The addition of a second wild-card team has brought
increased complexity to Major League Baseball. With five teams playing in each
three-division league, a team like the Milwaukee Brewers – who were playing
.500 ball until just recently – is still in the hunt for a post-season spot.
Things were far simpler 45 years ago to the day, when each league had
10 teams (up from 8 in the early 1960s) and no divisions. Two teams saw
October, while the other 18 went home. In 1967, the American League in late September
was looking at a 30,315,229 to 1 chance for a four-way tie for the pennant. It
truly was Down to the Wire, the title of a 1992 book by former Dallas Morning
News sportswriter Jeff Miller that chronicles the race between the Boston
Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins.
Jeff Miller's definitive book on the 1967 AL pennant race
The 1967 White Sox were the reincarnation of The Hitless
Wonders. The team, managed by Eddie Stanky, ended the season with a batting
average of .225 (ironically, not the league’s lowest) and 89 homers, almost half
as many as the league-leading Tigers. Don Buford and Ken Berry shared the team
leadership with a .241 batting average, while Pete Ward led with 62 RBI,
followed by Tommie Agee with 52 and Ron Hansen with 51. Since they were just an
average fielding team, the Sox were carried by a pitching staff with an
astounding ERA of 2.45; no team was lower than 3.14. The leading starting
pitchers were Gary Peters (.2.28), Joel Horlen (2.06) and Tommy John (2.47).
Bobby Locker (20 saves, 2.09) and Hoyt Wilhelm (12 saves, 1.31) anchored the
bullpen. Desperate for hitting, the Sox traded for 36-year-old Ken Boyer from
the Mets and 33-year-old Rocky Colavito from the Indians in July. Smoky
Burgess, now age 40, was in his last season as what amounted to a designated
pinch-hitter.
Pete Ward and Don Buford
The surprising White Sox held first place from June 11 to
August 12, regaining it for one day, September 6. Before the next night’s game,
the American League sent former umpire Charlie Berry to inspect the condition
of the infield, following complaints by Angels manager Bill Rigney. Head
groundskeeper Gene Bossard, father of current head man Roger “The Sodfather”
Bossard, was well known for keeping the home-plate area slightly less arid than
a swamp and, under the league’s direction, Bossard’s crew steered a one-ton
roller over the area. It was later confirmed that the Sox indeed put baseballs
in a freezer before the games, thus helping negate opponents’ power. The Sox
lost the next two games to the Tigers and would bounce between third
and fourth place but still very much in the running.
Two surprises characterized the season. The 1966 World
Champion Baltimore Orioles, who swept the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 to 0 in the
Fall Classic, fell 21 games to finish 76-85 in 1967. The Boston Red Sox, 72-90
and only two games ahead of the last-place New York Yankees in 1966, were in
fifth place as late as August 13 before storming into the pennant race, thanks
in part to Carl Yaztremski’s Triple Crown season and the mid-season addition of
present White Sox announcer Ken “Hawk” Harrelson. The Minnesota Twins and
Detroit Tigers, second and third in 1966 with a one-game difference, had solid
line-ups. Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva led the Twins in hitting, and Dean
Chance joined Jim Kaat, a 25-game winner in 1966, on the mound. The Tigers were
led by Al Kaline, Willie Horton Norm Cash and Bill Freehan, with star pitchers
Denny McLain, Mickey Lolich and Earl Wilson.
Ken "Hawk" Harrelson
The White Sox seemly had no business being in such company
but with only five games remaining, they stood only 1 game out. The schedule
was in their favor, with a double-header vs. the last place Kansas City A's on the road
and eighth-place Washington Senators for a weekend series at home. The Twins were in
first place, the Red Sox in second, one game back and percentage points ahead
of the White Sox, and the Tigers were 1.5 games back in fourth. Because of a
rainout, the Tigers would have to play back-to-back doubleheaders with the
Angels in Detroit, while the Twins and Red Sox eventually squared off for the final two
games in Boston.
A’s manager and Hall of Famer Luke Appling, a career White
Sox player, would have liked to see the Sox win the pennant but sent two of his
best pitchers, Chuck Dobson and Catfish Hunter, to face Peters and Horlen. The
first game was a disaster for the Sox, scoring 2 runs (in the 9th
inning) on 4 hits while committing two errors, a wild pitch and passed ball on
the way to a 5-2 loss. The second game was worse, blanked 4-0 on three hits by
Hunter. Some 5,325 fans witnessed the meltdown, the last A’s games in Kansas
City. They moved to Oakland the following season. (My blog post on the A's is http://brulelaker.blogspot.com/2012/05/kansas-city-athletics.html)
Chuck Dobson and Catfish Hunter
The Sox limped back to Chicago, now 1.5 games back in fourth
place. A win on Friday night was a must. Only 12,665 showed up to watch the Sox
stay in the race. Anticipating a possible World Series appearance, the Sox
built a fenced-in area for photographers on the far side of the 1st-base
dugout. The Senators put runners on first and second vs. John in the 1st
inning, thanks to two errors. Fred Valentine then lofted a pop foul behind 1st
base that Tommy McCraw would have caught if the photographers’ area hadn’t been
built. Valentine then singled to drive in a run, which held up thanks to 4-hit
pitching by Phil Ortega, and the Sox’s 1-0 loss eliminated them from the
pennant race. They then lost the final two games, 4-0 and 4-3, the Saturday
game witnessed by 4,020 die-hard fans.
Fred Valentine
So down to the wire it was, as the Tigers split their first
doubleheader and the Red Sox beat the Twins on Saturday. The winner of Sunday’s
Red Sox-Twins game was assured at least a tie for first place, while the Tigers
needed a sweep to force a one-game playoff. The Red Sox defeated the Twins,
5-3, setting of a wild celebration resulting in the shutdown of the Kenmore T
station for fear the mob would spill on to the third rail.
In the meantime, the Tigers won game 1 of the doubleheader,
and somehow I found myself on the second floor of the D wing of Dravo Hall at
Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where I was a freshman, at about
7:30 EDT. Somebody had tuned in Ernie Harwell’s call of game 2 from WJR in Detroit. I arrived just in time to hear Dick McAuliffe ground into
a Knoop-to-Fregosi-to-Mincher double play, thus ending the Tigers’ hopes with
an 8-5 defeat.
Ernie Harwell
It took the White Sox five years to recover from the
disappointing ending. Attendance for the season was only 985,634, as the
mid-summer shooting of a motorcycle policeman fueled increased fears of safety
in the Comiskey Park neighborhood. The team and attendance got progressively
worse, bottoming out in 1970, finishing 56-106, 42 games behind the
division-winning Twins, before a total of 495,355 fans. I was not one of them,
for the only season since my first game in 1953 or 1954, although my streak of
seeing the Sox every year is intact by attending a game in Boston.
