Page 67 - 1975 BoSox

60 ’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL
better 84-68. Whichever team won two of the three games would win the pennant. e Tigers took a 1-0 lead in the rst game, but Yaz doubled in the top of the third to tie it — and the Red Sox would have scored at least one more run (with Yaz safe at third with a triple) except that Luis Aparicio stumbled after round- ing third and retreated to the bag where he met up with the oncoming Carl, who was called out. One never knows what might have been, but this was a pivotal play and the Red Sox lost the pennant by a half-game.
Yaz had a subpar year in 1975, batting just .269 with 14 homers and 60 RBIs, but his play throughout the postseason reminded fans that he had always been at his best in clutch situations throughout his career. His stellar play in the eld and at bat carried over to the American League Championship Series against Oakland (he was 5-for-11, with a home run and two RBIs) to the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. Although the Red Sox lost to the Reds in seven games in one of the greatest World Series ever played, Yaz had scored 11 runs and batted .350 during the ten postseason games. As in 1967, the Red Sox fell just short.
From 1976 to 1983, Carl Yastrzemski made the American League All-Star team six times. On July 14, 1977, he notched his 2,655th hit, moving past Ted Williams as the all-time Red Sox base hit leader. In 1979, he became the rst American Leaguer to ac- cumulate both 400 homers (he reached the plateau on July 24) and 3,000 lifetime hits (his September 12 single o New York’s Jim Beattie was #3,000). Back on June 16, he’d banged out his 1,000th extra base hit.
On October 1, 1983, the next-to-the-last game of the season, 33,491 of the Fenway Faithful gathered to pay tribute to Carl Yastrzemski. e pre-game ceremony lasted for about an hour, and then came Yaz’s turn to speak. After 23 years of never inching in a pressure situation, Yaz broke down and cried when he stepped to the microphone. Once he regained his composure, he asked for a moment of silence for his mother and for former Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey. After thank- ing his family and everyone connected with the Red
Sox, he nished with the words, “New England, I love you.”
Carl Yastrzemski had played in 3,308 major-league ballgames — the record until Pete Rose topped it the next year — and played for 23 years for one team: the Boston Red Sox.
A few months after Carl retired, his son Carl Jr. was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in the third round of the January 1984 draft. Known as “Mike,” the younger Yastrzemski played ve years of minor-league ball, making it all the way to a couple of years of Triple A, but not to the majors. He came back to work in Massachusetts but died of a heart attack in September 2004 at the age of 43.
Mike’s son Mike was drafted by the Orioles in 2013 and as of this writing in the summer of 2014, is playing in his second year of minor-league ball.
In January of 1989, in his rst year of eligibility, Carl Yastrzemski was elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame. His vote total that year was among the highest re- corded in the history of the Hall of Fame. On August 6, 1989, the Red Sox retired his uniform number and it still hangs today, #8, overlooking Fenway’s out eld.
e baseball careers of Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski are inexorably linked. eir paths crossed directly for the last time when they were introduced before the 1999 All-Star Game at Fenway Park as two of the 100 greatest baseball players of the 20th century. e crowd reaction when Yaz was introduced shook the ballpark to its ancient foundations. e response of the crowd when Ted was driven from the far reaches of center eld to a spot near the pitchers’ mound nearly equaled the decibel count of the jet y-by following the National Anthem. At the home opener in 2005, Carl Yastrzemski and Johnny Pesky joined to raise the 2004 World Championship banner that ew over Fenway throughout the 2005 season.
Carl Michael Yastrzemski: the man we a ection- ately call Yaz.
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