With spring training upon us a lot of the talk in social media has turned to baseball. So far in the beginning of MLB camps we’ve found out that Derek Jeter is retiring, Ryan Dempster is taking the year off and David Ortiz wants an extension among other things around the leagues.
In my interactions with other Red Sox fans it’s clear how we feel about Ortiz. I wrote about him earlier this offseason and many feel he deserves the extension, he should be a Hall of Fame inductee and the immortalized at Fenway Park with a statue. I say yes to all of this, as while being wildly revered he has been grossly underpaid.
When we talk of Ortiz you can’t help but mention the post seasons he has had and we were talking about where he fits in the pantheon of Red Sox legends and lore. I said while Ortiz is great, Yaz resurrected baseball in Boston in 1967. He walked on water. One of my twitter followers @notwallygm made this comment that rings very true, “Yaz resurrected baseball, Ortiz erased 1918.” Fair enough.
I just feel like Carl Yastrzemski at times is forgotten in all the hoopla and hullabaloo surrounding Ortiz, much like Bill Russell is forgotten all too wrongly in NBA circles. The problem is many are too young to have either seen 1967 or even Yaz in his prime at all. Face it there isn’t a lot of video.
In 1967 Carl Yastrzemski played in 161 of 162 games with 158 starts. The team in his 158 games started was 90-68. He had a 13 game hit streak and reached base in 56 consecutive games. He had 21 go ahead hits with the team either tied or behind in the 7th inning or later. He drove in 121 runs in 680 plate appearances (579 AB’s) the MLB average in 1967 for RBI with 680 plate appearances was 62 runs driven in.
In 1967 Yaz had 5 multi-homerun games, 48 games with 2+ hits including 12 with 3 hits, 4 games with 4 hits and 5 hits in one glorious 18 inning April game at Yankee Stadium.
In that 18-inning game Yaz was 5 for 8 with a walk, he scored two runs, had a double, 2 triples and 1 RBI in a 7-6 loss.
His 1967 as a whole Yaz hit .326 with 44 HR and 121 RBI. He had 189 hits, 31 were doubles and 4 were triples. He scored 112 runs in 579 official at bats. He walked 91 times, was intentionally walked another 11, was hit by 4 pitches and struck out just 69 times and hit into only 5 double plays. His slash line was .326/.418/.622/1.040 and he was named the American League MVP and he put asses in the seats at Fenway. Oh and he won the Triple Crown and was the last player to do so until Miguel Cabrera in 2012.
In the 1967 World Series he hit .400 he was 10 for 25 with 2 doubles, 3 homeruns and 5 RBI. He also scored two runs, had 4 walks and struck out just one time. His World Series slashline was .400/.500/.840/1.340. If the Red Sox had beaten the Cardinals he would have been the MVP of the Series.
He also won a Gold Glove in ’67 playing all of his innings but 6 in left field. Those other 6 innings came in CF for 1 game. He made just 7 errors, threw out 13 runners and had a .977 fielding percentage.
The 1967 Red Sox were much like their 2013 brethren in that they weren’t expected to do much of anything much less compete. Like last year they faced the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series but unlike 2013 the Red Sox weren’t able to get to Cardinal pitching in key times and the great Bob Gibson shut them down with 3 complete game wins and a 1.00 ERA in 27 innings.
In ’67 the Red Sox were only in first place for 21 games. Their largest lead was just 1.5 games on August 30th; the biggest deficit was 7 games back on July 8. Until July they were just an average team being just 3 games over .500 going into July.
Starting with July 8 until the season’s end Yaz had 315 AB, scored 65 runs, had 104 hits of which 16 were doubles, 1 triple and 26 homeruns. He drove in 64 runs, walked 44 times, was intentionally walked 6 times, struck out 35 times and was hit by 3 pitches. His slashline from July 8 to October 1 was .330/.426/.635/1.061. In those 84 games the team went 52-32 to claim the American League pennant on the season’s last day when Minnesota lost.
Yaz was positively deadly down the stretch. In the last two weeks of the season (13 games) he had 48 at bats and 24 hits for you math majors the dude hit .500 over a two-week period in crunch time. He had 5 doubles and 5 homeruns and drove in 18 runs. Once again that’s in the last 13 games of the season when they absolutely needed every win. His slashline in those 13 games was absolutely ridiculous .500/.647/.916/1.564.
In those last 13 games he had hits in all but 1 game, he finished with a 10-game hitting streak and in those final two weeks he had 6 multi-hit games (2 games with 2 hits, 2 games with 3 hits and 2 games with 4 hits). In the last two games in which the Red Sox HAD TO WIN, Yaz was 7 for 8 with a double, a homer and 6 RBI along with a walk and only 1 strike out.
In 2004, 2007 and 2013 David Ortiz helped us erase 1918 and longing for a title to come to Fenway to becoming a three-time champion. But without 1967 and Carl Yastrzemski resurrecting a fan base I am not sure we can say what would have happened to Boston baseball. Would they be what they are today? Would those loses in ’67, ’75 and ’86 as well as ’78 and ’03 meant as much and hurt as much? Or would they have been a version of say the Texas Rangers or Cleveland Indians? Baseball is king in Boston, even with the recent sustained success of the Bruins and Patriots and the selective runs by the Celtics in the last 25 years. Would that be the case without ’67?
My contention isn’t that Ortiz is better than Yaz or Yaz is better than Ortiz but that they both walk hand in hand with what they mean to Boston baseball and history. 1967 laid the foundation for the next generations of baseball fans in Boston and there’s no doubt we have Carl Yastrzemski to thank for it.
