TWO TOPICS DOMINATED THE BOSTON headlines, airwaves, and just about every water cooler and worksite conversation in the city during 1975: Busing and baseball.
The first was a byproduct of the court-ordered desegregation of Boston’s public schools a year earlier and threatened to tear the city apart along racial lines. The second was the result of a fantastic season by the hometown Red Sox—led down the stretch by a pitcher whose own status as a man of color seemed to have no bearing on the respect and adulation fans of all backgrounds held for him.
How could these two situations coexist? Such was the magic of Luis C. Tiant.
At the same time that Tiant was getting the ’75 season underway with an Opening Day start against the Milwaukee Brewers at Fenway Park, Boston was nearing the end of a school year in which the city had dramatically addressed decades of discrimination in educational opportunities for minorities. Thousands of children across the city, by court order, were now required to board buses and travel to schools miles away from their own neighborhoods to create more racially-balanced classrooms. This did not sit well with some residents. In white, largely Irish-Catholic South Boston, angry teens and parents met incoming buses from predominantly Black Roxbury with racial epithets and rocks.
By September, as Tiant and the Red Sox were routinely filling Fenway Park during a stretch-run battle with Baltimore for the American League East title, the second year of the busing crisis was underway. Many high school classrooms in South Boston and Charlestown remained empty due to student boycotts, and there was backlash against Black and Latino residents of all ages—even those far from the front lines. Fenway, meanwhile, rocked with chants of “LOO-EEE! LOO-EEE!” as advocates for and against busing found one subject they agreed upon: their love for the darkest man on the diamond.
Playing minor league baseball in the Deep South of the early 1960s as a man with Black skin and limited English, Tiant had experienced racism and isolation on a grand scale. His father had encountered the same challenges while traveling the dusty Jim Crow roads of the Negro Leagues a generation before, which is why he attempted to dissuade his son from following in his footsteps as a ballplayer.
Thankfully, Luis did not listen.
A decade later, when he emerged as a pitching ace with the Red Sox, he was embraced by the city at a level afforded few athletic heroes before or since. Everybody seemed to love Luis, from Southie to Roxbury and all the spots between and beyond. One of the most popular players in team history, Tiant also served as a role model and inspiration to non-white fans who had long felt the occupants of Fenway Park were not really their team.
And as all fans—and teammates—learned more about the years of forced separation between Tiant and his aging parents in Cuba, it further bonded him with the public. Diplomatic intervention in 1975 opened the possibility of the family being reunited, and progress in the situation began sharing headlines with busing and the ballclub as summer wore on. Through the dog days of July and August, as Red Sox die-hards hoped for that elusive AL East title, and a resolution to the racial conflicts besetting their neighborhoods, they also yearned for Boston’s best pitcher to be together again with his mother and father.
If the Tiants could have a happy ending, maybe—just maybe—their city and their team could as well.
BACK IN MY HOME country, I grew up with Black kids and white kids, and we all played together. It was the same when I started playing ball, in Cuba and later in the United States. I never had any trouble with teammates because of color—it was always the people outside the clubhouse who had the problem.
For a while I thought I left the worst racist crap down south, but things got pretty rough in Boston during the mid-seventies. There was a lot of anger, on both sides, about Black and white kids being bused miles away from their own neighborhoods for school. The idea of giving everybody a decent education was good, but people didn’t want someone else telling them where they or their children had to go to school—especially if it was putting kids in danger. Those who could afford it were leaving Boston for the suburbs where the schools were in better shape overall and busing wasn’t an issue.
Maria and I had three children now, and two of them—Isabel and Luis Jr.—were in school full-time. We wanted to be together in one place all year round, not separated with me living alone in Boston and the rest of the family in Mexico City for the school year. I had a better contract and more stability by 1974, so I felt the time was right. I started going out looking for houses in the afternoons and on off-days, and as I told you already, I found a real nice one in the small town of Milton about fifteen miles from Fenway Park.
