Page 160 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 153
well at Wellsville, batting .363, hitting 24 homers, and winning the league’s Rookie of the Year and MVP awards. He played that autumn at instructional league in Sarasota and was added to the Red Sox’ 40-man roster. e next spring, 1964, the Sox brought him to their big-league spring training headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Boston’s manager was Johnny Pesky who, as it hap- pened, lived on the same street in Swampscott to which the Conigliaro family had recently moved: Parsons Street. Pesky saw the re in Tony Conigliaro and played him that spring; Tony hit a monster home run o Cleveland’s Gary Bell on March 22, the rst day his parents came to visit him in Scottsdale. Ted Williams admired Conigliaro’s style and told him, whatever he did, “Don’t change that solid stance of yours, no matter what you’re told.”Ted told reporters, though, “He’s just a kid; he’s two years away.”4
Johnny Pesky saw otherwise.Tony C was 19 and only in his second year in Organized Baseball, but he made the big-league club as the center elder for the Red Sox. Pesky was taking a chance on a relatively untested player, but the 1964 Sox, frankly, didn’t have a great deal of talent.
Conigliaro’s rst major-league game was in Yankee Stadium on April 16. In his rst major-league at-bat, against Whitey Ford, he stepped into the box with men on rst and second, and grounded into a double play. His third time up, he singled and nished the day 1-for-5. e next day, April 17, was the home opener at Fenway Park.Tony was batting seventh in the order, facing Joe Horlen of the White Sox. He swung at Horlen’s rst pitch and hit it over the Green Monster in left eld, and even over the net that hung above the Wall. Tony Conigliaro, wearing number 25, took his rst home-run trot. Tony told writers afterward that he always swung at the rst good pitch he saw. “I don’t like to give the pitcher any kind of edge,”he said.5
In that same spirit, Conigliaro crowded the plate. And pitchers, quite naturally, tried to back him o the plate. He was often hit by pitches, and su ered his rst injury on May 24 when Kansas City’s Moe Drabowsky
hit him in the left wrist, causing a hairline fracture. Fortunately, Tony missed only four games.
Back in the lineup, back pounding out homers, Tony hit number 20 in the rst game of a July 26 double- header against Cleveland. In the second game, he got hit for the fth time in the season, by Pedro Ramos. It broke his arm. is time he missed a month, out until September 4. Conigliaro nished the season with 24 homers and a .290 average.
In 1965, under manager Billy Herman, Tony played in 138 games and hit 32 more homers, enough to lead the league, though his average dipped to .269. During the June free-agent draft, there was more good news for the Conigliaro family: e Red Sox used their rst pick to select Tony’s younger brother, Billy. Tony was struck yet again by another ball on July 28, when a Wes Stock pitch broke his left wrist. It was the third broken bone Tony had su ered in just over 14 months. He simply refused to back o the plate. Orioles execu- tive Frank Lane intimated that Red Sox pitchers could defend Tony a bit better by retaliating.
Su ering no serious injuries in 1966, Tony got in a very full season, seeing action in 150 games. He banged out 28 homers and drove in 93 runs, leading the league in sacri ce ies with seven. His average was .265 and the Boston writers voted him Red Sox MVP. e Red Sox as a team, though, played poorly in these years. In 1966 they were spared the ignominy of last place only because the Yankees played even worse. Boston ended the year in ninth place, 26 games out of rst, and the Yankees ended in tenth, 261⁄2 games behind the Orioles. In his rst three years in the majors, the highest that one of Tony’s teams nished was eighth place in 1964.
Tony C’s brilliant play shone all the more because of the colorless team around him. e local boy made good was a teenage heartthrob and the 6-foot-3 hand- some star attracted a lot of attention from local girls, and girls on the road. Assigning older players as room- mates to provide a stabilizing presence didn’t do the trick. Dick Williams wrote in his autobiography, “I never saw him. Not late at night, not rst thing in the