Boston Red Sox

Nation builders

By Eric Wilbur

3 minutes to read

They’re credited with having created what is generally known today as “Red Sox Nation.” That’s news to former Red Sox manager Dick Williams.

“I didn’t know about Red Sox Nation until I saw it in the paper the other day,” he said.

Whatever you call it, it was indeed the 1967 Red Sox that transformed what the Red Sox would mean to New England forever.

“Before ’67, there wasn’t a Red Sox Nation,” Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski said. “It was very difficult to play my first six years here. They’d say we’d have 8,000 for Opening Day, and that was a big crowd.”

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Forty years later, there isn’t an empty seat in an expanded Fenway Park, where members of the Impossible Dream team threw out the ceremonial first pitch prior to today’s home opener against the Mariners.

“To be in a pennant race, and not 30 games out by the All-Star break was a completely different experience for me,” said Yastrzemski, who hit for the Triple Crown that season, still the last player to accomplish the feat. “Baseball was fun again.”

Led by rookie manager Dick Williams, the ’67 Sox went from a ninth-place finish in ’66 to the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

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“I think one of the big reasons for that ’67 team to have success was the way Dick Williams handled us,” Yastrzemski said.

“I knew we had talent on the ballclub in ’67,” Williams said, adding that one of the most important moves he made was stripping Yaz of his captaincy in order to spread the message of equality. It was at the end of spring training when he busted out the still famous line, “We’ll win more than we lose.”

“I truly believed it,” said Williams, who described his style of small-ball managing as “Branch Rickey-style.”

Outfielder Reggie Smith said Williams’s “Expect to win” nature transformed the team.

“He brought that attitude more than anything,” he said. “He could be pretty tough.”

  • Williams said that he knew Jim Lonborg would be his Opening Day starter in ’67 the moment he saw him in spring training that season. Lonborg, who wasn’t on hand for today’s ceremony, of course had his career cut short when he broke his leg in a skiing accident.

    “No telling how good he could have been if he didn’t go skiing with that broad,” Williams said.

  • Crooner Robert Goulet, a Lawrence native, sang “The Impossible Dream” as members of the team took the field. The song became the official anthem of the team during the 1967 season.

    “I’m thrilled to be able to sing it to them today,” Goulet said. “But I was so nervous it was ridiculous.”

    Goulet, who flew in from Vegas last night, had tears in his eyes from the cold weather he said, but none shed for Lawrence, where he hasn’t been in many years, he said.

  • Reggie Smith, who played toward the end of his career in Japan (1983), on the influx of Japanese ballplayers into the major leagues: “At the time I was there, I thought the level of play was Double-A or better. But the pitching was definitely major league caliber.”

    Smith added that he remembers seeing Daisuke Matsuzaka in high school in Japan, and knew at that time that he’d be a special player.

  • Williams on Tony Conigliaro: “Tony and I didn’t get along. But I’ll tell you what, I’ve never seen a more courageous ballplayer.”

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