddled Moreno laying on the mound, waving to the bullpen for another reliever without even speaking to his pitcher. Instead, Mauch was yelling, ‘I told you never to throw at him.”
“I remember that,” says Yaz. “I heard Mauch say that.”
That wasn’t my favorite Yaz revenge memory. In 1978, the Red Sox were on them climb back from 14 game lead to 3 ½ game deficit. It was the second-to-last weekend of the season, and they were playing the Blue Jays in Toronto, down 7-5 in the ninth inning with two runners on base. The Jays brought in a young, fireballing lefthander named Balor Moore, who got ahead of Yaz 0-and-2.
Then threw consecutive pitches at what looked like 100 MPH in the vicinity of Yastrzemski’s head.
“Number one, I was behind in the count,” Yaz remembers. “When it got to one-and-two, I didn’t expect to be thrown at, and he threw behind me, which is difficult because if you fall backwards, you get hit. I fell forward. I was a little irritated, and I kept saying, ‘hit it hard somewhere. He threw me a slider and I hit it—off the top of the center field fence.” Game tied, and eventually won.
“When I got to third I called time and started walking towards him and I remember calling him every name in the book, figuring he’d come towards me. That was probably the first time in my career I was looking to fight.”
Moore turned his back and walked towards first base. Yaz spit in his direction, then walked back to the third base bag.”
After the game, Yaz told me, “that may have been the closest I’ve ever come to death.” If you think, at 78, he’s lost any memory, he recalls where I used the quote in my story.
In April, as we went through that moment, he looked at me and said, ‘that was my finest at-bat. I think of all the at-bats I ever head, because of the balls being thrown at my head then hitting an outstanding pitch on the outside of the plate, I’ll always remember that as my greatest at-bat.”
Yaz still loves to talk about the sequence with Dean Chance when he stayed on the hard sinker down and away, lined the ball into center and keyed the winning rally on the final day. He well remembers how they had to wait to see what happened with the Tigers playing the Angels and whether or not there would be a playoff with Detroit, how the entire team pulled up chairs and sat in a circle in the Boston clubhouse listening to the Tiger-Angel game on a radio. And how Angels manager had three pitchers warming up in the bullpen.”
Carl Yastrzemski admits he thought about going to general manager Dick O’Connell to ask to be traded in the 1966-67 winter “because It was hard to play with no one in the stands.”: Yes, Yaz was the left fielder on Sept. 16, 1965, when Dave Morehead threw his no-hitter before 1257 fans.
He lived for the crowds, and the competition. First time up against 25-3 Ron Guidry in the ’78 game he smoked a homer to right field, and Ken Harrelson holted out of the TV booth and yelled, “can you believe that old SOB? He’s incredible.”
I wasn’t all that surprised. Late in his career, Yaz had me shag for him as he prepared at 3 p.m on the road. He changed his stance each game according to the pitcher, would tell me where to park myself and why. It was never about mechanics. It was about what he planned to do to beat that night’s pitcher. He had the mechanics down; play him in tennis, and he’d run all over the court to hit backhand with the same swing with which he torched Guidry.
It’s been a half-century since he went 7-for-8 on the last two days to beat the Twins, to go 23-for-46 down the stretch and capture the triple crown. He was the only American League player to hit .300 in 1968. He hit 40 homers three times in four years. He led all major league position players in Wins Above Replacement in 1967, 1968 and 1970, in the process of winning nine gold gloves.
He was a man who some thought hard, but he never let childhood famines or a damaged wrist (which caused him to go nearly a calendar year in 1971-72 without a home run).
Today’s millennial fans lump him in the retired number club as an afterthought to Ted Williams and David Ortiz. But, remember, he began his first game as a rookie in 1961 was the first game played at Fenway by the Red Sox after Ted’s final at-bat, and with an empty park and dreadful teams, he spent six years being compared to Ted. That, of course, was not fair. Ted, Yaz, Papi and all the other great Red Sox players are all dramatically different.
But I know this: I grew up in the town of Groton, 2000 people when I was in first grade, and for years I heard how a famous columnist in Boston killed Williams, writing that in the 10 biggest games of his career (the 1946 world series, the 1948 playoff against Cleveland, the final two days of the ’49 season when they lost the pennant in Yankee Stadium) Williams was 8-for-34; never mind that he was hit by a pitch in an exhibition before the ’46 series and couldn’t swing the bat right.
So, in lieu of any comparisons, I offer THE 24 BIGGEST GAMES OF CARL YASTRZEMSKI’S CAREER:
–The final two games of the 1967 season. Twins went to Boston, the Red Sox won both games, and there was pandemonium on the field. 7-for-8, one homer, 6 RBIs
–The 1967 World Series, lost to St. Louis in 7 games. Batted .400 with a 1.370 OPS
–Oct. 2-3, at Detroit, Red Sox went in tied with the Tigers for the final three game series, the Tigers won the first two 4-1, 2-1, and clinched. He had two hits and a homer in the games.
–The 1975 ALCS, World Series. Swept Oakland in the ALCS, lost to the Reds in 7 games of the World Series. Batted .455 with a 1.318 OPS in the ALCS, and .310 against the Reds.
-The 1978 A.L. playoff, lost 5-4 to the Yankees. Homered, singled.
In those 24 games, Yaz’s record:
84 AB
35 H
.417 AVG
21 Runs
6 HR
19 RBI
.738 Slugging %
Assists from Left Field: 4
I think about what might have been had he played for teams like the 1995-2001 Yankees, then I think about that at-bat against Balor Moore in Toronto in September, 1978, what today he calls the greatest at-bat of his career, the at-bat that best defines a 78 year old man who is the toughest player I’ve ever covered.
