The Impossible Dream

Red Sox fans (and baseball fans in general) get ready for a ginormous book excerpt. I cannot help myself. Along with my Vatican II research, I just picked up my dad’s copy of The ’67 Red Sox and the Impossible Dream by Bill Reynolds, columnist for the good ol’ Pro Jo. My dad’s copy is signed by Bill Reynolds. It caught my eye while I was home, and I started it last night, and read it nonstop on my train ride home. It’s fantastic. Heartbreaking. The NAMES. Now ’67 is before my time … but still: the names are Boston legends. Tony Conigliaro.

OUCH!! i still wince when I see photos of him being carried off the field with that awful eye. I wasn’t even BORN and I wince. (To be perfectly accurate, I did, in fact, exist at that moment … but I was swimming around in amniotic fluid, so I wasn’t really a baseball fan yet.) Reggie Smith. Rico Petrocelli. The names carry magic, history, nostalgia … God. Yaz. Yaz!! My dad took all of us to see his second to last game at Fenway. Here’s my diary entry of that night.

Jim Lonborg. Here’s one of my favorite sports-moments photos ever (even though, of course, the jubilance was followed quickly by grief and loss). This photo was in one of my baseball trivia books I had as a kid, and I remember reveling over it:

Sorry, must interject a girlie moment: Lonborg was absolutely gorgeous. Look at him!!

And Bill Reynolds’ prologue hooks you in immediately. I read a couple pages, while I was lazing around on Saturday, and realized: Okay. I must now read this entire thing.

So here comes some excerpts from that prologue:

From Lost Summer by Bill Reynolds:

I remember it as a cold, gray April afternoon.

I was sitting at my desk in a red-brick college dormitory in Providence, Rhode Island, doing homework, the radio tuned to the Red Sox against the Yankees, one of the first games of the season. It was 1967. I was a junior at Brown University. Pitching for the Yankees was the great Whitey Ford, now at the tail end of his career. Pitching for the Red Sox was some rookie left-hander named Billy Rohr. He was 21 years old, and it was his first major league start. I’d never heard of him.

Not surprising, really. I wasn’t a fan anymore. Baseball was something that I’d come to associate with the past, just one of the things that had gotten stowed away in some childhood footlocker…

Baseball had been my first love, so every once in a while I’d listen to a game on the radio — the equivalent of taking a ride past an old girlfriend’s house, a brief nostalgic visit to something that had once been important. One of the highlights of my childhood summers had been occasional trips to Fenway Park, the tiny oasis of green amid the urban bustle of Boston, a place that was a cathedral for generations of New England kids. My first memory of Fenway was from some lost year in the early 50s. It must have been one of Ted Williams’ first games after he returned from the Korean War, because when he came to the plate, the big crowd around me standing and cheering lustily, my father said, “Remember this. This is a great moment.” I must have been about seven or eight, certainly old enough to believe that one could yearn for nothing more noble than to play for the Red Sox and have people cheer as you came to the plate …

Throughout my adolescence there’d been annual pilgrimages to Fenway as the names changed from Jensen and Piersall to Runnels and Radatz. TS Eliot once wrote that we measure our lives in coffee spoons. But ole TS Eliot never could get around on the fastball. If you grew up in New England you measured your life in trips to Fenway Park. You got older; Fenway stayed the same, as timeless as sand castles at the beach. That had been back when I was still a fan, still glued to the daily box scores in the newspaper that served as links to the emerald green world of childhood.

By the time I was 19 there were other interests, seemingly more important things than a childhood game. Baseball was just something I used to love. My only real connection to it was a curious kinship I felt with Tony Conigliaro, one of the Red Sox’s young stars, and that was by accident. I’d been in school at Worcester, Massachusetts, at the time and it wasn’t a real good period for me. My longtime girlfriend was in the process of dumping me, and that realization had become an ache in my heart. I’d hitchhiked the 40 miles into Boston and was spending the afternoon sitting around a student apartment, drinking beer and feeling sorry for myself. On the radio was the ballgame. In his first at bat at Fenway Park Tony Conigliaro hit a home run. He too was 19.

I was suddenly struck by how different our lives were. Here we were the same age, yet he was hitting a home run in Fenway Park in his first at bat, and I was sitting in a seedy apartment just a few blocks away feeling sorry for myself. On that spring afternoon in 1964, in my particular view of the universe, Tony Conigliaro was everything I was not.

