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| Russ Gibson was Bill Rohr's catcher when both made their major league debuts for the Boston Red Sox on April 14, 1967. The two had been batterymates the year before in Toronto. Rohr came within one pitch of becoming the first major league pitcher to throw a no-hitter in his first game as he beat the New York Yankees 3-0 in New York. (Courtesy Topps Chewing Gum) |
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| Boston Red Sox left fielder Carl Yastrzemski makes a sprawling, tumbling catch of a drive off the bat of Tom Tresh, then comes up to show he indeed he had caught the ball. astrzemski 's spectacular grab preserved Bill Rohr's no-hitter April 14, 1967, but two batters later Elston Howard spoiled it by singling with two outs in the ninth inning. (YouTube screen grabs) |
It was only five days into the baseball season, but the events that transpired the Friday afternoon of April 14 at Yankee Stadium provided a good omen of things to come for Boston Red Sox fans in 1967. An Impossible Dream, if you will.
On that day Bill Rohr, a 21-year-old, 6-foot-3, 170-pound left-hander, gimpy after taking shot to the leg on a comebacker to the mound in the sixth inning, came within one pitch of becoming the first pitcher in history to throw a no-hitter in his first major league game. The Red Sox shut out the not-so-mighty-anymore New York Yankees 3-0 in the Yankees' home opener.
Now mind you, Rohr didn't have much to do with what the Red Sox eventually accomplished this season. But what he accomplished this afternoon and the accompanying events certainly abounded with rags-to-riches type karma.
Rohr, drafted by the Red Sox in 1963 after one year in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, had spent the previous season compiling a 14-10 record with the Red Sox's Triple-A farm club at Toronto. His manager there was Dick Williams, who'd been promoted to the big club as manager this year and was determined to bring a winning attitude to a once-proud team that had fallen upon hard times. The Red Sox hadn't had an above-.500 season since 1958, including a next-to-last ninth place in the American League the year before. The only club behind them in 1966, somewhat startingly, was their longtime rival Yankees. They finished in last for the first time since 1912 for their second straight losing season after winning pennants in 14 of 16 years, and nine World Series, between 1949 and 1964.
To make Rohr feel more comfortable in his big league debut, Williams installed Russ Gibson at catcher. Gibson, who had grown up a Red Sox fan at nearby Fall River, Massachusetts, had caught Rohr at Toronto, and today he was making his major league debut after 10 years in the minors.
Also making Rohr feel comfortable was another new face and Toronto product for the Red Sox, Reggie Smith. A late season call-up the year before, he was settling into the Red Sox lineup this year and gave Rohr all the help he needed when he led off the game with a home run. Smith, who would eventually become the American League's Rookie of the Year runner-up, unloaded on a 1-0 slider from Hall of Famer Whitey Ford for his first career homer.
Adding to the karmic, ironic feel of the day is the fact that Elston Howard broke up Rohr's no-hitter with two out in the ninth inning. That's the Elston Howard who would be joining the Red Sox in a midseason trade that year.
And it was only fitting that just before Howard played the spoiler, Carl Yastrzemski would preserve the no-hitter with a sprawling, somersault catch of a blast to deep left field by Tom Tresh on a 3-2 count for the first out in the ninth. (See it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/
Yaz, embarking on an amazing Triple Crown season, had been playing shallow and had to go back at full speed to record the first out of the bottom of the ninth inning. Bill Liston of the Boston Traveler, quoted in an article by Gregory H. Wolf for the Society for American Baseball Research Games Project, described it as a “near miracle” catch. Rohr called it the “greatest catch” he ever saw.
It was described in more vivid terms by Red Sox announcer Ken Coleman, as quoted in an article by Alexander Edelman for the SABR Biography Project.
"(Tresh's) drive to left over the head of Carl Yastrzemski left a rising trail of blue vapor ... At the crack of the bat, Yaz broke back, being guided by some uncanny inner radar," Coleman wrote in his diary of the 1967 season. "Running as hard as a man fleeing an aroused nest of bees, Yaz dove in full stride and reached out with the glove hand in full extension, almost like Michelangelo's Adam stretching out for the hand of God. At the apex of his dive, Yaz speared the ball, and for one moment of time that would never register on any clock, stood frozen in the air as if he were Liberty keeping the burning flame aloft."
