Fenway Park

by John Powers

  “I thought about tipping my hat, you’re damn right I did, and for a moment I was torn,” Williams later confessed. “But by the time I got to second base I knew I couldn’t do it. It just wouldn’t have been me.” Yet Manager Mike Higgins, who’d supplanted Jurges on June 12, wasn’t going to let him get away without one last ovation. “Williams, left field,” he declared at the top of the ninth—then sent Carroll Hardy out after him once Williams had been saluted for a final time.

  The club already had Williams’s successor—there was no replacement—in mind. Carl Yastrzemski, who’d grown up on a Long Island potato farm and whose father had spurned the Yankees’ lowball offer for his son, had signed a $100,000 deal while he was at Notre Dame. “We’re paying this kind of money for THIS guy?” said skeptical general manager Joe Cronin when he met his skinny bonus baby.

  The Sox gave Yastrzemski the jersey No. 8 because it was nearest to his predecessor’s legendary No. 9, and assigned him the locker adjacent to Williams’s at spring training, where Williams, now a batting instructor, gave Yaz a thorough tutorial. But by midsummer, when he was stuck in a prolonged slump and haunted by Yaz-vs.-Ted comparisons, the overwhelmed rookie went to see the owner. “I feel guilty about not giving you your money’s worth,” Yastrzemski recalled telling Yawkey in his autobiography. “Could Ted come in for a day or two and take a look at me?”

  ‘PATRIOTS DAY’ AT FENWAY

  Almost from the time it opened, Fenway Park served as a professional and collegiate gridiron for several teams. But Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey banished football from his ballpark in the late 1950s and early ’60s because he wanted to protect the grass for baseball. When Sox attendance plummeted, however, Yawkey welcomed the Boston Patriots of the American Football League to Fenway in 1963.

  It’s hard to fathom today, but the Patriots operated on pretty much a shoestring budget for their first decade. The team offices were in a basement in Kenmore Square, and when it came time to draft players, reporters sat alongside as team officials flipped through the Street & Smith football guide to make their choices. Former Patriot star Gino Cappelletti would typically rush from training camp to anchor WBZ television sportscasts five nights a week to supplement his $7,500 salary. The Patriots played their first three seasons at Boston University’s football field (the former Braves Field) before the Red Sox offered their ballpark.

  “We had played at BU and that was appreciated,” said Cappelletti. “But once we got to Fenway Park, it immediately gave us a feeling of having arrived.”

  Fenway’s football configuration put one end zone on the third-base line and the other in front of the bullpens in right field. Gil Santos called the games from a makeshift booth atop the first-base grandstand, and temporary stands were erected in front of the Green Monster. Both benches were initially situated in front of the temporary stands to avoid blocking the sight-lines of fans sitting behind the first-base dugout.

  “Funny thing about those side-by-side benches,” said Cappelletti. “During the games, we would get closer and closer to the other team and start eavesdropping. I remember one game when we heard [Chiefs’ head coach] Hank Stram calling for a screen pass. The next year, they put us over on the first-base side.”

  A receiver/placekicker, Cappelletti booted a lot of footballs into the stands. “The bullpens in right were pretty close to the end zone so most of my extra points went over the bullpens and into the bleachers,” he recalled.

  One summer, because of the uncertainty over where they would be playing, the Patriots printed tickets for three potential locations. Patrick Sullivan, the son of Patriots’ founder Billy Sullivan and the team’s former general manager, said his favorite venue was Fenway, where the Pats played for much of six seasons, until 1968.

  “It was a great place to watch a football game, for precisely the same reason it is for baseball,” he said. “If you were in the temporary seats that we set up against the Green Monster—it was a big grandstand with about 5,600 seats—you were right on the action. The conversations that occurred between some of the coaches and our fans were hysterical. I was a ball boy, so I would listen in on them.”

  Sullivan also remembered how players and fans would mingle on the field after games, which created a connection that doesn’t exist today.

  “Romances were started, business relationships were formed, and guys got jobs during those times,” he said. “The visiting players would hang out, too, and one time I bumped into [Bills quarterback] Jack Kemp. One of the things he later told me was that it was a Patriots’ season ticket holder who convinced him to later go into politics: Tip O’Neill.” Kemp went on to a successful political career after his playing days, which included a run for the presidency in 1988.