So all during college I checked the box scores to see how he was doing. In a sense he’d become a link to my youth. In some strange way his success became my success. Maybe it was because he was living out every New England kid’s fantasy. Maybe it was something more elusive, undefinable, the little-understood reasons why we root for some athletes while others touch our hearts. But if he was doing well, then things seemed a little more right. As if in my mind our fates had become linked that day three years earlier when we’d both come to Boston on the same day, he to begin to his major league career with the Red Sox, me to get dumped by a girl who had been the center of my little universe. No one ever said being a fan makes any sense.

Besides, rooting for the Red Sox was like rooting for my broken heart. If you’d grown up in New England in the 50s and 60s you never knew what a pennant race was. A pennant race was always something taking place in some other town, usually New York. Certainly not in Boston, where the Red Sox appeared to have failure and frustration all but seated on the bench with them. But listening to that game on the radio seemed to resurrect all my old baseball memories, some lost childhood passion. In the beginning it had felt like just another early season game, nothing special, just another game in an endless string …

The Yankees are the most famous franchise in all of sports, but this is not a good Yankke team. The year before they’d finished last for the first time in 54 years, and for the first time in 13 years there’s no talk of them fighting for the pennant. Roger Maris is gone to the St. Louis Cardinals. Bobby Richardson has retired. Mickey Mantle is aging and ailing, and there are rumors this might be his last season. Ford is near the end of his illustrious career. The great Elston Howard has become a part-time player. The Yankees seem a parody of themselves, as if the monuments of the great Yankee immortals that stare in from center field have turned their heads in shame.

There are only 14,000 people rattling around in huge Yankee Stadium…

Ken Coleman, whose voice, like Curt Gowdy’s before him, has become synonymous with the Red Sox, is calling the game. As the innings go by, it is apparent this is not just another early-season game. Through five innings Rohr has not allowed a hit, a rare thing for any Red Sox pitcher these days, never mind a rookie making his first start in the major leagues. He’d appeared understandably nervous at the start, but has settled down and retired the first 10 batters he faced.

But the score is only 1-0, courtesy of a leadoff home run by Reggie Smith.

In the bottom of the sixth, with Rohr still breezing along, the Yankees’ Bill Robinson rips a hard ground ball that comes off Rohr’s shin. The ball ricochets toward third baseman Joe Foy, who throws Robinson out. Rohr limps around the mound, in obvious pain. Manager Dick Williams, also in his first year, and trainer Bobby LeRoux come out to see him. Williams is thinking of taking Rohr out. But Rohr walks around the mound for a while, testing his leg, and a few minutes later says he’s okay.

There is some concern that Rohr is going to be affected by the bruise, and Williams tells catcher Russ Gibson, another rookie, to let him know immediately if he thinks Rohr has lost anything. He hasn’t. In fact, Gibson thinks he’s getting stronger. He gets through the seventh without giving up a hit, as the drama starts to build. Rohr’s bid for a no-hitter has gotten serious. Rohr gets a cushion in the top of the eights when Joe Foy hits a two-run homer to give the Sox a 3-0 lead. He gets through the bottom of the eighth. An early-season game in the cold of Yankee Stadium has become as good as baseball gets.

After the Red Sox go down in their half of the ninth inning all the people in the stadium stand and cheer as Rohr walks out to the mound, just three outs away from baseball fame. If ever there is someone who seems like an unlikely candidate for baseball immortality, it is Billy Rohr, this skinny stringbean of a left-hander.

He’d grown up in Southern California, began playing Little League when he was eight years old. He weighed only 145 pounds in high school, but he was 26-3 over his career, and when he graduated there were about a dozen major league clubs that had an interest. The Red Sox were not one of them. He eventually signed with the Pirates for a reported $25,000 bonus, and was sent to rookie ball in Kingsport, Pennsylvania, where the Pirates were trying to hide him and three other young players in hopes of ultimately leaving them off a list of protected players. They even played games in the mornings, never at night. Rohr knew something strange was going on, but wasn’t sure what it was. The strategy failed. Mace Brown, a Red Sox scout, was tipped off, and the Red Sox drafted Rohr in the fall of 63. Just two years later, midway through the season, he was jumped to the Red Sox Triple A club in Toronto, bypassing Double A. It was a difficult adjustment, and the first thing he learned was that the better the league the less hitters chase bad pitches, an important lesson for any young pitcher. In 1966, still in Toronto, he pitched 10 complete games for Dick Williams and earned himself a spring training invitation.

