Scores On This Historic Day: October 1, 1967, The Red Sox Impossible Dream

The Detroit Tigers are half a game back, with a doubleheader against the team then known as the California Angels, at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. If they can sweep it, they will forge a tie with the Red Sox-Twins winner, and there will be a 1-game Playoff the next day.

The White Sox had finished a close 2nd 3 years earlier, and had won a Pennant just 8 years earlier, but hadn't won a World Series in 50 years. The Tigers had come close 6 years earlier, but hadn't won a Pennant or a World Series in 22 years. In addition, their city suffered the worst race riot in the nation's history, one of several to hit American cities that Summer. The Twins had won the Pennant just 2 years earlier, but hadn't won the World Series since moving to the Minneapolis area. Which was also among those hit by a race riot. Their last title was as the Washington Senators, 43 years earlier, and nobody in Minnesota cared about that.

And the Red Sox were in their 1st Pennant race in 16 years, hadn't won a Pennant in 21 years, and hadn't won a World Series in 49 years. And their city, too, had been among those hit by race riots. It wasn't as bad as Detroit's, or Newark's, or those in Chicago and Cleveland the year before, or Los Angeles the year before that, or New York and Philadelphia the year before that, but, in this year of living dangerously, it was worse than any but those in Detroit and Newark.

Just 3 years to the day earlier, Fenway Park hosted the smallest crowd in its history, 306 fans. This time, 35,770 people shoehorned their way into the little green pinball machine in the Back Bay. The starting pitchers are Jim Lonborg for Boston, and Dean Chance for Minnesota. Lonborg was going for his 22nd win of the season. Chance was going for his 21st. Pitching for the Angels, he had won the Cy Young Award 3 years earlier, and had come back strong, including pitching a no-hitter, after 2 down years.

Tony Oliva hit an RBI double in the 1st inning. Harmon Killebrew, who shared the AL home run lead with the Sox' Carl Yastrzemski, each having hit his 44th of the season in the previous day's Boston victory, had an RBI single in the 3rd. That gave the Twins a 2-0 lead. Chance had allowed a double by Yastrzemski and 3 singles, but no walks, and no Boston runner had reached 3rd base. He was cruising.

Then came the bottom of the 6th inning. Lonborg, in those pre-designated hitter days, led off. I can imagine Joe Girardi in this situation: He would have pinch-hit for Lonborg, who, himself, had allowed only 2 runs on 4 walks (1 of them intentional), and then used 5 pitchers over the last 3 innings, allowing the Twins to win the game 7-0.

But the Sox manager was Dick Williams -- no relation to Sox legend Ted. Indeed, Dick made the very bold move of kicking Ted out of the Spring Training complex at Winter Haven, Florida, when he saw Ted contradicting Dick's instructions to hitters. That let everyone know who was in charge: Dick Williams.

It was the ex-reserve infielder's 1st season as a big-league manager, but he'd led their top farm team, the Toronto Maple Leafs (the hockey team was named for them), to the last 2 International League Pennants. Before the season, he predicted, "I think we'll win more than we'll lose." This was a very bold prediction, because the Sox hadn't done that in 9 years.

But his no-nonsense attitude, and his willingness to play black players -- the Sox had none until 1959, and had hardly used the ones they'd had since -- turned them around. Despite losing local hero Tony Conigliaro to a beaning that ruined his career, in just 1 year, they had completely reversed. They went 72-90 in 1966, but went into the regular season finale 91-70.

In 1965, a musical had premiered on Broadway, Man of La Mancha, based on Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Alonso Quixano is a middle-aged minor nobleman in Spain (though he is usually depicted as an old man, with a long white beard a la Santa Claus or Rip Van Winkle), who has fallen under the delusion that he is a medieval knight who must live up to the chivalric ideal. It was titled "The Impossible Dream." The music was written by Mitch Leigh, whose next-best-known song is the commercial jingle, "Nobody Doesn't Like Sara Lee." The lyrics were written by Joe Darion, and this is the only song of his that anybody remembers.