  Cappelletti and quarterback Babe Parilli were two of the team’s big stars of the time, and running back Jim Nance’s appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated gave the Patriots national recognition in the mid-1960s. The AFL gradually gained acceptance, and later, a merger with the NFL.

  “When we first got there, I don’t think many of us realized that pioneering was what we were doing,” said Cappelletti. “The original dream was survival. First, you had to survive to make the team. Then, you hoped for franchise survival. And then you hoped that the league would survive.”

  “Get behind by four runs, no problem. Ahead by four in the eighth, delay the champagne. Nothing was—or is—certain, not even a pitcher sailing along. One little hit, an error maybe, can open a door to a pop-fly homer in the net. . . . That’s the magic of Fenway Park. That’s why people love it so.”

  —Ned Martin, longtime Red Sox announcer

  So Williams abandoned a fishing trip to give Yastrzemski a refresher course that made for a respectable debut season highlighted by 80 RBI and 11 homers. His teammates, few of whom would deign to speak to a rookie, didn’t do nearly as well, and the Sox finished in sixth place, far enough behind that they would have needed a spyglass to locate the Yankees. The highlight of the season came against the last-place Senators on a Sunday in mid-June when the Sox staged the greatest comeback in franchise history, coming from seven runs down with two out in the ninth to win the opener of their doubleheader, 13-12. They then claimed the nightcap in 13 innings, 6-5.

  “You had a real bad day at the plate today,” an observer jokingly told Jim Pagliaroni, who hit the killer grand slam in the first game and the walk-off homer in the second. “You were only 2 for 11.” “Gee, that’s right,” the catcher realized. “My batting average is going to blazes.”

  In a season when the Sox finished 33 games out of first place, novelties of any kind were welcome. The most notable came in the season’s finale in the Bronx when Tracy Stallard proffered the ball that Roger Maris launched for his record-breaking 61st homer of the season. “I have nothing to be ashamed of,” concluded the rookie, who pitched only one more inning for the club, but ended up as a Cooperstown footnote, albeit with an asterisk. “Maris hit 60 other homers, didn’t he?”

  It was otherwise a forgettable summer that engendered several more of the same. “There may be more broken beer bottles than broken hearts in the trail they leave behind them,” concluded Globe columnist Harold Kaese on the morning of the club’s Fenway finale.

  Boston fans (they were not yet a Nation) derived their satisfaction from rare and wondrous moments that season. For instance, who would have predicted that the club’s first no-hitter in a half-dozen years would be pitched by an African American?

  Earl Wilson, who’d grown up in Louisiana, had been signed in 1959 as Boston’s second black player after Pumpsie Green, as much for his demeanor as his ability. “Well-mannered colored boy,” said the club’s first scouting report on him. “Not too black, pleasant to talk to, well-educated, very good appearance.” Wilson had come up from the minors before the 1962 season, but he was flawless when he faced the Angels on June 26, feeding them a steady diet of fastballs. “It’s hummin’, man,” catcher Bob Tillman assured him as Wilson strung together a row o
f zeros and won the game, 2-0, with a homer off Bo Belinsky, who’d thrown a no-no of his own in May.

  “All I can say is the Good Man was with me tonight,” proclaimed Wilson, the first black pitcher to toss a no-hitter in the American League, and the first Red Sox pitcher to hurl one since Mel Parnell in 1956—and the first right-hander to pitch a no-hitter at Fenway since Ernie Shore in 1917. Fenway’s man upstairs was suitably appreciative, as Yawkey made a rare visit to the clubhouse, gave Wilson a $500 bonus, and bumped up his salary by $1,000.

  Little more than a month later, Bill Monbouquette threw another no-hitter in Chicago. It was the first time a pair of Boston pitchers had managed the feat since Dutch Leonard and George Foster both pitched no-hitters in 1916. By then, though, the season had been long lost. The Sox were entombed in eighth place, 17 games out, and Higgins, who’d morphed from caretaker to undertaker, was dismissed.

