Page 66 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 59
Former teammate George Scott remembers it this way, “Yaz hit 44 homers that year, and 43 of them meant something big for the team. It seemed like every time we needed a big play, the man stepped up and got it done.” In the nal 12 games of the season — crunch time — Carl Yastrzemski had 23 hits in 44 at-bats, driving in 16 runs and scoring 14. He hit ten homers in his nal 100 at-bats of 1967. He had ten hits in his last 13 at-bats, and when it came to the last two games with the Twins, with the Sox needing to win both games to help avert a tie for the pennant, Yaz went 7-for-8 and drove in six runs.
Yaz was no slouch in the playo s, either, batting an even .400 (10-for-25) with three home runs and ve RBIs in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. e storybook season came to an end when the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series in Game Seven, but Carl Yastrzemski’s place was indelibly etched in baseball folklore. Yaz came within one vote of a unanimous selection as the Most Valuable Player of the American League. He was selected by Sports Illustrated as the “1967 Sportsman of the Year” at year-end. And he achieved baseball’s Triple Crown, leading the American League in batting (.326), runs batted in (121), and home runs (44). In all the baseball seasons that followed, no player had been able to match his Triple Crown feat until Miguel Cabrera did so in 2012, 45 years later.
Yaz also led the league in hits (189), runs (112), total bases (360), and slugging percentage, not to mention on-base percentage. His On-Base plus Slugging (OPS) was 1.040. How did a Triple Crown winner who brought his team to the pennant miss the MVP by one vote? One voter cast his rst-place ballot for Cesar Tovar of the Twins. Tovar batted .267, had six homers to Yaz’s 44, and drove in 47 runs to Yaz’s 121!
e next year, 1968, Yaz won his third batting title, with a .301 mark. is was, for sure, the Year of the Pitcher, and Yaz was the only batter in the league to crack .300, 11 points ahead of runner-up Danny Cater. Only four batters hit .285 or above.
Between 1965 and 1979, Yaz was named to 15 consecu- tive All-Star teams. e game he remembers best is the 1970 All-Star Game held in Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Yaz had four hits, to go along with a run scored and an RBI to earn him MVP honors that year, even though his AL team lost to the NL in 12 innings. He and Ted Williams [1946] are the only two American Leaguers with four hits in an All-Star Game. When asked about this record Yaz, never one to focus on personal statistics, responded, “I never knew that before. To tell you the truth, I was so sick of losing to the National League that I didn’t pay much attention to that stu .”15
It is sometimes written that Yaz had a “career year” in 1967, but never again approached that standard. It should be noted that in 1970 he led the American League in runs scored, on-base percentage, total bases, and slugging percentage; and — when rounded — he was .0004 out of the lead for the batting title. When coupled with his all-time high of 23 stolen bases, you have a year that would have been a career year for almost any other player.
ose 23 stolen bases made him only the second player in Red Sox history to steal more than 20 bases and hit more than 20 home runs in a single season. Former All-Star out elder Jackie Jensen was the rst Red Sox player to achieve this combination in 1954, and Jensen duplicated this feat during the 1959 season. Only ve other Red Sox players have achieved this standard since.
In February 1971, Carl Yastrzemski signed a three-year contract that was reported to pay him $500,000 over the three seasons. At that time his contract was the largest in baseball history.
e year 1972 was a frustrating one. e season started late, due to struggles between players and owners. Teams agreed to simply play out the schedule without worrying about whether one team played more games than another. As fate would have it, the Red Sox entered the nal three games of the year playing the Tigers in Detroit. ere was no chance of a playo tie. e Tigers had a record of 84-69 going into the October 2 game, and the Red Sox were a marginally-