We called them the Cardiac Kids because they had so much heart. And that’s exactly what they had – heart. They had no inheritance, no entitlement, no expectations of being champions. In fact, in 1966, the Boston Red Sox had finished in second to last place. Not dead last, mind you. In that respect, they couldn’t win for losing. But surely, at the start of the 1967 season, no one expected the Red Sox to win the AL pennant and play in the World Series.
But the Impossible Dream came true. That was the second cliché – the Impossible Dream. The Cardiac Kids dreamed the Impossible Dream. And the Impossible Dream came true on the last day of the season. Four teams had a chance to win the pennant that day. The Red Sox had to beat the Minnesota Twins for both of the last games of the season, and they did. Once the Red Sox had won their last game against the Twins, they still had to wait for the outcome of the game between the California Angels and the Detroit Tigers. Detroit’s loss provided the Red Sox’ championship.
But if the Dream was Impossible, winning the season was deserved. Carl Yastrzemski won the Triple Crown that year, leading the league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in. No American League player has won the Triple Crown since that year, when Yaz did it. Jim Lonborg won the Cy Young Award with 22 wins. Yaz and Lonborg, joined by Rico Petrocelli and Tony Conigliaro, played in the All-Star Game that year. They were a fabulous team.
And the Sox kept it together even after we lost Tony C. Tony Conigliaro, a home run hitting outfielder and a local boy, was hit by a pitch on August 18, 1967 by Jack Hamilton of the California Angels. The pitch broke his cheekbone and his jaw, causing damage to his eye. He was taken, unconscious, off the field on a stretcher. He missed the rest of the season and, though he later returned to baseball, he never had the career that he seemed headed for. But even without him, one of our All Stars, the Red Sox continued to win.
The Cardiac Kids won the American League pennant and played the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Although we took the Series to seven games, we lost. But no one thinks of 1967 as the year we lost the World Series. It was the Impossible Dream year, the year we won the pennant, deservedly but unexpectedly.
In 1967, I was a bookish girl growing up in Boston. I had had no interest in any professional sports before that season. But it was hard to live in the city without being infected with the fever. So I came to love the Red Sox. But more than that, I came to believe in the Cardiac Kids and the Impossible Dream. The framework was in place before that year. I was, after all, American, so I have always had a predisposition in favor of the self-made. The United States Constitution bars Congress from bestowing titles of nobility, so we have a public policy notion that everyone needs to earn their own way. As Americans, we also have national myths like Horatio Alger, in which an earnest, honest and hard-working young person aspires to and attains wealth. In many ways, the 1967 Boston Red Sox, the Cardiac Kids, were just another version of those American stories. It was the Cardiac Kids that impressed that ethic indelibly on my psyche. Four decades later, I still believe that, in the right order of things, it is the kids with the heart that will win the prize. It is the Impossible Dreams that are worth dreaming. And it is the 1967 Boston Red Sox that taught me that.
Thanks, Yaz.
Tags: 1967 Boston Red Sox, Boston Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Lonborg, Rico Petrocelli, Tony Conigliaro, World Series
