'67--The Year the Sox Won the Pennant

All week the newspapers had gushed of "the gonfalon" and "a new era" but when one joined the fans moving across the Brookline Avenue bridge to the park it was clear that they at least had not changed. Sausage-necked goons stiff-walked in time to their own larded drummers. Little boys in loose t-shirts whom I remembered as urchins had been transformed into juvenile delinquents by Nancy Sinatra and television commercials. Teenagers whom I remembered as juvenile delinquents had been transformed into flabby facists by the Record American and television commercials. And students from intown colleges, fat thighs wrapped in white levis, yellow shirt-tails dangling, would make good followers for bad leaders. We were a motley crew, hardly fit to pay homage at the temple.

Not that the temple was a monument of stately form. Fenway Park is a misshapen variation on themes in green and grime. It is full of posts and bad seats. The left field wall, built high to convert cheap home runs into cheap doubles, belongs in a pinball game. But, given a choice between the Astrodome and Fenway, one would prefer the latter. On a summer afternoon the park makes delightful patterns of gloomy caverns and sunlit places. It suffers no totalitarian pastel plastic, no carnival scoreboard. It is true to the strange spirit of the city.

Through the Portal

So one surfaced through the portal and realized that Fenway Park was just right for the occasion. The fans were wrapped tightly around the playing field, the left field wall was still inscrutable, and great things could be done here. The park, like the team, was anomalous, small and somewhat fierce.

The teams were taking warmups, and one looked for hints. But one wasn't sure what to make of the Twins. In their road uniforms they seemed grim. Kaat, the starting pitcher, was monolithic, utilitarian and unimaginative. He made only the briefest attempt at a windup as he loosened up. Allison was big and stupid (his stupidity proved crucial), and Killebrew--the Killer--infused his pudginess with evil.

But there was no consistency of image because in and out of the hostile big men cavorted the small Negroes--Versailles, Tovar and Carew--who formed the infield. Throwing balls behind their backs, striking poses for their own amusement, they seemed confident but fragile. Their light-heartedness was an affront to the solemnity of the occasion, and one suspected that the confidence might split under pressure, that the fragility might lead to disaster.

But one liked them, especially Tovar, who scurried about in one place, tagging photographers and newsmen each time he caught a ball. One hoped that the Press would take the hint. Maggots all, they swarmed around our heroes who were innocent and obliging in their little boy knickers and knee sox. We--the public--had created the Press, or perhaps they created us. In any case, they polluted the field with our worst qualities, our inane curiosity and opportunism. They messed about Yastrzemski as if to pull him down. Solid, neatly divided in two equal parts by his black belt, loosening up with grace and some levity, the Great God Yaz seemed impentrable in his excellence. The Press could not touch him.

Santiago was different. He was as fragile as Tovar, but the confidence, if there was any, had been diffused in his skinny frame. One was afraid that he would trip on the pitching rubber, throw his first pitch into the stands, collapse in Puerto Rican tears. And one wanted the Press to leave him alone.

Evil NBC

NBC was lurking in the park, and its character was less complex. NBC was evil. One knew this when one saw a member of their team, insolent in his blue blazer, tanned by the Carribean--or was it Innsbruck--sun, corrupt in his basic indifference to our ragged emotion and hope. He wore a blue plastic badge as a catchet of his sterility. The opportunists from mass media delayed the game so that they could beam coast to coast a clicheridden conversation with the rival managers.

One hated the way Dick Williams, a strange good man, came running to the almighty camera. The interviewer was Sandy Koufax, a patent phony who had sold out for money. Hair slicked down--was it Vitalis or Brylcream--Koufax, also in a blue blazer, underwear by Jantzen, was out of a thousand ads. He slipped a microphone cord around William's neck and made the honest man do tricks for five minutes.

The opportunists were killing us. Just as Williams started back to the dugout, Vice President Humphrey--an ardent Minnesota fan, don't you know--made his carefully timed entrance into front row seats where he stood next to Ted Kennedy. Photographers pushed in close, Hubert worked himself into a frenzy of smiles, and Williams trotted by unnoticed.

In the first inning, fortune threw the home side a slider. The Twins methodically walked and singled for a quick run. Bases were loaded with one out, and one feared for the fragile Santiago. Watching the pitcher carefully, however, one was reassured, not by the pitches he threw--a collection of junk balls without craft--but by his manner.