  Succeeding him was Johnny Pesky, the former Sox shortstop and manager of their Triple A affiliate in Seattle. He was determined to put a stop to the “country club” culture that had become embedded over the previous decade. So during spring training in Scottsdale, Arizona he established a midnight curfew, banned swimming (because “It dulls the reflexes”) and discouraged golf. “I’m not a slave driver,” the new skipper insisted. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”

  What the 1963 club needed was something close to unearthly intervention. It arrived in the form of Dick “The Monster” Radatz, a hulking closer who was coming off a percussive rookie season during which he’d led the league in relief appearances, victories, and saves and was voted “Fireman of the Year.” His repertoire consisted of one pitch—a fastball—but it was delivered from a 78-inch frame that weighed 245 pounds.

  Helicopters were employed to help dry out the field in March 1967 as preparations for the season got underway. Later in the year, veteran groundskeeper Jim McCarthy used a riding mower to keep the grass in check.

  Ned Martin broadcast—on radio and TV—for 31 Red Sox seasons, partnering first with Curt Gowdy and last with Jerry Remy.

  Carl Yastrzemski supplanted Ted Williams in left field in 1961 and went on to create his own Hall of Fame legacy.

  During a season when victories were again hard won, Radatz’s was the only number on Pesky’s bullpen speed dial when the game hung in the balance. In June and July alone, Radatz made 30 appearances, once working six times in six days and closing out both ends of consecutive doubleheaders. In one 15-inning victory over Detroit on June 11, he pitched the final nine innings. “God bless Dick Radatz,” proclaimed Pesky. “He’s our franchise.” The Globe’s Kaese avowed that Radatz was to the Red Sox “what (Pablo) Casals is to music, the Prudential Tower is to Boston’s skyline.”

  In the All-Star Game at Cleveland, Radatz pitched two innings and struck out five men, including future Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Duke Snider. But his 15 victories and 25 saves couldn’t rescue a club that went into a summer swoon, falling from second place to seventh and finishing 28 games behind the Yankees. The Sox poster boy for the season was first baseman Dick Stuart, nicknamed “Dr. Strangeglove” for his mystifying fielding. While Stuart led the club with 42 homers and 118 RBI, he also struck out a franchise-record 144 times and made 29 errors.

  Wood always had been a higher priority than leather around Fenway, so when a 19-year-old rookie from Swampscott cracked a 450-foot homer against the Indians in spring training, he immediately was plugged into the 1964 starting lineup, despite having only played a year of “A” ball. The only challenge was getting Tony Conigliaro into, and then out of, bed.

  When the Sox scheduled a workout for Yankee Stadium after their season opener with New York was rained out, the rookie still was dozing at the hotel. “What a way to start a career,” he moaned. “I can hear my kids asking me some day, ‘What did you do on your first day in the big leagues, Dad?’ And I’ll say, ‘I slept.’”

  Tony C., as he immediately was dubbed, was wide awake on Opening Day in the Fens though, launching the first pitch he saw from Chicago’s Joel Horlen over the left-field wall. He hit 22 more homers before the season was done, even though he missed about six weeks with various injuries, including a broken wrist and forearm. Broken curfews also were an issue, as Conigliaro was casual about bedtimes. “I am not a playboy,” he insisted after Pesky fined him for being AWOL in Cleveland.

  Not that it would have set Conigliaro apart on a club that usually played as if it had been up all night. The Sox snoozed through the rest of 1964 and Pesky was dismissed two games before the end with third-base coach Billy Herman, who hadn’t managed since 1947, inheriting a club that finished eighth. They were the Dead Sox now, flatlining by May. In 1965 Boston was buried in seventh place after 14 games, en route to 100 losses with foul balls clanging off empty seats.

  “When I was with Kansas City we played in Fenway one day and I was in right field, counting people in the stands,” recalled Ken Harrelson, who ended up in Boston in 1967. “There couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred.” Only 1,274 turned up on September 16 when Dave More-head, a 23-year-old right-hander who’d lost 16 games that season, pitched a no-hitter against the Indians, missing a perfect game on a full-count walk in the second inning.

