Page 123 - 1975 BoSox

116 ’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL
the playo roster, but did get a $250 check as a partial World Series share.
Talking about twists and turns, Rick might have made the team out of spring training had it not been for a last-minute Tony Conigliaro home run. As Kreuger tells the story, it was the last day of spring training. He packed his bags and the clubhouse guys loaded them on the truck headed to Boston. Conigliaro was trying to mount a comeback, but it was “the last game or second to last game of spring, and he hit like .130, but he hit this home run, three-run homer or some- thing. And so they tell me the last day as we’re getting ready to pull out, ‘Rick, we’ve decided to take Tony with us to Boston. You’re going have to go, you know, back.’ I was just devastated.
“Well, ironically, Darrell Johnson’s daughter was chasing me around then, right. And I knew, those guys would say, ‘Stay away from her. Stay away from her.’ So I stayed away from her, and I even told her so. But that last day, I was so devastated. I was with the guys in Triple-A, drinking it up and kind of having my pity party and she calls up and wants me to go o with her somewhere. So we do. Next thing I know, she’s, you know, writing and she’s telling her mother all about me. And I didn’t know this until I was brought up to Boston. And Mrs. Johnson said, ‘Oh yeah, you’re Rick Kreuger, Dara’s told us all about you.’ ose guys said it was the kiss of death. So the next thing I know is that winter, Darrell Johnson takes my big-league contract away from me.” It was the winter of 1975. By 1976, Kreuger continued, “the Red Sox had had enough of [ Johnson]. I don’t know if it was because of his drinking or whatever else, but, anyways they got rid of him. As soon as they got rid of him, they gave my contract back to me.”
Kreuger felt he was sort of stuck behind Bill Lee in the Red Sox system, but he played under Joe Morgan in Pawtucket until he got a call-up to the big-league club. e last night before he was to report, though, Morgan put him in a game against Rochester and, while covering rst base on a groundball, he caught his ankle in a little hole and “I sprained the crap out of my ankle.” His rst appearance with Boston in 1976
was in August. He was given a start on the 17th in the second game of a doubleheader in Chicago’s Comiskey Park. He was pulled in the fourth inning, with the Red Sox ahead 6-2. He’d walked six White Sox batters. An inherited run scored after Dick Pole came in. Kreuger got in seven other games, including three other starts, and wound up with a 4.06 ERA in 31 innings, with a 2-1 record. His best game was the night of September 21 in a start against Milwaukee at Fenway. Rick had a no-hitter going into the seventh inning, but lost 3-1, despite nishing with a complete- game three-hitter.“ e crowd there gave me a standing ovation. I tipped my cap, absorbed it all in, and kept on going into the dugout. I wondered at the time, how many people actually get a standing ovation at Fenway Park? It doesn’t get much better than that.”2
In 1977 Kreuger failed to make the cut out of spring training and was back at Pawtucket once more. at year he appeared in only one big-league game. It was August 26 and the Red Sox and the Twins were tied, 4-4, after seven innings at Fenway Park. Kreuger took over for Don Aase, to pitch the eighth. He threw four pitches and never recorded an out. With two strikes on Rod Carew, he threw the pitch he wanted but Carew icked a are over Butch Hobson at third and made it to second base for a double. “Lyman Bostock comes up and I’m still thinking about Carew, and I throw the rst pitch right down the chute.” Bostock hit it into right eld, where Jim Rice was playing that day. Rice red a ball to the plate but with so much force it ew over the plate and into the net behind home plate. Manager Don Zimmer called on Bill Campbell to come in. He got the rst two batters, but then Mike Cubbage singled home Bostock, and Kreuger was charged with two earned runs in zero innings pitched, and quite properly tagged with the loss. ose were his four major-league pitches in 1977, and his last four for the Red Sox.
Zimmer wasn’t pleased. “He threw me in the bullpen after that, never to be heard from again.” Ferguson Jenkins was banished to the bullpen, too. “Fergie was in such bad terms with Zimmer that he was actually sleeping out in the bullpen. He knew he was not going