The 10-game winning streak that ignited Red Sox Nation
This is the third part in a series about the Red Sox Impossible Dream season and the Summer of 1967 in Boston. Learn more about this project.ON THE NIGHT
Red Sox Nation was born, the Sox themselves were in the air, flying back from a midsummer road trip. Amid the scattered card games, the banter with the sports writers, and the flirting with the flight attendants in their sugar-spoon hats, the only thing unusual aboard their United charter on July 23, 1967, was that none of the guys were asleep.
They were too wired, high off of a 10-game winning streak, 12 games above .500 and just a half-game out of first. Some of the guys were now trying on the P word — “pennant” — in interviews, even if their brash manager was playing it cool, sticking simply with his preseason prediction that they’d win more than they’d lose.
The plane began its descent, and the captain’s voice crackled over the intercom from the cockpit. Word from the tower was that a crowd was waiting at the terminal, so they couldn’t pull right in. Instead, they would taxi to a far corner of the airport, then ride a bus over to meet their families and the fans.
To a man, they wondered what was going on down at Logan. This was a team accustomed to being ignored, routinely playing to fewer than 5,000 fans in recent years, occasionally fewer than 500.
At the end of each road trip, broadcasters Ken Coleman and Ned Martin would mention the team’s flight details, but it was mostly a courtesy to the wives and girlfriends who might greet the team. Only occasionally would an autograph-seeker or two show up, or maybe a couple of kids in Little League uniforms.
Indeed, expectations had been so low back in January that when rookie manager Dick Williams won a trip to Paris on a new game show called “Hollywood Squares,” the scribes in Boston had a field day. Surely by July, Williams — Boston’s eighth skipper in as many years — would be unemployed and ready for that Paris vacation.
But now it was actually July, and a club that finished ninth the last two years had somehow reached the All-Star break at 41-39, keeping the manager’s brassy prediction intact.
Read the complete story at BostonGlobe.com.
Don’t have a Globe subscription? Boston.com readers get a 2-week free trial.
