Carl Yastrzemski Leads Red Sox to World Series on Final Day of Season (October 1, 1967)

My nascent interest in baseball was boosted by the excitement created by 1967's American League pennant race, decided on the final day of the season.  The race was between Boston, Minnesota and Detroit.  Boston played Minnesota in the closing weekend and both games were telecast.  The rabid interest shown by my dad in these games rubbed off on me and the rest of the family.  Although our hometown team was the Pittsburgh Pirates he was closely following the Red Sox's Carl Yastrzemski because of their shared Polish heritage (truth be told, my dad was never a big fan of the Pirates).

 

Boston won both games over the Twins that weekend but then had to wait for the outcome of the second game of the Tigers' doubleheader against the Angels (the Tigers lost) before laying claim to first place.  As for "Yaz" he finished the season by becoming one of the select few players to ever win the Triple Crown (i.e., highest batting average, most home runs and most runs batted in).  In fact he would be be the last player to achieve this honor.  His storybook season was instrumental in making Boston a serious contender, a huge surprise after it finished next-to-last the previous season. 

 

 

 

Before this weekend the only other baseball event I had any recollection of was the 1966 World Series between the Dodgers and Orioles.  My 15-year old sister, Linda, had a crush on Dodger pitching great Sandy Koufax and at her urging we visited our Uncle John so we could watch one of the games Koufax pitched on his new color TV.

 

Ultimately the Red Sox's magical season would end in defeat in Game 7 of the World Series versus the St. Louis Cardinals.  The book The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox recounts Boston's enthralling season.  And here's a great clip from a 1967 TV special on Boston TV station WHDH celebrating the Red Sox's season.  

 

   

 

Skip ahead to the spring of 1968.  I shocked my male classmates because here I was, the boy who preferred reading rather than go to recess, rattling off baseball statistics in front of them on the playground. It was the first instance of me being drawn to numbers and the math behind them.  This interest in statistics and the analysis of them is what would also interest me in meteorology (high/low temperatures, amounts of precipitation), music (Billboard charts) and many years later proved instrumental in fueling my career in media research.