Page 145 - 1975 BoSox

138 ’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL
“I got disillusioned at that point and I was wondering if it was worth it. It’s one thing to go through all that mentally, and it’s another thing to have to physically throw everything together and ... go to another place and start all over again. It really takes a lot to stick with it. You really do nd out how much you really do want it. And I think at that stage ... I wasn’t sure if I really wanted any more. With only two or three weeks left in the season after the call from Mr. Veeck and a couple of other organizations, I just said, you know what, I’m just riding out the rest of this season. en I’ll take the winter o and see what I want to do.”
During the wintertime (1976-1977), Andrew was ap- proached to play professional baseball in Italy. He took up the o er and played the 1977 season for Bollate, a well-established ballclub in Milano. e team played in a summer league, a season of 14 or 15 weeks, so Kim spent a summer playing teams in cities like Rimini, Florence, Rome, and Venice, before crowds ranging from 500 to 5,000.
Andrew recalls, “It was a pretty good experience, a cultural experience. I did my best to promote the game over there and at the same time make a few dollars... I think I led the whole league in hitting.” e league elded teams of varying talent — one maybe around Double-A level, but another being perhaps no better than a good high school team. “It was not actually a big challenge for me, but I was able to play shortstop again and I loved it. I played so well over there that when I came back after being over there, I contacted a number of organizations, and the Pirates invited me to spring training from one of the letters that I wrote to the organizations. About two, two and a half weeks prior to me reporting, I slipped o a ladder and sprained my ankle. I gured at that point maybe that was kind of a sign: your baseball career is done. O cially. So I called it a career.”
Kim returned to the United States and worked in sporting goods retail for a while, and then began
working for the company he still works for in 2005: Federal Express. He has served the last 24 years as a freight driver for FedEx, marrying a year or two after his return and raising two boys. Both boys played baseball into their high school years, but neither pursued it further. Baseball still remains in Kim’s blood, though. As of late summer 2005, he was contemplating taking early retirement at age 55 and then musing about trying to become a minor-league batting coach.
Despite the way his career ended, in retrospect he sees opportunities perhaps missed. “I was watching a base- ball game yesterday and there was a pitcher who’d been released three or four times. I said to myself, that’s amazing. And he’s pitching in the major leagues now. If I would have known that, I wouldn’t have been so disillusioned back then, probably. I realize [now] there’s always an organization that looks at you dif- ferently than the organization you’re with.”
He recalls several of the players with the Red Sox in those days, and felt particular a nity to Jack Baker, Don Aase, and Jim Burton. As a young rookie, he didn’t have a lot of personal interaction with stars like Carl Yastrzemski. “I was the bottom man on the totem pole with that team and he had a lot of power, he had a lot of in uence. I do believe he said a couple of things to me at one time or another, but I pretty much kept myself in line while I was with the time. Pretty much was there to do the job, if called upon.”
Kim Andrew was remembered when it came time to distribute World Series shares, and received a check for $500. He hadn’t expected a thing and was pleased to receive it; while with the team, he says he’d been making the major-league minimum of the day.
Sources
Author interview with Kim Andrew, July 24, 2005. www.retrosheet.org
John orn and Pete Palmer. Total Baseball.