Page 32 - 1975 BoSox

BORN IN BELLOWS FALLS, Vermont, on December 26, 1947, Carlton Fisk embodies traditional
New England values like pride, ruggedness, and individuality. ose virtues were what the late Boston Red Sox public relations director Dick Bresciani was trying to capture in 1997 when he wrote that Fisk was a “native of Vermont” on his original plaque for the Red Sox Hall of Fame. But the greatest baseball player ever born in Vermont — and the man respon- sible for perhaps the most dramatic moment in New England sports history — doesn’t consider himself a Vermonter. Fisk grew up on the other side of the Connecticut River in Charlestown, New Hampshire, a town of less than 1,000 inhabitants—it just so happened that the nearest hospital was in Bellows Falls. So in a display of traditional New England stubbornness, Fisk insisted that his plaque be recast (at a cost of $3,000 to the Red Sox) to delete the Vermont reference and re ect that he was raised in New Hampshire.
In his rst at-bat for the Bellows Falls American League team in 1965, Fisk crushed a home run at Cooperstown’s famous Doubleday Field, the site where according to myth baseball was supposedly invented. In ironic, storybook fashion, he returned to Cooperstown in 2000 for his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Carlton Ernest Fisk inherited his extraordinary work ethic and athletic talent from his parents.
Not only was his father, Cecil, an engineer
in the tool and die industry in Spring eld,
Vermont, but Cecil’s second vocation was working the Fisk family farm. Often he would dismount from the tractor, race to a local tennis match to soundly defeat an opponent, and then return to the farm to resume his chores. In addition to playing tennis, Cecil also was a superb basketball
player. Carlton’s mother, Leona, was famous in her own right as a champion candlepin bowler, and also excelled in softball and tennis. Certainly the gene for hand-eye coordination and the competitive drive ran deep in the Fisk family.
e Fisks of Charlestown represented an established athletic dynasty. Carlton’s older brother, Calvin, his younger brothers, Conrad and Cedric, and his sisters, Janet and June, all exhibited unusual athletic prowess. In fact, the son who was destined for the Hall of Fame was not considered the most talented of the progeny. Carlton was chubby as a youngster, which is how he acquired his well-known nickname, Pudge, or Pudgie. “If you saw him as an eighth-grader, you would not believe he could accomplish the things he has,” said Ralph Silva, his high-school coach.1 But Carlton was strong, and Coach Silva honed that strength by imple- menting weight training long before it became commonplace.
Beginning in 1962, when Calvin and Carlton rst played Charlestown High School sports together, and continuing through 1972, when June graduated from the newly regionalized Fall Mountain School District, the Fisk family contingent could be counted on to lead their respective teams in annual postseason play- o s. Along with Calvin, Conrad, and younger brother Cedric, Carlton was part of the nucleus of a dominant Charlestown presence in basketball; baseball; and, when later introduced as a scholastic sport, soccer.
Early on, though, Pudge’s greatest ac- complishments came on the hardwood. Despite his 6-foot-2-inch frame, “Fisk could have made it in basketball,” said Coach Silva. “He was that tough.”2
After developing his hoop talent in his grandfather’s barn, Carlton went on to some legendary high-school perfor- mances. In a 1963 regional playo game
Carlton Fisk
By Brian Stevens
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