But that’s not the end of the story. After I had found the house, and asked the real estate agent for a price, she said it was no longer available. The owner had decided not to sell. The truth, I found out, was that some people in the neighborhood didn’t want any more Black people living there. They already had one a block and a half away from this house; one was enough.
But I fooled them. I went to the house myself, knocked on the door, and a lady answered. She was Puerto Rican, and it turns out she and her husband—who was white—were the owners. When I told her how much I liked their home, she made sure that we were able to buy it. I guess she understood.
Maria, me, and the kids all loved the house, and we were very happy there. Most neighbors were nice to us, and we made some great friends in Milton. Luis Jr. was a teenager by this point, and really enjoyed himself.
“People used to just knock on the door to say hello, and after a game my dad won, people would come back to the house and my mom would cook up a heck of a meal,” he remembers. “Before you knew it the whole street would be filled up with cars. Everybody would eat and drink. It was mostly mom cooking; she and a couple friends would take over the kitchen. We had a pool too. There were lots of cigars, lots of music—salsa, merengue, old school funk, and disco. Some of my friends would come and hang out. Sometimes guys from the Red Sox or the visiting team would come over—or a guy Dad knew from Cuba or winter ball. We had a good-size basement, a bar, and a pool table, and he had a custom-built trophy case in there, too.”
We did have some great times in Milton, but we could never forget, even if we wanted to, that we still looked like outsiders to a lot of people.
One day not too long after we moved in, I was raking the leaves in the front yard when a lady stopped her car near me. Then she rolled down her window and asked—assuming I was the gardener—if I might be interested in picking up some extra lawn work at her place.
“Raking my own yard is enough for me,” I said with a smile, “but thank you for the offer.”
Besides, I could have told her, I already had a pretty good job playing baseball.
In February 1975, when the Red Sox reported to Florida for spring training, there was little moping around about our collapse the previous September. We knew we had a great mix of veterans and younger players who had already been through a pennant race together. Burleson at short, Evans in right, Cooper at DH, and rookie outfielders Rice and Lynn—both of whom looked real good when called up for the last month of the ’74 season—were all twenty-five or younger. Yastrzemski at first and Petrocelli at third were the “old men” on the team, clutch hitters who were smart and steady in the field after a decade-plus in the majors. There were really only two uncertainties: Doug Griffin, a great glove man at second, had a bad back; and Fisk, still recovering from his knee injury suffered the previous June, was limping early in camp. Pudge insisted he would be ready by Opening Day, and knowing his toughness, we didn’t doubt it.
The problem with all this talent was that it left no room on the roster for one of my best friends on the team. So in December 1974, outfielder Tommy Harper was traded to Oakland, ending our second long stint as teammates. I’d no longer have anyone to “flush away” each day in the clubhouse.
Before getting to the ’75 season, I have to share one of my favorites of the many adventures I enjoyed with Tommy. Both of us loved dog racing, and one time while in spring training with Boston, we were coming back from a day at the track when a cop pulled us over for speeding. I was driving, and so the officer came up to my window, lifted his dark sunglasses, and leaned in.
“What were you doing going so fast back there?”
I looked at him, paused, and then said the first thing that came to my mind:
“I was bringing some HEEEEEEEEEAT!”
As one old friend left the club, another came aboard. Stan Williams, teammates with me and Harper on the Indians, and then with me again in Minnesota and Boston, was back in a Red Sox uniform for 1975—this time as our pitching coach. Stan was a master of his craft, with pro experience stretching back nearly twenty years, and like me had reinvented himself mid-career after a major injury robbed him of his fastball. His wisdom would definitely be welcomed because outside of me and Lee, the area where we had the most question marks entering ’75 was starting pitching. Wise and Cleveland were coming off disappointing first seasons with Boston, and Rogelio Moret was a great young talent who lacked consistency and maturity.
