The purpose of this article is not so much to reminisce about a very pleasant part of my past. It is intended, more correctly, to alert the baseball world to watch out! All things are possible. 

I am a native Bostonian who happens to live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. I have been here for about fifteen years and while remaining a Red Sox fan, I have followed the Tampa Bay Rays since they have been in existence and have developed a soft spot in my heart for them. The history of the Rays is very similar to that of the Red Sox of my youth. In what seemed like the blink of an eye the Red Sox went from the laughing stock of the American League to being within one game of being World Champions. 

This year, the Rays seem to have the pieces of the puzzle in place to make them competitive. Teams like the Tigers, Blue Jays and the Indians are at this point having a hard time living up to their hype. Teams like the Athletics and the Twins are playing better than most folks thought they would. The Yankees are old and brittle. The White Sox and the Rangers confuse me. The Mariners are not as bad as their record indicates. The Royals are not as bad as they have been in recent years. The Orioles have shown signs of life and all those kids may surprise. That being said, it is my opinion that the Angels and the Red Sox are the elite teams in the American League but the Sox have pitching concerns and the Angels don’t seem to have the chemistry (although that is viewing it from 3,000 miles away). 

The timing may be just right for another “Impossible Dream” season featuring your Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. 

I spent the summer of 1955 with my sister and her husband in Levittown, New York. My mother decided that I needed to get out of Boston that year for a couple of reasons. The one that I always thought was the main reason was that the polio epidemic was running rampant in Boston at the time. In fact, two kids in my neighborhood contracted and died from polio that summer. Recently, she told me that the main reason I was shipped to New York that year (and the following five) was because my Dad had passed away a couple of years before and my Mom couldn’t take care of my little sister and me and work at the same time. My going to stay with my older sister gave her some breathing room.  

I was nine years old and hardly knew my big sister and her husband when I arrived at their Long Island home. They were almost smothering in trying to make me welcome and comfortable. One of the things my brother-in-law (####) did to entertain me was to take me to a Giants game at the Polo Grounds. My sister was wild. I was there for protection against the poliovirus and here he was taking me to a ballgame surrounded by thousands of other people who could be carriers of the virus. We didn’t go to any more games that year but I was hooked. In the following years, #### and I went to a lot of Giants games. 

I was about twelve when I went to my first Red Sox game. My uncle Irving was upset that I was becoming so attached to my brother-in-law that he decided to compete with him. Irving was an avid Red Sox fan and attended a fair amount of games every year. He also didn’t like #### very much. I always wondered why he bothered going to games though, because all he ever seemed to do was complain about how bad the Sox were back then; and they were pretty bad. But they got even worse! 

From 1959 through 1966 the Red Sox never had a winning season and in fact, from 1964 to 1966 they lost over 90 games. They were hapless and hopeless but they were the Red Sox and I had become a fan. I knew they weren’t going to win anything so I focused on the players. Bill Monbouquette, Pete Runnels, Frank Malzone (although he was known as Frank Malone in my Irish neighborhood), Earl Wilson, #### Radatz, Don Buddin and later Eddie Bressoud were my favorites.  In 1966 the Sox brought up George Scott and Joe Foy. They were going to be the players that would allow Yaz and Tony Conigliaro to take the Sox to the next level. But it didn’t work out that way. As a matter of fact the 1966 season was in complete disarray with (manager) Billy Hermann being replaced by Pete Runnels late in the season. O’Connell was dumping everybody.  

#### O’Connell took over as GM of the Red Sox n September of 1965. He was doing an awful lot of things behind the scenes that we fans never knew about and from my point of view; the situation was no different than it had always been except that none of my favorite players were still on the team. After the 1966 season, O’Connell hired #### Williams to manage the Red Sox. Williams had been the manager of the Toronto AAA minor league team and knew most of the young players that were coming up. He brought a new and strange atmosphere into the Sox clubhouse; work hard, play hard and be accountable to your team. What a concept! Back then the Red Sox had the reputation of being 25 ballplayers who took 25 different cabs to the ballpark. 

Williams and the Red Sox started the 1967 season with a bucketful of young players. Yaz and Conigliaro were established stars and Joe Foy, Rico Petrocelli and George Scott were obviously going to be good ballplayers. Rookies Reggie Smith and Mike Andrews were untested but it did appear that the Sox had 7 of the 8 field positions covered. O’Connell filled the roster with role players like Jerry Adair, Dalton Jones, Jose Tartabull and George Thomas. He acquired Gary Bell and Lee Stange to go along with Jim Lonborg, Gary Waszlewski, Darrel Brandon and Dave Morehead. John Wyatt, Jose Santiago and a young Sparkey Lyle were in the bullpen. Actually O’Connell was running people in and out all year with 38 different players seeing time on the Red Sox roster. 

No long-in-the-tooth Red Sox fan will ever forget that awful August game against the Angels when Tony C was hit in the head by a Jack Hamilton fastball; ultimately ending his career. But help was there. Charley Finley and the Athletics had finally tired of Ken (the hawk) Harrelson and released him. O’Connell quickly picked him up and we had a right fielder. On August 3rd of that year the Red Sox traded two guys of no consequence to the Yankees for Elston Howard and the catching position (which had been a problem all year) was solidified.  

The American League pennant was won on the last day of the season. The Sox beat the Twins and the Tigers lost the second game of a double header to the Angels. The problem was that the Sox had to use their 22 game winner, Jim Lonborg against the Twins and messed up the pitching assignments with the Cardinals for the World Series. Only in game seven did Lonborg face Cardinals ace Bob Gibson and he did that with 2 days rest. There was no contest. Gibson had three complete game victories in that series. 

1967 was a glorious time for a Red Sox fan and the Red Sox organization. The Sox had not won a pennant in 23 years and in fact had only finished second twice during that time. Attendance was dismal for years until the 1967 season and I can attest to that. I never had trouble getting into a game and rarely did I ever see the stands more that half full. From then on, Red Sox tickets have become a premium buy in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski won the triple crown (the last player to do so). Jim Lonborg won 22 games and was the American league Cy Young award winner. Reggie Smith (who would have been Rookie of the Year if he wasn’t up against Rod Carew). Rico Petrocelli and Sparkey Lyle went on to have long and successful careers. Ken Harrelson got into a major market and took full advantage of it. His very public persona spring boarded him into a very successful post baseball career in broadcasting. After having such a dismal record prior to the 1967 season, the Red Sox have only had 6 losing seasons in the last 40 years. Only the tragedy of Tony Conigliaro’s beaning put a cloud over this wonderful season.  

I see are a lot of close comparisons to the Cardiac Kids of 1967 and the 2008 Rays. Yaz, Tony C, George Scott and Joe Foy couldn’t carry the Sox in 1966 (the Sox lost 90 games) and Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton, Carlos Pena and Delmon Young couldn’t carry the Rays in 2007 (the Rays lost 96 games). A couple of rookies and some key veteran pick-ups took the Sox over the top in’67. Evan Longoria and Jason Bartlett along with a few key veteran acquisitions have got the Rays this far in 2008. 

I know the season is less than 25% old as I write this but just maybe there is another “Impossible Dream” season in store for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008. If it happened it would be one of the greatest stories in baseball and you heard it here first.