Game Six by Mark Frost Read Free Book Online Page A

native and war veteran, the disciplined, dedicated O’Connell had been with the team since 1947, worked his way up through the organization, and inherited the job by default when Ted Williams turned it down after retiring in 1960. For the first time in thirty years, the Red Sox had a general manager in place who was an executive first, not just another featherbedding former player and Yawkey yes-man. By mid-decade O’Connell had revitalized the Red Sox farm system, producing the first steady stream of solid prospects the team had ever seen; and, not coincidentally, for the first time in franchise history many of them were Latin or African-American. When the first wave of these players was ready to step up to the majors, O’Connell tapped the man who’d been managing most of them at the team’s Triple-A franchise in Toronto, hard-liner and future Hall of Famer Dick Williams, to take over what had devolved into an aging, overpaid, and complacent Red Sox squad that played to crowds occasionally numbering in the hundreds. Fans derisively referred to this bunch as the “country club Sox” and like the team itself, Fenway Park had also fallen into disrepair. Far from the cherished shrine of the game it is today, with its peeling paint and broken windows Fenway was dismissed by most as a rusted relic from a bygone age. In the course of lobbying for a new, modern park in downtown Boston, Yawkey used the now familiar refrain of blaming his team’s woes on their antiquated stadium, and like owners everywhere he also wanted the city and taxpayers to underwrite it. His new manager was about to change all that.
    Schooled in the disciplined Dodgers tradition, the thirty-seven-year-old Williams brought the hammer down, replacing what he correctly perceived to be deadwood on the Red Sox roster with many of his players from Toronto, and opened the 1967 season withthe second-youngest lineup in either league. Everyone expected that a few seasons of rebuilding had to follow. Expectations were so low that fewer than ten thousand people turned out for Opening Day and oddsmakers calculated that the Sox were 100–1 to win the American League pennant. But with his marine drill instructor’s mouth and sharp baseball mind, Dick Williams turned his team into a contender from day one; what was known as the “Summer of Love” across America became the “Impossible Dream” in Boston, as fans hung the theme of the hit Broadway musical Man of La Mancha on their improbably resurgent Red Sox. Young outfielder Tony Conigliaro slugged fifty-six home runs in his first two seasons and had already earned matinee idol status with Boston’s female population. He was joined now by a fiery, hard-hitting shortstop from Brooklyn who quickly became another fan favorite, Rico Petrocelli. But these Sox were led on the field by the man who had replaced Ted Williams in left field in 1961 but in the minds of Boston’s demanding fans never come close to equaling him, blue-collar workaholic Carl Yastrzemski. Solid but hardly a superstar to that point in his career, Yastrzemski came of age in response to Dick Williams’s tough discipline and won the Triple Crown in 1967, leading the American League in batting average, home runs, and runs driven in; he was only the third man to pull off that trifecta since Ted Williams himself, who did it twice. Yastrzemski was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player for his efforts, but it was his performance during the season’s last two weeks that earned him a place in the hearts of Red Sox fans forever. With four teams still in the pennant race down to the wire, Yaz hit five home runs, drove in sixteen, and hit an astounding .523 as Boston won eight of their last twelve games and captured the American League pennant with a one-game lead. Tom Yawkey embraced Yaz in the clubhouse, calling it “the happiest day of my life.” Despite Yastrzemski’s continued heroics in the World Series, the Sox came up short once