At the top of his stretch, with his long arms straight up, Santiago's loose wrists would come together in an insolent, triumphant flick of glove and ball. At first, one though it was some kind of supplication. But it was a strong gesture, a determined yet casual Latin signal of defiance. One could imagine Jose saying to himself, as he checked the Twins all around, "I have good stuff. I have real good stuff and I no worry."

Then one had a chance to study the Red Sox, and one liked the prospect. This kid Andrews, Mike Andrews, the second baseman, so young and earnest. Helmet pulled way down. Stance clean and open. Uniform a little bit dirty, even in the first inning. He tried hard. One could have confidence in young Andrews.

And one could have confidence in old Jerry Adair, journeyman third base-man, who chewed tobacco and hunched over the plate in arthritic concentration. One hesitates to say it, but the team was Andrews and Adair. In the mixture of their youth and age, the identity of their concentration, lay the secret of Red Sox success.

Big Carl

And Yastrzemski. What does one say? He is apart. He came to bat after Adair, and one took pleasure, even in his patient preparation. In the on-deck circle, two bats swirling around the shoulders, above the head in an ashwood ceremony of prayer and promise. Meticulous attention to every detail.

First the left foot, scraping the dirt near the back of the box, establishing this dominion. Then, settling the helmet with the right hand. Finally the foot, closer to the plate, more mobile than the anchoring left foot. One easy practice swing--just one and then the body tightened. Bat drawn up and back with terrifying geometrical precision, lines and angles of force created by arms, elbows and wood. No nervous practice swings, just a slow waving of the bat. The pitch--and the explosion of energy, cracking the ball down the right field line.

One was impressed with the Red Sox, but also with Kaat. So big and dumb and powerful. The atmosphere was ugly. It was partly our fault. We were committing heresies, electronic sins. The crowd had divided its psychic powers of support between the action and the insidious transistor radios held in weakness close to the mind.

We weren't fans, we were spectators plugged into a WHDH announcer whose voice sounded like breakfast, and worse yet, into distant, unimportant football games. Notre Dame vs. Purdue. How are the Boilermakers doing? Yanked back and forth in this echo chamber, one received a startling impression of America on a Saturday afternoon. A vast vacuum crossed only by baseballs, footballs, and flying hysterics.

Then fortune hurled another sign. Kaat was pitching to Santiago in the bottom of the third. Jose had little chance of getting a hit, but he fought Kaat as best he could, fouling pitch after pitch, making an easy out difficult.

Those fouled pitches--Santiago's show of resistance--exasperated Kaat. He bore down. And something popped in his left arm. The game would be ours. One's premonition was justified.

Kaat's reliever, Perry hung on for two innings, but in the fifth, after the Red Sox had scored one run, the pitcher failed to cover first on a sharp grounder by Yastrzemski and Boston went ahead.

Fortune Again

Minnesota tied the game, and then it happened again. With one man on, one out in the seventh, the crumpled Adair pushed a grounder to the mound, leveling the screams begging for a rally. Versalles moved easily towards second to make the double play--when confidence gave way to fragility. He dropped the ball, and runners were safe all around. Yazstrzemski whirled the bats about and hit a home run, a slow elegant home run which drew us after it in an orgasm of sound and motion.

One could understand Versalles error. But one couldn't cope with Yastrzemski. Here education came to an end, blunted, then smothered by religion. It was existential--the clutch. All the past hits established at best probability--more likely possibility, which is to say nothing. And that this man continued to overpower these situations, seven out of eight times--holding our religious feeling in hand, toying with it, and with another hit driving that feeling still higher--that was inhuman.

He had driven our feelings so high, so near certainty. The fall from those expectations could be so great. One feared for us. As a man he had no right to be so reckless.

One left Fenway Park quickly, satisfaction tempered by circumstances. The thought of another team in a simultaneous struggle halfway across the country and the lingering image of Killebrew's ninth inning home run.

Killebrew's squat body twisted around, shoulders back, chest facing the left field wall. A human mortar gun rocked back on its heels, the ball spinning up as if shot from his groin. So Harmon did have it in him. The ball went right over Yastrzemski, and Carl could do nothing to stop a home run that stood between him and an undisputed lead for the Triple Crown. Kaat vs. Santiago. Yastzemski vs. Killebrew. Minnesota vs. Boston. The duals lined up perfectly, and the mind boggled at coincidence. It was a bad sign, that home run, because it was a parting gesture of defiance. A retreating enemy had signaled that it was not beaten.