Some tidbits from January 1967. A Clif Keane story: Sox Spurn $500,000 for Conig; Signs for $30,000. Eccentric A’s owner Charlie Finley was offering half a million. I wonder how much a 22-year old Tony C would be worth today on the open market?
At the Boston baseball writers dinner, Yankee manager Ralph Houk proclaimed that “the Yankees might be fighting for the pennant with the Red Sox.” The Major was about ten years too early-his Yanks would finish ninth in 1967.
At the dinner, General William D Eckert, one of the most undistinguished baseball commissioners, praised big league ballplayers who went overseas to Vietnam (no surprise there) and made a pitch for a new stadium for Boston. GM Dick O’Connell on Fenway: “We’ve got to think that we won’t have many more years in Fenway, where our pitchers will have to throw four strikes,” in apparent reference to the field’s size. I wonder if in the hereafter O’Connell knows that Fenway, which is no longer a ballpark but a shrine, is going to be celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year?
Other interesting headlines: Red Sox Pick Fisk, ex-UNH backstop. The next day: Sox Brass, Fisk to Talk Money. “I’ve been waiting so hard to play. I can’t think of much else,” Fisk was quoted as saying. That kind of feeling would characterize Pudge’s Hall of Fame career, only a part of which was played with the Red Sox. Due to the bungling and chaos in the front office after the death of Tom Yawkey, Fisk would be allowed to escape to the White Sox, where he would play 13 more productive years. Losing Fisk rivals the Bambino trade as one of the worst blunders in team history.
How many more World Series games would Carlton have won in a Boston uniform? If anyone deserved to stay in New England, it was him.
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