Sad Days at Fenway Park in the 1960s

               (Excerpt from Remembering Fenway Park: An Oral and Narrative History of the Home of the Boston Red Sox/Abrams 2011  - - now available in stores, on-line and direct from the author)

              By Harvey Frommer

The joy and passion and full houses (breaking the 700 straight sellout mark and counting) and winning ways now on parade at Fenway Park all are a sharp contrast to the way things once were at the little ballpark in most of the 1960s.

There are still those around who recall that time, some with mixed emotions.

SAM MELE: I came into Fenway a lot when I managed Minnesota from 1961 to 1967. My home was still in Quincy, Mass. So I slept in my  own bed.  It was funny. I was managing against the team that I loved.

In 1965, we beat Boston 17 out of 18 times, 8 out of the 9 at Fenway.  It actually hurt me, to beat them.  I felt sorry because in my heart I was a Red Sox fan.  I had played for them, I had scouted for them.  Tom Yawkey would come in my office. And we would talk a lot.  Oh yeah, geez, he had me in his will. 

The losing, the miserable attendance, the doom and gloom that pervaded Fenway was on parade big time on the 16^th of September. The tiniest crowd of the season made its way into Fenway Park  - - just 1,247 paid and 1,123 in on passes. Dave Morehead opposed Luis Tiant of the Cleveland Indians.

          Fenway was a ghost town of a ball park in 1965 when the team drew but 652,201, an average of 8,052 a game . The worst came late in the season. On September 28^th against California only 461 showed to watch the sad Sox. The next day was even worse against the same team – just 409 in the house.  Finishing 9^th in the ten-team American League, the Sox lost 100 games and won 62. The nadir had been breached.

            Managers kept coming and going. Top prospects somehow never made it for one reason or another. Billy Herman was in place as the 1966 season started.   Early on Dave Morehead, just 24, regarded as a brilliant future star, suffered an injury to his arm and was never the same. Posting a 1-2 record in a dozen appearances, he symbolized the Red Sox of that era - promise but pathos.

     In 1966, the Sox lost 90 games and finished ninth. Attendance at Fenway Park was 811,172, an average attendance per game of 10, 095.  It was pitiful.

    JIM LONBORG:  The 1967 season started  off as a typical Red Sox season. There were 8,324 fans on a cold and dreary  April  12^th, Opening Day.  We beat the White Sox 5-4. Petrocelli hit a three-run homer.  And I got the win.

The next day there were only 3,607 at the ballpark.  And then we went on a road trip. We came back having won 10 straight games.  And when our plane landed there were thousands of fans waiting at the airport. That moment was the start of the great relationship between the fans and the players.

 

       A noted oral historian and sports journalist, cited in the Congressional Record  and the New York State Legislature, Harvey Frommer has written forty one sports books.  His work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Daily News, Newsday,  USA Today, Men’s Heath, The Sporting News, among other publications.

          Dr. Frommer, dubbed “Dartmouth’s own Mr. Baseball” by the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, received his Ph.D. from New York University. Professor Emeritus, City University of New York, he has been a professor in the MALS program at Dartmouth College since 1992, where he has taught courses in oral history and culture and sports journalism.