  THE PATRIOTS FLOP IN FIRST MEANINGFUL GAME

  Gino Cappelletti peeked through his bedroom curtains and couldn’t believe his eyes. Snow? Can’t be, he said to himself.

  The date was December 20, 1964, and the Patriots would be taking on the Buffalo Bills at Fenway Park in the biggest game in team history.

  The game was for the AFL’s Eastern Division championship. Buffalo, led by Jack Kemp, Cookie Gilchrist, and Elbert Dubenion, came to Boston with an 11-2 record. The Patriots were 10-2-1 and had halted the Bills’ 10-0 start by beating them at Buffalo. With a win, the Patriots would capture the division and face the San Diego Chargers for the AFL title at Fenway. The Patriots sought revenge for the 51-10 whipping the Chargers had administered in San Diego a year earlier in the Patriots’ only championship game appearance.

  For the first time in history, a Patriots’ game not only was going to sell out Fenway Park, but it would also be the national TV game of the day. The surprise snowstorm that had hit Boston the night before meant that the game had to be delayed for 45 minutes while the grounds crew finished clearing the field. And with 38,021 fans converging on the snow-covered streets around Fenway, the entire area was in chaos.

  Said Cappelletti, “I got stuck on Route 9 on the way in [from his home in Wellesley]. Thank goodness the game was delayed. The rumor in the locker room was that I got kidnapped by gamblers. No kidding. That was the story going around, and some of the guys believed it.”

  Much of the crowd stood throughout the game because the seats were never cleaned. The Globe’s Bud Collins described Fenway as a glacier: “There were snowball fights and fist fights and drawing from the hip flasks.” When the game finally started, it was all Buffalo. On the first play from scrimmage, Gilchrist, a powerful fullback, leveled Patriot cornerback Chuck Shonta, who was shaken up but stayed in the game. Two plays later, Dubenion beat Shonta for a 57-yard touchdown pass.

  “You could see the Bills get a lift after that,” said Cappelletti. “They also had an excellent defensive game plan.”

  The Bills won, 24-14, and went on to beat the Chargers for the AFL championship. For the Patriots, it would be 21 more years before they would play in a league championship game, and it took them 37 years to win their first league title in Super Bowl XXXVI.

  The Fenway Park gridiron was bathed in white after an unexpected storm dumped four inches of snow on December 20, 1964. The Patriots (led by Gino Cappelletti, above) played the Buffalo Bills later that day for the AFL’s Eastern Division title, falling to the eventual AFL champions, 24-14.

  Tony Conigliaro worked on his batting stance in the Fenway Park dressing room under the watchful eye of then-Red Sox vice president Ted Williams on July 21, 1966.

  Even that fea
t wasn’t enough to keep Yawkey from dumping Higgins as his general manager in the middle of the game—Higgins’s second sacking by the Sox in six years. The former skipper, who’d been the primary target of fans’ displeasure, had advised the owner to fire him. “You’d be better off with somebody else,” Higgins said. “I’m not popular in this town.”

  Yawkey first said the change would be made during World Series time. But he lowered the boom in the fifth inning (“I’d like to make that change now”), giving Morehead 45 minutes to savor his no-hitter before announcing the decision to the public. Replacing Higgins was Dick O’Connell, who quickly shook things up by moving spring training from Arizona to Florida and promoting farmhands like George Scott, Joe Foy, Reggie Smith, and Mike Andrews.

  But the club still finished ninth in 1966, dropping its first five games and 20 of 27. By mid-May, the Sox were in last place. “You’re always optimistic in spring training,” Yastrzemski wrote in his memoir, Yaz, “but that optimism’s gone after the first two months of the season when you’re 25 games out of first place and looking at 2,000 people in the stands in springtime.”

  It was no consolation that Boston finished the season ahead of New York. The franchise was going sideways and attendance still was well under a million. So O’Connell brought in Dick Williams, who’d been the Triple A manager in Toronto and who insisted on two things—a one-year contract and absolute autonomy in the dugout. “I decided if I’m going to go down, I’m going down my way,” said Williams, who’d been a reserve infielder on the Sox soporific 1963 and 1964 teams where “nobody really cared about winning.”