Will McDonough of the Boston Globe put it in immortal terms: "When I think of the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry, I don't think of Williams or DiMaggio. I think of the catch Yaz made in the Stadium to save the no-hitter for Billy Rohr."
On the next pitch, Joe Pepitone followed that heart-attack moment with a fly out to Tony Conigliaro in right.
Next was Howard, the No. 5 hitter in the Yankees' lineup. Rohr went to a 1-2 count and then threw a fastball that looked like strike three. "Umpire Cal Drummond called it a ball, but to this day, Russ Gibson maintains that the pitch was most certainly a perfect strike," Edelman wrote.
Howard looked at another pitch to make it a full count, then looped a “flat curve” over second baseman Smith’s head, bringing on jeers from the Yankee Stadium crowd. “That’s the first time in my life I ever made a base hit and was booed,” Howard said.
(Although Smith was at second this day, he would only be there for six games filling in for the injured Mike Andrews, another rookie. Smith then went to center field for the rest of the season).
Williams made a trip to the mound to talk to Rohr before Howard stepped to the plate. Later, he second-guessed himself.
"I told him I've beaten myself over the head about that trip to the mound. ... He had one shot at fame, and my meddling may have blown it for him," Williams said in his autobiography.
After Howard had removed the suspense, Rohr retired Charley Smith on a fly out to right, ending the game in 2 hours, 11 minutes.
Save for the never-ending, will he or won't he drama of the no-hit quest, Rohn relatively sailed through the game. He did encounter some trouble in the eighth when, with one out, he threw wildly on a tapper back to the mound by Lou Clinton, pinch hitting for Ford. It was the game's only error, and the Yankees had runners at first and second when Rohr walked Horace Clarke, the pitcher's fifth free pass of the game.
But Rohr, who was signed out of Bellflower High in San Diego in June 1963, kept the shutout and the no-hitter going when he coaxed Bill Robinson to hit into a shortstop-to second-to first double play.
The only other inning the Yankees moved anybody into scoring position was the fourth, when walks to Robinson and Pepitone put runners at first and second with two out. But Howard flied out to center, ending that threat.
Rohr suggested this day was going to be special by retiring the first 10 batters he faced before Robinson walked in the fourth. He faced only four batters each in the fifth and sixth and went 1-2-3 in the seventh.
“It’s a big place and I was nervous,” Rohr told the Boston Herald of making his debut in the fabled House That Ruth Built. “After I got the first batter out, I forgot all about it.”
Despite Rohr's mastery, Ford was matching goose eggs with him until Joe Foy clubbed a two-run homer in the eighth with two outs to make it 3-0. Gibson was aboard after leading off with a single for his first major league hit.
Gibson also singled in the ninth, giving him a 2-for-4 debut. Yastrzemski also went 2-for-4 for Boston.
Besides Yaz's ninth-inning gem, Rohr did need some other defensive help, breaks and guts to flirt with making history. He struck out only two batters.
First baseman George Scott, who that year would win the first of eight Gold Gloves, scooped up a poor throw by shortstop Rico Petrocelli for the final out of the second inning. On Howard's long fly to end the fourth, according to the Boston Record American, center fielder George Thomas overran the ball but caught it awkwardly before crashing to the field.
In the sixth inning, after Yaz made a one-handed stab of Clarke’s line drive, Robinson sent a dart back to the mound and into Rohr's left shin, right below the knee, leaving the pitcher writhing on the ground. “I never saw the ball come back at me,” Rohr told the Boston Globe. The ball ricocheted to third, where Foy backhanded it and threw to Scott for the out. Rohr walked off the pain and forged on, receiving ice treatments between innings. “He limped from there to the finish,” wrote Henry McKenna of the Boston Herald. Even so, “after he got hit he actually got better,” Gibson told the Herald. “He amazed me.” "He claimed after the game that the shin injury did not affect his pitching," Wolf wrote. "Williams monitored him closely, making sure that he did not tax his shoulder overcompensating for his leg. Had Rohr not been working on a no-hitter, it’s likely he would have been relieved."