But of course as I sit in my dorm room at Brown I know nothing of this. Nor do I know that last night Rohr had been so nervous he’d asked follow Red Sox pitcher Jim Lonborg to room with him, so that the two of them could go over the Yankee hitters, and that Lonborg will say later that Rohr had spent the night sleeping fitfully, tossing and turning. All I know is that he’s three outs away from pitching a no-hitter in his first major leauge start, something no one in baseball history has ever done, and that I haven’t been so absorbed in a baseball game in years.

Due to baseball etiquette, no one has mentioned the no-hitter to Rohr as he spent time in the dugout. No one has to. Coleman gets around it on the radio by saying there have been eight hits in the game and the Red Sox have all of them.

As the crowd stands and cheers Rohr’s walk to the mound in the bottom of the ninth the young pitcher does not acknowledge the applause. He looks grim, determined. The suspense builds, the essence of baseball reduced to this one moment. This is baseball at its best, consequences riding on every pitch. He looks around at his teammates, and turns to pitch to Tom Tresh. The count runs to three and two.

“Billy Rohr on the threshold of fame, with a tremendous pitching performance today,” Coleman says on the radio. “Rohr winds and here it is, a fly ball to deep left. Yastrzemski is going back … way back … way back.”

Carl Yastrzemski, in his grey road uniform with “Boston” on the front in navy blue letters, and number eight on his back, starts running back as fast as he can. He can’t see the ball, but instinctively knows where it figures to land. Behind him is the scoreboard. Behind it is the left-hand grandstand, with only a smattering of people sitting in it. On a dead-run Yastrzemski dives, his body in full extension, left arm straining, his momentum carrying him away from home plate. He manages to catch the ball just before he hits the ground, landing on his left knee and doing a full somersault. His cap is off, lying near him on the grass. He quickly gets up, momentarily holding his glove with the ball safely tucked inside it over his head, as Coleman screams over the radio, “One of the greatest catches you’ll ever see by Yastrzemski in left field. Everyone in Yankee Stadium is on their feet roaring as Yastrzemski went back and made a tremendous catch.”

There is one out.

Yaz has done it, I think. He has saved it.

Joe Pepitone is the next batter. He hits a routine fly ball that Tony Conigliaro handles easily in right filed.

Two outs.

One more, I tell myself. Just one more.

The batter is Elston Howard. Ironically, later in the season he will be with the Red Sox. But no one knows that on this afternoon. On this gray day he has become the one thing that stands between a rookie pitcher and a sliver of immortality. Before he steps into the batter’s box Williams comes out to visit Rohr. The manager doesn’t really have anything to say, just feels he should say something, anything, to calm his young pitcher. Howard digs in, a wide stance. He is a right-handed hitter and he rhythmically waves his bat toward Rohr. The count runs full. Billy Rohr is one strike away. Everyone in Yankee Stadium knows they are watching history. Sitting in a dorm room, rooting for the first time in years, I know I am listening to it. Can he really do it? Is it really possible? Gibson calls for a curveball.

“Russ Gibson gives the sign,” Coleman says dramatically, the tension in his voice. “The left-hander delivers … a line drive into right field for a base hit. Tony Conigliaro takes it on the first hop. He had no chance.”

Rohr’s curveball has hung a fraction of a second too long, not breaking down and in to Howard as he’d envisioned it would. He looks over at Howard standing at first base and doesn’t feel angry, just disappointed. He has come so close.

I turn the radio off, feeling somehow cheated, feeling that this is just one more example of an imperfect world.

When the game ends Rohr is greeted by several FBI agents. They tell him that Jackie Kennedy wants to come into the Red Sox clubhouse to meet him. He goes up the ramp twoard the clubhouse and all he sees are reporters and TV lights. For a moment he wonders if he’s about to be arrested or interviewed. Two days later he appears on the Ed Sullivan show, baseball’s newest hero. The mayor of Boston sends him a telegram thanking him for giving all Red Sox fans everywhere an unforgettable day, and saying how he hopes Rohr’s victory over the Yankees will be the first of hundreds of others in his career.

It isn’t.

By the end of the year Rohr will be long gone from the Red Sox; the highlight of his career will be this afternoon in Yankee Stadium. But, in a sense, this early-season game, played before a sparse crowd in Yankee Stadium on this cold, raw April afternoon, comes to resemble that season that will forever be known as the “Impossible Dream”, the season that becomes, as someone once put it, the time everyone forgot about the human race and worried about the pennant race: It is a complete surprise; it’s an incredible, memorable performance by a player who isn’t supposed to be able to deliver it; and, in the end, it just misses being perfect.