Page 228 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 221
packed us up just before the end of school every year and my mother drove us to our summer home. If the team was lucky enough to make the playo s we started school in that city and then returned to Sayreville.”
Never having managed higher than Class A in his rst 14 seasons, Popowski was suddenly tabbed as the manager of Triple-A Minneapolis in 1960, under unusual circumstances. After managing the Philadelphia Phillies’ opening game in 1960, Eddie Sawyer announced that he no longer wanted the job and promptly resigned. On the eve of Minneapolis’s opener, the team’s manager, Gene Mauch, was hired to replace Sawyer in Philadelphia, while Popowski, only two days from his own opener for Alpine, was promoted to the helm of the Red Sox’ top farm club. It was in Minneapolis that Pop worked closely with Carl Yastrzemski to convert him from an in elder to an out elder, which ultimately allowed Yaz to take over Boston’s left eld after Ted Williams retired in September 1960.
After the season Popowski returned to manage in the lower minors until September 1966, when he was named a Red Sox coach for 1967. Manager Billy Herman had been red near the end of the 1966 season. Coach Pete Runnels was named interim manager to nish the season but made it known he would not be in the picture in 1967 due to a private business com- mitment. Popowski was named to replace Runnels on the coaching sta , while the Sox searched for a manager.
When Dick Williams was selected as the new skipper, he designated Popowski as second in command. Perhaps Popowski’s most important contribution to the Impossible Dream Red Sox was his handling of players. He was more than just a coach or manager, but also a con dant and adviser with whom many players talked over their personal, as well as their baseball, problems. Dick Williams, who would gain a reputation as a noncommunicator with his players, delegated Popowski to keep an eye on some of the younger players, particularly George Scott and Rico Petrocelli. In an interview with biographer Ron Anderson, Scott said of Pop, “I’ve been around baseball a long time—in and out—and I never loved a lot of
people in the game, but I loved the man so much. He was like a father to me. I used to talk to Pop about everything. You get my heart [when you talk about Popowski], because this guy here, if it wasn’t for Pop I doubt if I would have played in the major leagues. Pop got me when I was a young kid in A ball,and he brought me to the Instructional League and he taught me how to play. He made me a good defensive player because he hit me about 200 groundballs a day. e year I won the Triple Crown — Pop was the manager up in Pitts eld. It would be impossible for me to put into words what he meant to me.”7
Rico Petrocelli was succinct: “Pop was good because he was understanding, but he would kick you in the butt.”8 Baseball is far from an easy profession, and at least one time in each of their careers, both Rico and Yaz contemplated quitting. In both cases, Popowski is credited with having talked them out of resigning.
“Dick wants me to handle some of these players, we’ve talked it all over,” said Popowski in a spring-training interview. “We’ll have troubles. But, boy, it won’t be because we didn’t battle to nd out what ails them. We won’t perform any miracles, but there’ll be nobody crying that we didn’t handle them right.”9
When Jim Lonborg won the nal game of the ‘67 season and the Red Sox clinched at least a playo game, one of the rst out of the dugout was Pop. “He wound up on the bottom of the pile and was scared to death because he couldn’t breathe. If you watch a tape of that in slo-mo,” said his daughter, “you can see him going under.” He was quick, though; he only lost his cap and a few buttons.
Of course, he survived — but his suit almost didn’t make it. “’ irty years,’ said coach Eddie Popowski. ‘ irty years in the bush leagues I waited for this day.’ en they came and carried him like a maharajah and dumped him into the shower. ‘My $25 suit,’ Pop shrieked. ‘You’ll ruin my $25 suit!’”10
On the eve of the 1967 Series, Pop told Joseph O’Rourke of e Home News, a newspaper in New Brunswick, “ irty years and now, in my rst year up