But people remember it. Richard Kiley had sung it as Quixote in the original Broadway production. Jim Nabors had sung it on an episode of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Frank Sinatra had recorded it on his album That's Life. In 1967 alone, Jack Jones had a hit with it, and The Temptations and Shirley Bassey had also released versions of it, proving that it didn't have to be an exclusively white, or even (in Shirley's case) an exclusively American or an exclusively masculine song. (It would take until 1972 for the musical to be filmed, starring Peter O'Toole.)

Jones' version only reached Number 35 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 (a.k.a. "the pop chart"), but was Number 1 on its Adult Contemporary chart, as grownups treated it as an inspirational song, rather than the fluff, or the hippie-incited songs, that kids were listening to in the "Summer of Love."

The song got associated with the Red Sox. They came into the 1967 season with their odds of winning the Pennant at 100-1. But they contended for the 1st time in a generation, and people began calling their Pennant race "The Impossible Dream." Boston was electing a Mayor that Fall (Kevin White would win the 1st of 4 terms), and "YAZ FOR MAYOR" signs appeared. The nation was electing a President the next year, and "YAZ FOR PRESIDENT" signs appeared.

Dick Williams had gotten the Sox to the last game of the season with a 50-50 shot at the Pennant. But they were losing 2-0, and didn't look like they would be able to come back.

Then came the bottom of the 6th inning. As Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe put it in his 1990 book The Curse of the Bambino, published well before the 2004 postseason rewrote the rules of what constitutes a Red Sox success, "Red Sox fans can recite this inning faster than their own telephone numbers."

Lonborg led off with a bunt. A pitcher bunting with a man on 1st is common. Any player bunting to lead off an inning is not. The Twins were taken by surprise: 3rd baseman Cesar Tovar mishandled it, and Lonborg was aboard. He was credited with a hit -- not that this mattered.

Jerry Adair singled, moving Lonborg to 2nd. Dalton Jones singled to left -- but the Green Monster, the 37-foot-high left field wall, was just 315 feet (they said at the time, later admitting it was closer) from home plate, and Lonborg did not want to make the 1st out of the inning at the plate. The bases were loaded, with nobody out.

The batter was Yastrzemski. Yaz shared the AL home run lead with Killebrew. He led the League in RBIs. He led in batting average. At the time, the Triple Crown wasn't all that unusual. But it wouldn't be done again until Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers in 2012.

Yaz had been on one of the absolute tears of baseball history. He had batted over .500 in the last 2 weeks. Teammate George Scott said, "As I recall, out of those 44 home runs, 42 of them meant something: Either they won the game, or tied the game, or got us back into the game." And there was a banner held up in the center field bleachers, with a bullseye painted on it, saying, "YAZ HIT #45."

Chance delivered, and Yaz lined a shot up the middle, a clean base hit, if not the grand slam the bannerholders were looking for. Lonborg scored easily. Adair came around to score. Jones reached 3rd. It was 2-2.

That brought Ken Harrelson to the plate. Today, people know Harrelson as the incredibly annoying broadcaster for the White Sox. At the time, the Hawk was a controversial player.

Kansas City Athletics owner Charlie Finley had fired manager Alvin Dark, upsetting Harrelson to the point where he said Finley was "a menace to baseball." Finley released him, despite his hitting ability. He could have punished him by trading him to a worse team, but there wasn't any team noticeably worse. So he flat-out let him go, making him a very rare thing at the time: A free agent. Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, desperate to replace the injured Conigliaro in right field, snapped him up.

Despite being known for his power, Harrelson hit a weak grounder to short. Zoilo Versalles, 2 years earlier the AL's Most Valuable Player, threw home to try to get Jones out. He must have forgotten that 2nd base was open, meaning that the play on Jones wouldn't have been a force play. Twins catcher Earl Battey couldn't just take the ball and step on the plate: He had to tag Jones out. He couldn't. 3-2 Boston. There's still nobody out.

Twins manager Cal Ermer took Chance out, and brought in Al Worthington. Williams sent Jose Tartabull (Danny's father) in to pinch-run for Harrelson. Worthingto threw a wild pitch, and that advanced Yaz to 3rd and Tartabull to 2nd. Then he threw another, scoring Yaz and putting Tartabull on 3rd. 4-2 Boston.