Rohr saluted his catching compadre from a year ago for making his job easier. “Russ called a perfect game,” Rohr said of Gibson “He knew what I was trying to do and I think I only shook him off twice. We were thinking together.” As for what Gibson was calling and what he was throwing, Rohr said, "I think my fastball had them guessing, since it was breaking away from the right-handed hitters, and I had a good change that I got guys out on.” As grittily as he battled in his 11th home opening start for the Yankees, the 38-year-old Ford was good for only six more games. After encountering significant elbow pain, rather than undergo an operation, he officially retired May 30 in a ceremony at Yankee Stadium. A game matching Ford on his way out and Rohr on his way in illustrated the contrasting fortunes of the two teams. While the Red Sox would be rising, the Yankees,1-2 after Friday's game, were destined for more misery. They finished ninth that year and would be shut out of a pennant until 1976. The decline was evident in the stands as well as on the field. Only 14,375 showed up for the home opener, compared with 40,006 the year before.
Another Yankee legend close to being on his way out, Mickey Mantle, was sitting out this game with a sore leg before pinch hitting in the eighth. He flied out to right. This was his next-to-last season.
Meanwhile, the Red Sox, 2-1 after Friday's action, were launching a season that became known as "The Impossible Dream," after the hit song from the 1965 musical "Man of La Mancha." They won their first pennant since 1946 and took the St. Louis Cardinals to seven games before falling in the World Series.
At the center of their Cinderella year was Yastrzemski, who led the AL with a .326 batting average, 44 homers and 121 RBIs. He was at his most heroic over the final two weeks of the regular season, in which he homered five times, hit .523, drove in 16 runs and scored 14 as the Red Sox captured the flag on the final day.
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| Bill Rohr, left, and other former Boston Red Sox get together during a team reunion in 2012. Rohr finished with only three major league victories, but he has fond memories of April 14, 1967, when he came within one out and one pitch of becoming the first pitcher in history to throw a no-hitter in his first major league game. (Photo: USA Today file photo) |
In fact, Rohr won only two more games in his career and pitched in only one game for the Red Sox in 1967 after June 1. The only time he approximated his spectacular April 14 showing, and his only other complete game, came in his next start April 21, when he gave up nine hits and one earned run in beating the very same Yankees, 6-1 in Boston. (Howard drove in the only run for the Yankees in the eighth.) After some shaky outings he was sent down to Toronto and was back for one game Sept. 22.
Rohr finished the season with a 2-3 record and a 5.10 ERA over 10 games and 42 innings. And then he was out of the major leagues after 1968, when he went 1-0 with a 6.87 ERA after being sold to Cleveland, pitching only 18 innings in 17 games. He bounced around the minor leagues before retiring in 1972.
Final major league totals: 27 games, 61 innings, 3-3 record, 5.64 ERA.
If Rohr could have gotten that final out in the ninth April 14, he would have joined Bobo Holloman as the only major leaguers to throw no-hitters in their first major league start. Holloman, who had made four previous relief appearances, turned the trick for the St. Louis Browns on May 6, 1953. Rohr also would have joined Holloman as pitchers who fell off the cliff after their initial stunner. Holloman's no-no was the only complete game he pitched in his career — he was out of the majors before the end of 1953 season with only three victories to his name. The difference is that while Holloman was toiling for a last-place team, Rohr was with an eventual pennant winner. And as the Red Sox won the 1967 flag by only one game, you can say Rohr made a big difference with his two wins. And on April 14 he provided some mighty memories at the start of a momentous season.
Peter Gammons, a Hall of Fame award-winning baseball writer and Boston native, put it this way: "Billy Rohr was 1967," he wrote, "even if he only won two games and was out of town by June."
Sources:Play-by-play: https://www.
Rohr biography: https://sabr.org/bioproj/
Yastrzemski's catch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com.
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