Don Canney

After the year we’ve all had, it’s nice to see baseball once again being played at old Fenway, albeit before a limited number of fans. Seeing the hype of this year’s opening game and its effect on our pandemic psyche sent my mind travelling to a time long before the obscene multi-million-dollar contract and steroid era, when players played because they mostly loved the game.

Perusing an October 12, 1967 edition of the Nashua Telegraph brought me back to a time when everyone in New England was focused on a group of rag tag kids, the “Impossible Dream” team, also known then as the Cardiac Kids, who brought us to the very edge of a World Series championship. LBJ was in the White House, Berg’s Shoe Store on Main Street had sneakers on sale for $1.13 and Ray Hackett’s on Kinsley Street touted a UHF antenna (so you could watch channels 56 and 38) for a whopping $13.13. And the Sox were in the seventh game of a World Series.

It was obvious what the focus of most Nashuans was that day. A walk down Main Street and a peek into the window of Sears Roebuck was proof positive. Every TV in the appliance department was tuned in to the game.

I can fondly remember that summer, sitting in a small sweltering bedroom on a well-worn overstuffed chair in our Cedar Street abode, transistor radio at my side, listening intently to Ken Coleman and Mel Parnell deliver each play as if it were happening before my very eyes. Listening to each crack of the bat raised our hopes of a possible World Series appearance for a team that, at the time, hadn’t been there for 47 years. Little did we know how much longer we would have to wait for an actual win.

It all culminated with a heart pounding ending to a crazy season when our beloved Sox beat the Minnesota Twins on the last game of the regular season to propel them into the eventual seven game event. The Sox sent the likes of Reggie Smith, Hawk Harrelson, Rico Petrocelli, Joe Foy, Jose Santiago, Gary Bell, and Lee “the Stinger” Stang alongside the big guns themselves, Cy Young award winner Jim Lonborg and Triple Crown winner Carl Yastrzemski against the likes of Bob Gibson, Tim McCarver, Julian Javier, Lou Brock, and the rest of the heavily favored St. Louis Cardinals.

For the seventh and final game, I was in my sophomore year at Nashua High. I hadn’t missed a day of school since grade five but was able to negotiate with my mother to skip school and stay home to watch the game on our old 21″ black and white. I was quite confident that Yaz and company were going to pull this one out. In hindsight, boy, was I wrong.

It all came down to game 7, where, as the same Nashua Telegraph story said, it was “the best against the best.” Lonborg versus Gibson. We all know the unfortunate outcome.

St. Louis was firing on all eight cylinders while the Sox could hardly find 4. Pitching, hitting, and base stealing were indeed in the “cards” for St. Louis and our beloved Sox fell 7-2. Depression reigned in New England at the end of that day. Hope was dashed for a first championship in 47 years, along with bragging rights and the vision of a banner waving proudly at Fenway the next season.

But all was not lost. This Sox team was credited with resurrecting baseball in Boston in a year that followed all too many previous less than stellar teams taking the field at Fenway. Boston was once again a baseball town and the name Yastrzemski, the man who took over for the immortal Ted Williams, was a household name. Pennant fever was born that year, and there was no turning back.

It would be another 37 years until the Fenway Faithful would see a World Series trophy paraded atop Duck Boats in Boston. But those Cardiac Kids captured our hearts with their incredible comebacks, dramatic catches, timely stolen bases, and mammoth home runs. The Impossible Dream started it all.

Don Canney is a freelance writer and professional voice artist. He was born and raised in downtown Nashua with great interest in Nashua history circa 1950-1970. He now resides in Litchfield.

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