Worthington finally got the 1st out of the inning, by striking Scott out. But he walked Rico Petrocelli. Reggie Smith came up, and hit a grounder to 1st. As I said, there was no DH at the time. Killebrew, like Dick Allen of the Phillies, was an atrocious 3rd baseman whose booming bat had to be kept in the lineup, so they moved him to the position where he could do the least damage. Not this time: He bobbled the grounder, and Tartabull scored. Worthington got former Yankee Norm Siebern to ground to 2nd, and Lonborg came up again, and popped to 2nd. The inning ended with Boston leading 5-2.

Lonborg cruised through the 7th inning, but ran into trouble in the 8th, as 3 straight singles by Killebrew, Oliva and Bob Allison resulted in a run, but Allison was thrown out trying to stretch his single to a double, ending the threat.

Williams sent Lonborg out for the 9th. He allowed a leadoff single to Ted Uhlaender, bringing the man who will win the AL Rookie of the Year award, Rod Carew, to the plate with the tying run. But Carew grounded to 2nd, and Mike Andrews, who had replaced Jones, turned the double play. Rich Rollins popped up to short. Petrocelli caught it for the last out. This time, as opposed to the Johnny Pesky incident in the 1946 World Series, nobody minded that the Red Sox shortstop had held onto the ball.

Red Sox 5, Twins 3. The fans poured onto the field, and picked Lonborg up, and carried him off. It is the greatest victory at Fenway Park since the 1912 World Series. (The Sox had played the 1915, '16 and '18 Series at Braves Field, because it had a larger capacity, but played the '46 Series at home, and lost.)

But the Pennant was not yet clinched. The Tigers had already won the 1st game over their doubleheader with the Angels, 6-4. If they had won the 2nd game, there would have been a Playoff at Fenway the next day. And, while the Sox won a coin flip to decide home field advantage, Williams would be in a bind, as he didn't have another pitcher as good as Lonborg to start.

In those pre-Internet days, CBS managed to link up their Detroit station, WWJ, and their Boston station, WHDH (850, once again the Sox station but with call letters WEEI), so that people in the Boston area could listen the the nightcap in Detroit. The TV version of WHDH, Channel 5 (it became the ABC affiliate, WCVB, in 1972), filmed them as they watched, as they were putting together a highlight reel to turn into a TV special after it was all over -- if the Sox won.

The Angels won, 8-5, and the Sox had their 1st Pennant in 21 years, only their 2nd in 49 years. The Sox players erupted in the locker room. Instead of a Playoff tomorrow, they would begin the World Series at home against the National League Champions, the St. Louis Cardinals, in 3 days.

That they ended up losing did little to dim the memories. They had not only won the Pennant, but they had excited the locals for the 1st time in a generation. The Red Sox were cool again. Fenway Park, at the time just one of several pre-World War I ballparks still in use and not considered particularly special, and one which team owner Tom Yawkey really wanted to get out of (either to a new stadium, or to another city entirely), became the place to be, the most famous building in New England, even more than the Old North Church.

As Shaughnessy put it, it was "the birth of Red Sox Nation." Despite everything that has been won by other teams, the Red Sox remain New England's defining sports team. As former Red Sox broadcaster Curt Gowdy put it on Fenway Park's official 75th Anniversary video in 1987, "There are 3 special things about Summer in New England: The Red Sox, Cape Cod, and I forget the 3rd."

Shaughnessy says that, while 2004 is "the greatest story of them all" for Sox fans, 1967 is the most important year in Red Sox history. He has a point: If that Pennant hadn't happened, the likeliest scenario is that Yawkey would have gotten together with Patriots owner Billy Sullivan, and moved with the Pats to suburban Foxboro. 

Instead, Fenway still stands, having celebrated its 100th Anniversary, 6 more Sox Pennants, 4 World Series wins, and the 50th Anniversary of the Impossible Dream. Which ended with everyone waking up 1 game too early. But that didn't bother them as much as the defeats in the World Series of 1975 and 1986, or the AL Championship Series losses to the Yankees in 1999 and 2003, or the collapses of 1978 and 2011.

The Impossible Dream season remains special. People bought the Impossible Dream album. People still have 52-year-old loaves of "Big Yaz" Bread in their freezers. People still keep a copy of the famous front page of the now-defunct Boston Record American, with the Red Sox logo (in red ink, rare for a newspaper in those days) and the headline, "CHAMPS!"