The Toughest Day
in Red Sox History

A Hometown Hero's Fall Still Echoes After 40 Years

Recalling Tony C. | Slideshow | Audio
Bob Ryan Archive: Unforgettable Moment Hit Home

The following article on Tony Conigliaro and the 1967 Red Sox by Shaun Kelly, was originally published by Jim Walsh for the 2007 Red Sox Annual, by Maple Street Press, publisher of the Ultimate Red Sox Companion:

On a balmy Sunday afternoon, September 18, 1966, my father and I strolled down an unassuming alley in the Back Bay section of Boston then called Jersey Street, entered Gate A, and sat in our appointed seats in Section 12 at Fenway Park.

Another summer of disappointment would officially end for the Boston Red Sox ten days later. On the final day of the season, the team would finish with a demoralizing 72-90 record, good for ninth place, one-half game out of last place in a ten-team American League.

At the time, the organization was considered a genuine loser with a disquieting moniker – “The Country Club”. Boston’s only professional baseball club was known to overpay and coddle its stars while playing in a then feeble stadium where the average attendance was less than nine thousand a game. The last major league franchise to include an African-American on its big league roster, the organization was a backwater for deep-seated colonialism that had directly affected the overall play of the team on the field.

Not surprisingly, the Sox hadn’t had a winning season in a decade, and despite the presence of a handful of talented prospects emerging from Boston’s AAA squad in Toronto, a sparse crowd of downcast loyalists sat passively as the Olde Towne Team lose their final home game of the season to the California Angels.

As my father and I watched from our red seats along the first base line, we witnessed starting pitcher Jim Lonborg relieved in the fifth inning after another unsatisfactory outing. He would then be replaced by journeymen hurlers Rollie Sheldon and Gary Roggenburk. Despite the looming presence of such emerging sluggers as Carl Yastrzemski, Tony Conigliaro, and George Scott, Angel hitters Jim Fregosi and Paul Schaal outmatched the Sox, 5-3, handing Boston its 86th defeat of the season.

At 3:29 pm, when the final out was made, even the most casual of fans recognized that one more futile Boston baseball season was already in the books. Observing my gloom, my father, who had come to accept disappointment as an unswerving baseball companion, put his arms around me and said fiercely, “Don’t worry, son. You know what they said in Brooklyn in the old days? ‘Wait until next year’!”

“I hope so,” I muttered as we walked past five-thousand torn scorecards, confetti for another melancholy season.