Game Six by Mark Frost Read Free Book Online Page B

again, when the Cardinals’ ferocious African-American star pitcher, Bob Gibson, beat them three times, and they lost in seven games.
    But the memories and emotions stirred by that breathtaking pennant race had provided such a joyride it hardly seemed to matter; baseball fever had been born again in New England. The old fans who’d drifted away during the indifferent years came back to the fold, and a generation of baby boomers fell in love with this modern edition of their parents’ and grandparents’ Red Sox. During an era when clubs around both leagues tore down their charming old prewar bandboxes, putting up soulless cookie-cutter concrete “multi-use” stadiums in their place, fans also renewed their affection for the quirky, angular ballpark where their Red Sox worked and played. The “Impossible Dream” also rekindled Tom Yawkey’s ancient obsession, and between 1968 and 1975, the frayed civic image of both the ballpark and its owner underwent a complete and remarkable conversion. For all the money the Red Sox had cost him through their many lean years—by 1967 his total losses were calculated at close to $8 million—Yawkey never felt the pinch; he was worth hundreds of millions now, and against the weight of that fortune the team remained at best a minor item on his balance sheet. And as a result of their “Dream” season, from ’67 on the franchise began doing something it had never done before: making more money every year. All talk of Tom Yawkey selling the Sox, a persistent rumor in Boston for the past decade, now vanished, as did any thoughts of tearing down Fenway Park. Yawkey showed up on most game days again, an old man now but still out there in spikes and sweats playing pepper with his bat boys—he often paid for the college education of his favorites—or taking a few grounders from longtime clubhouse attendant Vinnie Orlando before games. When he shuffled into the Red Sox clubhouse, a soft-spoken, retiring figure in baggy pants and a cheap windbreaker, newcomers occasionally mistook him for an attendant himself; during their first meeting in 1974 newly acquired outfielder Bernie Carbo asked Yawkey to run out and grab him some lunch.
    Yawkey’s forty-four years as the sole owner of a professional major-league franchise had now become the longest tenure of any owner in the history of his sport, and the futility of his quest for a World Series title remained equally unmatched. In his service asvice president (now emeritus) of the American League, a post he’d held for twenty years, Yawkey stood tall as a stabilizing figure in a sport evolving through uncertain times. Most of the men who played for him remained fiercely loyal to Yawkey because of his personal kindness and undying private generosity. Although no longer his contemporaries or partners in crime, the Red Sox players had always provided the nearest thing he would ever know to an extended family; those closest to him, like Ted Williams or Carl Yastrzemski, could accurately be described as his surrogate sons. By 1975 the people of New England had bestowed upon both Yawkey and his ballpark the respect and affection they had historically shown to any person or place that in their long memories had stood the test of time; they embraced them both as local monuments. All past sins and transgressions forgiven, the Sox’s benevolent monarch had at last become beloved in his adopted town. His team hadn’t suffered another losing season since their “Impossible Dream” year; they were a perennial front-line contender now, and winning a World Series was no longer just an achievement that Red Sox fans craved for themselves; they had embraced it as a sacred and sentimental responsibility: “Let’s win one for good old Tom Yawkey.”
     
    AT EIGHT O’CLOCK, Yawkey escorted Duffy Lewis from his rooftop perch down through the stands to the playing field for the opening rituals of Game Six. Red Sox officials parted the crowd ahead of them, but