10-1-67: Bosox dream delivered

Carl Yastrzemski capped a Triple Crown season by going 4-for-4 in the Boston Red Sox's 5-3 victory over Minnesota on Oct. 1, 1967, that clinched them their first American League pennant since 1946.

Cy Young Award winner Jim Lonborg pitched a complete-game seven-hitter, allowing only one earned run, in Boston's    5-3 American League pennant-clinching win over Minnesota on Oct. 1, 1967.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  Much ado was made of the night of Sept. 28, 2011, the close of that year's regular major league baseball season, headlined as "Best. Night. Ever" in a Sports Illustrated article (https://www.si.com/vault/2011/12/12/106139348/best-night-ever). Four games were played that night with do-or-die implications, for the Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Rays.

  But here's the thing. All that night's drama resolved only who was going to make it into the postseason, which meant at one least more round, possibly two for teams to get past before even making it to the World Series. Of the survivors that 2011 night, the Cardinals won both their division series and championship series to advance to the World Series, while the Rays were eliminated in the division series.

  Before 1969, only one team out of eight (before 1961) or 10 (1961-68 American League, 1962-68 National League) moved on to the postseason -- the one and only World Series. These were true pennant races, and when they came down to the final day of the regular season, it was truly do-or-die baseball.

  And there was perhaps was never so much doing or dying going on as in the 1967 AL pennant race. Of the 10 most dramatic pennant races in history recounted in a Baseball Egg article by Dan Holmes (http://baseballegg.com/2012/09/22/the-nine-most-dramatic-pennant-races-in-baseball-history/ ), six involved two teams, three involved three and one involved four -- AL '67 with the Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins and Boston Red Sox.

  Three teams were tied for first place and the fourth was a half-game back Sept. 18, and going into Wednesday of the final week the four were within 1 1/2 of each other. Then the White Sox went into the tank, losing five straight to 10th-place Kansas City and sixth-place Washington. But the other three were at each other's throats right to the final hours. Boston and Minnesota met in a regular-season finale in Boston tied for the league lead, while because of previous rainouts Detroit, a half-game out, had to host a doubleheader with California. The Tigers needed a sweep to force a playoff with whatever team won in Boston. The Tigers split, leaving it all up to the Red Sox and Twins, before 35,770 (capacity listed at 33,524 at the time) on Sunday, Oct. 1.

  And the Bosox, who'd placed ninth the year before and hadn't had a winning season since 1958, captured the pennant for the first time since 1946 with a 5-3 win. Their season was dubbed "The Impossible Dream" (a popular song from the 1965 hit musical "Man of La Mancha"), and they capped it in true fashion with a five-run sixth inning to overcome a 2-0 deficit.

  Triple Crown winner Carl Yastrzemski, who'd hit a three-run homer the day before in a 6-4 Red Sox win, continued a phenomenal late-season tear in which he batted .522 (23-for-44) by going 4-for-4 with a run scored and 2 RBIs. But sharing hero honors on this day was Cy Young winner Jim Lonborg, who threw a complete game seven-hitter and gave up only one earned run.

  It was Lonborg, who'd gone 0-3 against the Twins in '67 coming into the game, who got the Red Sox started in the sixth with a bunt single. From the Society for American Baseball Research Games Project article (https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-1-1967-red-sox-complete-impossible-dream: “The bunt was my own idea,” he told The Associated Press. “It was the first thing I thought about when I went to the plate.”

  The Red Sox loaded the bases on back-to-back singles by Jerry Adair and Dalton Jones, and Yastrzemski broke up Dean  Chance's shutout and tied the game with a single to center field that scored Lonborg and Adair. Jones made it 3-2 Red Sox as he beat out shortstop Zoilo Versalles' throw home on Ken Harrelson's high bouncer. That brought on Al Worthington in relief of Chance, the 1964 Cy Young winner who went 20-13 in 1967. Worthington uncorked a pair of wild pitches that brought Yaz around. After George Scott struck out and Rico Petrocelli grounded out, Reggie Smith reached on a misplay by first baseman Harmon Killebrew, allowing pinch runner Jose Tartabull to score and make it 5-2.

