Page 63 - 1975 BoSox

SADDLED WITH THE BURDEN OF replacing one of baseball’s legendary players, Carl Yastrzemski carved out his own iconic
Hall of Fame career, eventually escaping Ted Williams’ extraordinary shadow to win three batting titles and seven Gold Gloves, and earn 18 All-Star selections. In Boston, where he played the entirety of his 23-year career, he is remembered especially for his Triple Crown season that led Boston to its Impossible Dream in 1967.
Born August 22, 1939, in Southampton, New York, Carl Michael Yastrzemski came of age in nearby Bridgehampton, Long Island (population 3,000) where he often played alongside his father in local semipro games. Yaz’s father Karol Yastrzemski (the name was Anglicized to Carl) and his uncle Tommy owned an inherited 70-acre potato farm, their work a “legacy from Poland, folks coming over here and doing what they knew from the old country.”1
In his rst of two autobiographies, Yaz wrote, “I’m told that when I was 18 months old my dad got me a tiny baseball bat, which I dragged around wherever I went, the way other babies drag blankets or favorite toys. I vaguely remember playing catch with him as a very small boy, but my rst clear memory is hitting tennis balls in the back yard against his pitching after supper every night when I was about six. Later we played make-believe ball games between the Yankees and the Red Sox, my two favorite teams...”2
Yaz’s dad loved baseball. He might have tried to make it in baseball himself, re- portedly having o ers from both the Dodgers and the Cardinals, but was “reluctant to leave the potato elds of Long Island to try baseball during the Depression.”3 Before Carl was born, Carl Yastrzemski Sr. actually formed a semipro baseball team, the Bridgehampton White
Eagles; he played shortstop and managed the team. It was almost entirely a family team, with Carl Sr.’s four brothers on the team, as well as two brothers-in- law and three cousins. e team played on Sundays, and did so for years. By the time Carl himself was seven, he was the team’s batboy, his rst “job” in base- ball. He rst played for the team at age 14 — young for a semipro player. Even at age 40, Carl’s father was still “the guts of the ball club, a good shortstop and the best hitter of the team.”4 His father played with drive and determination, but channeled his baseball ambitions t into his son Carl. Still playing (and out- hitting his son) at age 41, Carl’s dad was doing it for his son. e younger Yaz wrote, “I could tell the only reason he played was on account of me, just as that had been the only reason he kept the White Eagles alive for so long.”5 From the very date Carl signed his rst pro contract, the elder Yastrzemski never played again, but the memory lasted. “I loved his spirit and intensity when I played alongside him.”6
Some of Carl’s teammates with the Boston Red Sox saw the in uence of Carl’s father in his son’s drive for success. Former Red Sox catcher Russ Gibson re- membered one time early on: “Yaz and myself, and two other guys, shared an apartment in Raleigh [North Carolina] when his dad came for a visit. We were all just starting out, but Yaz was hitting about .390 at the time. We all went o to play golf while Yaz visited with his father. When we got back, all his things were
gone. When I asked Yaz what had hap- pened, he said, ‘My dad thinks I’m dis- tracted living with you guys. He’s moved me into an apartment by myself.’”7
Carl’s father was quite a man himself. Scouted during the Depression, Carl Sr. never played professionally but he was a erce advocate for his son.
Carl Yastrzemski
By Herb Crehan and Bill Nowlin
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