1973 Carlton Fisk Boston Red Sox Catcher Baseball - 4-Page Vintage Article

Description

1973 Carlton Fisk Boston Red Sox Catcher Baseball - 4-Page Vintage Article
Original, Vintage Magazine article
Page Size: Approx. 9" x 12 1/2" (24 cm x 31 cm) each page
Condition: Good
Playing baseball gives me
deep satisfaction, especial-
ly when I'm doing well and
we’re winning. Like last season,
my team, the Boston Red Sox,
just missed playing the Oak-
land A’s for the American
League championship, mostly
because Detroit's Al Kaline
stopped us with his hot bat.
And for me, personally, 1972
was excellent. First of all, I was
voted the AL’s Rookie of the
Year. While I have to admit
that it didn't come as a big sur-
prise—the
newspapers and
magazines kept saying I had it
locked up—I was very pleased
at being chosen unanimously.
It was the first unanimous vote
for that honor in the history of
the American League.
Another high point of '72
was appearing as the only
rookie on the AL All-Star team.
My eyes were as big as base-
balls when stars like Hank
Aaron and Willie Mays came
up to hit. Seeing them, I thought
back to when I was growing up
in New Hampshire, collecting
bubble-gum cards with these
same players on them.
To give you an idea of just
how affected I was, let me tell
you what happened on the field.
Bill Freehan, of Detroit, had
caught the first five innings and
I took his place in the sixth.
Now, all day long I'd been tell-
ing myself that Bill would go
six innings and I’d catch the
last three. So when Indians
pitcher Gaylord Perry and I
went in to form a new battery.
I had it in my head that there
were three innings left. Gaylord
stayed in two innings and was
replaced by Wilbur Wood, of
the White Sox, after our team
had gone ahead, 3-2, in the top
of the eighth. Wilbur got them
out in the bottom of the eighth
—only I thought it was the bot-
tom of the ninth—and I ran out,
shook his hand, and said, “Atta
boy, Wilbur, way to go!" Well,
he looked at me as if to say,
"Oh, man, this guy really is a
rookie. Doesn’t even know how
many innings there are in a
game." You can imagine how I
felt!
I guess you’d think profes-
sional ballplayers don’t make
mistakes like that, but they
sure do—and that wasn’t my
first time. Back in 1968, I was
in my first year of professional
baseball, catching for the mi-
nor-league club in Waterloo,
Iowa. In the fifth inning of one
game, with the bases loaded
and nobody out, I walked out
to the pitcher and said, “Hey,
look, if the ball’s hit back to
you, throw it to me and I'll
throw it to first, and we'll have
a double play." Two pitches
later it happened exact- —
ly that way, and I ran...
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