The 1967 American League Pennant: Four Teams, Six Weeks, One Winner by Cameron Bright (review)

Book titles can be a bit specious at times, but in the case of Cameron Bright’s The 1967 American League Pennant: Four Teams, Six Weeks, One Winner, readers can take heart when they realize that the author develops the timeframe of his book to include the entire 1967 season rather than a half-dozen weeks. Indeed, the second half of the narrative is devoted to the increasingly frenetic tussle between the Chicago White Sox, Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, and—the club that ultimately prevailed—the Boston Red Sox.

Bright’s detailed and informative book was assembled mostly through contemporaneous accounts in newspapers and other weekly publications to get game stories and observations, which are then melded with secondary sources, many by personnel who, like Dick Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, and Bill Freehan, played an active role in determining the AL champion. The author has succeeded in creating a timeline delineated by short chapters that provide convenient breaks so that the reader does not feel overwhelmed by the constant changing of focus from one team to another as the season progresses. By adding a snapshot of the league standings to the beginning of each chapter, readers can see the jockeying for position endured by the ten teams as the campaign moves from spring to autumn.

The first half of the book especially is well stocked with biographical vignettes that put the players, coaches, and managers into context, although devoting four pages to Bob Allison is an extravagance. Emerging as the anti-hero is ChiSox manager Eddie Stanky, possessed of the prickliest personality among the four field leaders. As a player, “Stanky appeared locked in almost a life or death struggle. He had to win” (8). With the influence of Leo Durocher seeming to ooze from his pores, Stanky provided a stark contrast to the staidness of the other contending skippers, Cal Ermer and Mayo Smith, to say nothing of Dick Williams’s reserved but nonetheless unflinching grip on his charges.

The 1967 season was marked by many low-scoring games, presaging 1968’s “year of the pitcher,” but in the case of the White Sox, the collective dominance of their staff could not compensate for their punchless run production and weak defense. Marked by braggadocio and an obnoxious streak which proved a constant irritation to opponents, the press, and even some of his own players, Stanky was reduced to lamentation when his team was all but eliminated in the season’s final week. His dour meeting with the media after a fateful doubleheader loss “ended when Stanky walked away with tears streaming down his face” (223).

But Stanky was not the only casualty of the pressure that ratcheted up as September drew to a close. Players lost weight, while some found a good night’s sleep to be a rare commodity as the tension of the four-way race took its toll. “Except when his adrenaline was pumping during the game,” Bright notes of Boston’s George Scott, “he felt constantly exhausted” (147). And this was only at the end of August.

In the end, it was the command performance of Carl Yastrzemski that delivered the AL flag to the Red Sox, his bat catching fire down the stretch as if to validate the tutorial provided to him by the legendary Ted Williams during spring training. Winning the coveted Triple Crown for his offensive production, Yaz personified Boston’s quest to achieve “the Impossible Dream” of moving from ninth place to first.

Throughout the narrative, the author moves the story along at a determined pace, deftly informing the reader of the happenings that shaped the four contenders. Historically, 1967 featured its share of events domestic and foreign that impacted the United States, but in several instances Bright incorporates these into the text at the expense of straying from the main storyline of baseball. While there is relevance of his discussion of ballplayers being subjected to the draft as...