I was 14 years old in 1967 and — like most fans that year — was madly in love with the Boston Red Sox. Devoid of the cynicism that fans can develop when they live and die with one team their whole lives, I was flush with the glow of a teenage boy whose heroes finally, after years of abject futility, came through.
There was no mountain that Yaz, Rico, Boomer, Lonborg and the rest couldn’t scale. Take two from the Minnesota Twins — a team that pretty much had owned them for three years? No problem, but thanks go out to should-be Hall-of-Famer Jim Kaat for popping something in his elbow in the penultimate game. The Sox wouldn’t have beaten him.
And thanks, too, to Zolio Versalles, the American League MVP two years before, whose throwing error helped open the door to the five-run rally that sealed the deal in Game 162.
Seven games later, I came to one startling conclusion: the American League, in 1967, had nobody who played the game the way Lou Brock of the St. Louis Cardinals did. The man was incredible.
The overarching story of the 1967 World Series was that Bob Gibson silenced the Red Sox three times in one of the most dominating stretches of pitching ever. And that’s true. Gibson, who had broken his leg and missed more than a month, hit his stride by the series and was unhittable.
And Lou Brock was unstoppable. Brock hit .414 in the seven-game series, and stole seven bases. The Red Sox never caught him once.
What an awful combination if you’re the Red Sox. They couldn’t keep him off first base — and then couldn’t keep him on first base once he got there. With those two guys playing the way they did, it’s a wonder the Red Sox took the Cardinals to seven games before losing. That was 100 percent due to their season-long pluck. They never gave in. And it was comforting to know that they lost to a truly superior team.
Brock died over the weekend — the second Major League Baseball immortal from my lifetime to pass in a week, Tom Seaver being the other.
Seaver was never in a position to kill the Red Sox during his distinguished career, but ironically he did anyway. He came to the Red Sox via trade in 1986 and would have pitched in that World Series against the Mets, but got hurt. Al Nipper pitched instead and got rocked. Somehow, even a 40-plus-year-old Tom Terrific would have done better, I think.
But Brock? Brrrrrrr. I still have nightmares of him running wild against hapless Red Sox catchers. He was the Road Runner, taunting Wile E. Coyote every time he swiped another one.
Guys like Brock, and also Maury Wills before him and Rickey Henderson after him, don’t just disrupt defense because they steal bases. They do it by making pitchers nervous enough to change their routines and, possibly, mess with their mechanics. They throw over to first base endlessly (the batter following Brock in the Cardinals lineup had to have extraordinary patience).
Even if Lou Brock doesn’t steal a base, the pitcher could lose his focus, and throw one right down Broadway that the batter launches to the deepest part of the park. As the sign says, “Speed kills.”
Years go by and you develop a deep admiration for that which you hated while the battle raged. I was privileged to attend Julius Erving’s last game at the Garden. Ditto Derek Jeter’s final game at Fenway Park. I hated these players because they killed teams for which I lived and died. But I grew to respect them for what they brought to their sports — and to my life.
In 1999, MLB included Bob Gibson as one of the best players of the latter half of the 20th century (but not Brock, for some reason). That was the year the All-Star Game was in Boston, so all those players showed up for a news conference. I had a chance to talk to Gibson, who — once he found out where I was from — immediately mimicked the Bostonian’s lament. “You ruined my summmaaaah!” he said.
But no. Those days were long gone. What remained was the admiration I had for his integrity as an athlete, his fierceness on the mound, and for his accomplishments. That feeling makes sports unique.
I was able to tell him that. I wish I’d been able to tell Lou Brock that, too, because nobody rooted harder for him to break Wills’ stolen-base record in 1974 than me, and nobody was happier for him than I was.
Our childhood sports heroes are all at ages where they’re leaving us left and right. Brock was 81, as is Yastrzemski. Tony Conigliaro, who was my picture of youthful exuberance (and perhaps hubris, too), would be 75 if he were alive. Ringo is 80 and Paul McCartney is 78.
Just know, though, that each time one of these guys goes, a little piece of the fans who followed them (and in some cases hated them) goes with them.