  The Twins cut the margin to 5-3 in the eighth on singles by Killebrew, Tony Oliva and Bob Allison with two out. Killebrew scored on Allison's hit, but Yaz, making up for an earlier transgression in the field, gunned down Allison trying to stretch his hit, sending the Twins back into the dugout two runs shy.

  After a leadoff infield single by Ted Uhlaender in the top of the ninth, Lonborg got Rod Carew to hit into a second-to-first double play. (Carew, a career .328 hitter with seven batting titles, beat out Smith for '67 AL Rookie of the Year with a .292 average, but on this day went 0-for-4 out of the No. 7 slot in the lineup.)

  Pinch hitter Rich Rollins popped up to a backpedaling Petrocelli at shortstop to end the game. Lonborg, who completed a 22-9 season with a 3.16 ERA, nearly had his shirt torn off by Red Sox fans in the postgame celebration.

Delirious Boston fans at Fenway Park nearly rip the shirt off pitcher Jim Lonborg's back after the Red Sox clinched their first American League pennant since 1946.

  The Red Sox, who were led that year by Dick Williams in the first season of a 21-year Hall of Fame managerial career, then went into their locker room to await the result of the twin bill nightcap in Detroit. The Angels won 8-5, sending Boston into the Series. 

  Earlier on Oct. 1, the Twins took a 2-0 lead with unearned runs with two out each time on errors by normally sure-handed fielders. Killebrew, after he'd walked, scored on a throwing error by Scott after Oliva doubled to left in the first. After Cesar Tovar walked in the third, he scored when Yastrzemski committed an error on Killebrew's single to left.

  The Red Sox got only one runner into scoring position and hit into two double plays before knocking out Chance in the sixth.

  Yastrzemski went 7-for-8 in the final two games to finish the season at .326 with 44 homers and 121 RBIs.

  Yaz and Lonborg continued their success in the Series, a rematch of the 1946 Fall Classic won by the Cardinals 4-3, this one won again by St. Louis 4-3. Yastrzemski batted .400 with 3 homers and 5 RBIs. Lonborg won Game 2 (5-0) and Game 2 (3-1) before being bested in Game 7 by Bob Gibson, as the Cardinals won 7-2. Lonborg had a 2.62 ERA in the Series.

  Gibson was the main reason the Cards prevailed. He won three complete games, one a shutout, and had a 1.00 ERA. This gave him five straight complete-game wins in the Series, coming on top of the Cardinals' 4-3 triumph over the Yankees in 1964. Gibby added two more complete-game wins in 1968, giving him seven in a row, before falling to Mickey Lolich and the Tigers 4-1 in Game 7.

  As for the Red Sox, their 1967 season sparked a love affair that's continued virtually unabated since. They drew a record 1,727,832 to Fenway that year, almost doubling their attendance from the year before and their highest since 1960, Ted Williams' last year. They've been above 1 million ever since, and above 2 million for the most part since 1977.

  As for the product on the field, although the Bosox stumbled a bit after '67, they were back in the World Series in 1975, and since '67 they've won 10 division titles and made 17 postseason appearances, six in the World Series. After more Fall Classic frustration in 1975 and 1986, they've won their past four Series, starting in 2004, their first world title since 1918.

  And it all really and truly started with the Impossible Dream of 1967. It wasn't a mirage.

   Sources: The basic play-by-play was provided by the Retrosheet account at https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1967/B10010BOS1967.htm. Filling in the details was the Society for American Baseball Research Games Project account at  https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-1-1967-red-sox-complete-impossible-dream. A long-form view of the game and the season can be found at https://slkelly.org/2017/06/04/the-year-the-impossible-was-not-just-a-dream/?fbclid=IwAR0t_PdsAwE5NfiDmEVarb_FtBt1YQIm27ZCg8wVJ0fH9VVtoVyKzWzHWqo
More background was provided by a pennant race roundup at http://baseballegg.com/2012/09/22/the-nine-most-dramatic-pennant-races-in-baseball-history/ , and various sources on the Retrosheet and SABR Biography Project sites, as well as baseballreference.com.