Page 170 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 163
over. I didn’t bitch about it and complain. So I guess that was it.”
Bob Heise took retirement philosophically. “I sort of did. I wanted to raise my kids. I wanted to be at home. And that’s what I did. I became a police o cer, and I did that for 26 years until a couple of years ago. I retired, and I got cancer. I had cancer for about 21⁄2 years and right now I’ve beat the cancer. At my last checkup, I was cancer-free.” Heise’s work in corrections saw him work at Vacaville himself, as well as San Quentin and a couple of other facilities. He also worked ghting res for 16 years.
Heise has two children and two stepkids. One son was, Heise said, “very good in baseball, but he did not have the drive I had.”He served in the Army instead, and graduated from police academy, going on to get a college degree. Heise himself got o ers to join some of the card and memorabilia shows, but didn’t take up the o ers, recognizing that there, too, he’d be playing the role of a utilityman. He’s content to stay home in what he contentedly calls his small two- stoplight town and play golf several times each week.
Did he feel happy when the Red Sox nally won it all in 2004? “I did. I did, for one person — Tom Yawkey. He treated everybody really great. When I came over in ‘75, he tore my contract in spring training and then I got some key base hits and we won same games and we went back into rst place and he called me back in and ripped it up again. We’re talking about little [amounts], but back in those times, they were big.” Heise said that with a laugh, but indeed the raises were very signi cant — $5,000 at a time when Heise was making a reported $30,000.1
Yawkey was “One of the best owners in baseball, ever. So wherever he’s at, you know, you know, in his grave or whatever, that was really great to see Boston win it last year.
“You know, I have an American League Championship ring, and it says Boston Red Sox on it. And it’s a thing that I’ll get to pass down to my son, Bobby Jr. And now he just had a son, that’s Robert Lowell Heise III, and he’ll pass it down to his kid.”
After the cancer and the radiation which proved successful, Heise also had to bear back surgery and then in 2010 he got Parkinson’s disease. It prevents him from considering long-distance travel, such as to Fenway Park for the 40th anniversary celebration of the 1975 Red Sox team scheduled for May 2015, but through exercise he’s been able to slow down the onset of the degenerative disease. In early 2015, he said, “I’ve slowed it down. I exercise daily and it hasn’t moved very fast. With a lot of exercise, it’s about the same as it was back in 2010. I’m playing golf three times a week.” His attitude is a refreshing one: “I’m doing okay. Besides that and the back surgery, in the last 10 years, life’s been pretty good to me. I can’t complain. e kids are all doing well and my wife and I are happy and we’re doing well.”
Sources
Personal interviews with Bob Heise on August 23, 2005, and January 9, 2015. All quotations attributed to Heise come from these inter- views unless otherwise indicated.
retrosheet.org.
thebaseballcube.com.
e Reporter, Vacaville California.
Gammons, Peter. Beyond the Sixth Game (Lexington, Massachusetts: e Stephen Greene Press, 1986.
Notes
1 Peter Gammons lists Heise’s 1975 salary as $30,000 a year; whether that was before or after the Yawkey raises, we do not know. See Peter Gammons, Beyond the Sixth Game (Lexington, Massachusetts: e Stephen Greene Press, 1986), 281.