Page 159 - 1975 BoSox

NO MATTER HOW YOU measure it, Tony Conigliaro’s career got o to a terri c start, but tragedy
repeatedly intervened and the great promise of his early years remained unful lled. A local boy made good, Tony was born and raised in the Boston area, signedwiththehometownteam,andmadehismajor- league debut in 1964 soon after he turned 19 years old. In his very rst at-bat at Fenway Park, Tony turned on the very rst pitch he saw and pounded it out of the park for a home run. By hitting 24 home runs in his rookie season, he set a record for the most home runs ever hit by a teenager. When he led the league in homers with 32 the following year, he became the youngest player ever to take the home run crown. When he hit home run number 100, during the rst game of a doubleheader on July 23, 1967, he was only 22 — the youngest AL player to reach the 100-homer plateau. He hit number 101 in the day’s second game.
Asifthatwasn’tenough,TonyConigliarowasabona- de celebrity and singer with a couple of regional hit records to his credit.
Tony C was born on January 7, 1945, in Revere, Massachusetts, a few miles north of Boston, and grew up both there and in East Boston, where he rst played Little League ball at age 9. Tony and his younger brother Billy (b. 1947) were obsessed with baseball, playing it at every possible opportunity, usually with the support and guidance of their uncle
Vinnie Martelli. “He used to pitch batting practice to me for hours, till my hands bled,” wrote Conigliaro in his autobiog- raphy Seeing It rough.1 In his very rst at-bat for the Orient Heights Little League team, Tony hit a home run over the center- eld fence. He credited coach Ben Campbell for giving him tremendous encouragement in youth baseball.
Tony confessed that at a very early age, “I discovered how much I hated to lose.”2 His teams didn’t lose that often. By the time he was 13 and in Pony League, they were traveling out of state in tournament play. Tony went to high school at St. Mary’s in Lynn, where his father, Sal, was working at Triangle Tool and Dye. Sal andTony’smother,Teresa,wereverysupportiveofhis athletic endeavors and were a xture at Tony’s various ballgames.
As both a shortstop and pitcher, Tony had already come to the attention of scouts like Lennie Merullo and Milt Bolling and by the time he graduated claimed to have had as many as 14 scouts tracking him. In his nal couple of years, he recalled batting over .600 and having won 16 games on the mound, and remembered his team winning the Catholic Conference Championship. He played American Legion ball in the summers, with the same .600 batting average. e Red Sox asked Tony to come to a 1962 workout at Fenway Park, where both he and Tony Horton showed theirstu .WhentheLegionseasonendedandTony’s father courted bids, Boston’s Milt Bolling and Red Sox farm director Neil Mahoney made the best bid at $20,000 and Tony signed with the Red Sox.3 He was sent to Bradenton for the Florida Instructional League.
It was Conigliaro’s rst time far from home, and he didn’t stand out that well at winter ball. In the spring of 1963, he was invited to the Red Sox minor-league
camp at Ocala. He did well there, and was assigned to Wellsville in the New York-Penn League. Before he reported, he went home to see his girlfriend, got in a ght with a local boy, and broke his thumb. He wasn’t able to report to Wellsville until the end of May. at was the end of Conigliaro’s pitching career, but the scouts were looking at his hitting more than his pitching anyway.Tony did
Tony Conigliaro
by Bill Nowlin
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