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Carl Yastrzemski, the greatest career-long Red Sox player not named Ted Williams, grew up a Yankees fan on Long Island, where he was born in Southhampton, on August 22, 1939, a week before the outbreak of the Second World War. His father, Carl Sr., a potato farmer back in the days when Long Island real estate was very cheap and supported many farms, loved to play baseball and was good enough to play semi-pro ball. (In his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, Carl Jr. would pay tribute to his father, saying he had the talent to be a major leaguer, but had to defer his dream during the Great Depression in order to support his family. He also mentioned his mother, the former Hattie Skonieczny, for all her love and support and sacrifice that had helped him realize his dream.)
Young Carl grew up in Bridgehampton, Long Island, graduating from Bridgehampton High School (Class of 1957), where he set records in multiple sports. He was a career .512 hitter for Bridgehampton High and set the conference record for most points scored by a basketball player, performances that won him an athletic scholarship in both baseball and basketball to Notre Dame University. While a freshman at Notre Dame, he signed a professional baseball contract.
In the pre-draft days of major league baseball, in which a team could sign as many prospects as it could afford, young Carl -- who had played semi-pro ball along with his father -- was offered a Yankees contract. The idea of signing with the perpetual World Champions (the Yankees won the pennant, then an immediate pass to the World Series, all but three times from 1947 through 1964, a span in which they won the series 10 times) did not appeal to Carl Sr., as the Yankees had a deep farm system, abetted by the then-current scouting system which allowed them to stock up on the best prospects. (During the late 1950s, before the team was acquired by Charles O. Finley, the Yankees also used the Kansas City Athletics as a kind of ancillary farm team, siphoning off their best players.) Carl's father preferred a contract offered by Tom Yawkey's Boston Red Sox that would allow his son the time to earn his college degree.
The Red Sox had not been in contention since the early 1950s, but a talented player like Carl could expect to be a starter far sooner with this franchise than he could with the Yankees, who might trade the talented youngster away to a perpetual doghouse dweller like the K.C. Athletics (from whom they acquired Roger Maris). Carl Sr. believed that his son would be better served by the Red Sox than the Yankees. Indeed, his father's hunch paid off: Carl would get to the big leagues by the time he was 21 years old, but he -- like Ted Williams -- would never win a World Series championship, something that eluded the franchise for 85 seasons (1919-2003).
As a member of Raleigh Capitals of the high A-level Carolina League during the 1959 season, Yaz lived up to his reputation as a premier baseball prospect by hitting .377, which lead the league by a whopping 64 points. He won Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player honors in the Carolina League, then moved on the following year to the Minneapolis Millers of the Triple A International League, the Red Sox's top farm team. As a Miller, he almost won a second batting title. (As a major leaguer, he would win three batting titles and finish second twice.)
The great Ted Williams, #9, retired in 1960, and the next year, the man New England would know and love -- and sometimes revile -- as "Yaz" made his major league baseball debut, taking over left field from the departed "Splendid Splinter", who left baseball with a career batting average of .344. Yaz wore #8, which Red Sox teammate Bill Lee ("The Spaceman") said contributed to his longevity (23 years in the major leagues with one team, a record matched only by Brooks Robinson) as, when lying down on the trainer's table, the "8" morphed into the symbol for infinity. But back at the start of his career, Yaz was criticized for not being a hitter of Ted Williams' caliber.
In fact, during the first three months of his major league career, Yaz was hitting a paltry .220. He asked that Ted Williams, then fishing in New Brunswick, be solicited for advice. Yaz's confidence had been undermined, and he did not think he could play in the major leagues. Williams responded by flying down to Boston and working with the rookie who had replaced him in left for for three days. In his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, Yaz thanked Ted Williams for his mentoring, recalling that #9 "Helped me mentally. Gave me confidence that I could play in the big leagues. I hit .300 for the rest of the season.... (applause) Ladies and gentlemen, no man is an island. He must have a support system which without he cannot function."
Yaz turned out to be an outstanding outfielder (something Ted Williams clearly was not, focusing purely on hitting), leading the American League in assists in his sophomore year and for an additional six years in his career, the last time in 1977, when he won a Gold Glove at the age of 38! As a hitter, he could not rival Williams (whose only rival, in terms of production, was another former Red Sox, the pitcher the Boston club dealt to the Yankees, Babe Ruth, which put the fabled "Curse of the Bambino" on the franchise for three-quarters of a century).
Yaz lead the league in hits and bases on balls in 1963, the year he won the first of his three American League batting titles. But it was not enough for Red Six fans. Williams, who had lost over five years to military service in World War II and the Korean War, won six batting titles, four home run titles, four RBI titles and six times led the league in total bases; in addition, Ted had won two "Triple Crowns" -- the batting average, home run and RBI trifecta. However, in 1967, Yaz would achieve redemption.
In what is widely considered one of the greatest single season performances by any player, Yaz made the Red Sox fans forget Ted Williams by winning his own Triple Crown and leading the Boston Red Sox into the seventh, last and deciding game of the World Series before losing to the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1966, the Red Sox had finished 9th in a 10-team league; in '67, they went almost all the way. It was dubbed "The Impossible Dream" pennant (after the song from Man of La Mancha (1972)), and Yaz was indisputably the cog that made the machine work. In addition to winning the American League Triple Crown (the last in major league baseball), he was named Most Valuable Player of the American League.
Yaz would play in one more World Series, the 1975 title match against the Cincinnatti Reds that many call the greatest World Series ever played (the team once again coming up short in the seventh, deciding game), and was the MVP of the 1970 All-Star Game (he was named to the A.L. All-Star time 18 times in his 23-year-long career). When he retired in 1983, Yaz held the American League record for most games played (3,308) and was the only A.L. player to amass 3,000 hits and 400 home runs, finishing up with 3,419 hits and 452 homers to go along with his 1,844 RBI. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot in 1989, his first year of eligibility, with a yes vote from 94% of the voters. He was ranked number 72 on "The Sporting News" List of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players in 1999.
Yaz now serves as a roving instructor for the Red Sox.
