The "Impossible Dream" Team
Celebrate
1967!
During the team’s first winning season since 1958, the Boston Red Sox shocked all of New England and the rest of the baseball world by reaching the World Series for the first time since 1946.
The Red Sox forged a 10-game, midseason winning streak and the 1967 Red Sox season became known as “The Impossible Dream”. The fans grew excited again and started flocking to Fenway Park. Over the season’s final six weeks, the Red Sox never led or trailed by more than 1½ games. Three teams were still in the pennant race during their final game. When that day was over, the Red Sox had become the first and only team in major-league history to rise from ninth place to league champions.
Team
Players
What makes “The Impossible Dream” so vivid 50 years after the Boston Red Sox won the American League pennant in 1967 is that it was so shocking, so preposterous, so absolutely unimaginable— yet in a positive way that had us exclaiming “Wow!” instead of “Why?”
AL Winners
How could a band of very young and inexperienced ballplayers— playing for a team that hadn’t had a winning season in eight years, had lost 100 games two years earlier, and then finished 26 games out of first place and a half-game out of the cellar the following year— turn their fortunes around so dramatically and win the pennant?
It’s All About Teamwork
Led by 1967 MVP Carl Yastrzemski and Boston’s first Cy Young Award winner, Jim Lonborg, our 1967 Sox were the youngest Red Sox team since the days of Babe Ruth. We went from ninth to first place in what remains the closest pennant race in baseball history. Tony Conigliaro, George Scott, Reggie Smith, Billy Rohr, Jerry Adair, me, and our teammates became household names to the Fenway Faithful as they carried the Red Sox to our first World Series in 21 years under manager Dick Williams.
By the Numbers
Stats
Manager Dick Williams moved our Red Sox from a ninth-place finish in 1966, helping us overcome 100-to-1 odds in winning the pennant and coming within one win of a World Series upset over the Cardinals.
games won
Moved from 9th place to finish first in American League
runs scored
Up from 655 runs scored in 1966 and better than the 611 scored in 1968
season attendance
Average per game attendance at Fenway Park in 1967— 21,331, a team record at the time, and more than double the 10,014 per game in 1966
chances of winning
The Boston Red Sox hadn’t had a winning team since 1958, and they’d finished in ninth place in 1966, just a half-game ahead of the last-place Yankees
season attendance
Average per game attendance at Fenway Park in 1967— 21,331, a team record at the time, and more than double the 10,014 per game in 1966
chances of winning
The Boston Red Sox hadn’t had a winning team since 1958, and they’d finished in ninth place in 1966, just a half-game ahead of the last-place Yankees
Donate
The Jimmy Fund
Since 1953, one thing has remained constant for the Boston Red Sox baseball team — its role as champion for the Jimmy Fund.
Champions for Charity
The roots of this allegiance extend back to the founding of the Jimmy Fund in 1948, when members of another Boston baseball franchise, the Boston Braves, participated in the national radio broadcast that launched the charity.
On April 10, 1953, Yawkey announced that his team would adopt the Jimmy Fund as its official charity and continue the tradition started by the Braves. The two ball clubs celebrated the occasion by playing a benefit exhibition game for the Jimmy Fund the next day.
Home Runs
The Yawkeys’ commitment to the Jimmy Fund over the years made the charity a household name and, more importantly, helped Dana-Farber make unprecedented strides in cancer research and care.
When the Jimmy Fund/Red Sox partnership started in the 1950s, few cancer treatment options were available and most patients with the disease did not survive. Today, with the use of chemotherapy, radiation, vaccines, targeted drugs, and other therapies, half of all patients do. Indeed, these therapies have led to cure rates nearing 90 percent for some forms of childhood cancer.
Today the Red Sox commitment to the Jimmy Fund remains in full swing. In the words of Lucchino, team president and CEO, as well as a former patient at Dana-Farber: “The Red Sox are part of the fabric of this city and the Jimmy Fund is an inseparable part of the Red Sox.”
RICO SHARES HIS STORIES
Baseball Has Been Very Good to Me!