Stan was more than just a teammate. He was my dear friend, my supporter, and, when necessary, my defender. I’ll let him tell this story, another one from spring training:
“Luis resented the feelings they had about Black folks in some parts of Florida, as did I,” Williams remembers. “One time we were in a restaurant, and the people were all pointing and mumbling and cussing because a Black man was in there having dinner. So I got up and said, ‘You people really know how to treat a guy, don’t ya? If you’ve got anything more to say, say it to me outside. Two at a time—no, make that three at a time because I want somebody to catch the other two.’”
Stan was six-foot-five and 230 pounds in those days. Nobody took him up on the offer.
We had a real solid pitching staff for Stan to work with, but it could have been even better. Early in the 1974-75 off-season, we were rumored to be the favorites to sign reigning Cy Young winner Catfish Hunter, who was declared a free agent when his contract with the A’s was voided by an arbitrator. The Yankees outbid several other teams and signed Hunter, who had led the American League in wins (at 25-12) and ERA (2.49) in ’74, to a five-year, $3.2 million contract. It was the biggest deal in baseball history; Dick Allen, the highest-paid player in the majors the previous season, had made $250,000, and the average big-league salary in 1975 would be $44,676.
Our general manager, Dick O’Connell, refused to even try and match New York’s offer to Hunter, even though Catfish was on the record as saying he hoped to play for the Red Sox. Dick told reporters that “the unlimited bidding process is inconsistent with the best interests of the Boston club,” but I think all of us in the clubhouse would have been very interested to have Hunter on our club. The move instantly made the Yankees contenders in the AL East, along with us and Baltimore, and made the rest of us players start thinking more about our contracts.
The other new coach we had for the ’75 season was Johnny Pesky at first base. Johnny was a beautiful man who became like a father to me and so many other guys on the team over the next thirty years. He had been a great player with the Red Sox in the 1940s and early ’50s, a terrific shortstop and third baseman who hit .300 setting the table at the top of the order for Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr. Later he managed the Sox for a couple seasons, and after a stint coaching and managing in the Pirates system, he was back where he belonged in a Boston uniform. Nobody loved wearing one—or was more proud of doing so—than Pesky. Especially when it came to working with young ballplayers, he was one of a kind, and he would still be hitting ground balls and fungos well into his eighties.
Even with Stan and Johnny coming on board, the biggest news for the Red Sox in spring training was bad: Fisk, catching in just his second game since coming back from his knee injury, was hit by a pitch in an exhibition game on March 12 and broke his right forearm. He was expected to be out until midseason, once again leaving us without our cleanup hitter and starting catcher. The catching would now be handled mostly by Bob Montgomery, a solid defensive player but a .250 hitter with little power. Sportswriters warned of a big drop-off in offense, but Monty rose to the occasion—coming through in the early weeks of the regular season with several clutch hits including a two-run double to help beat the Milwaukee Brewers at Fenway Park on Opening Day.
I started the opener and earned the 5-2 win, but most of the attention was on the designated hitters: Tony Conigliaro for the Red Sox and Hank Aaron for the Brewers. Tony C, making his latest of many comebacks since he was almost killed by a pitch in 1967, singled in his first at-bat—which got him a long standing ovation. Aaron, making his American League debut after twenty-one seasons in the NL, got one too, with the fans saluting his status as baseball’s new home run king. He had passed Babe Ruth’s famous 714 mark the previous year with the Atlanta Braves and now had 733.
Me? I got booed—for walking Aaron in his first at-bat. I understood; if I was a fan, I would have booed me too. Everybody wanted to see Hank hit his first American League home run, but I made sure it wouldn’t be on that day.
Aaron would wind up playing two full years in Milwaukee, finishing with 755 homers. Conigliaro hit our first home run of the season three days later but then pulled a groin muscle and never got back on track. He was sent down to Triple-A Pawtucket when his average fell to .123, with the hope that things would improve and he’d be back up. They didn’t, and after dealing with back spasms and hitting .220 in the minors, Tony C retired for good in August. He was just thirty. “My body,” he said, “is falling apart.”
It was sad to see a guy with his guts and determination have to walk away from the game when still young and strong. I could appreciate some of what Tony had been through because I was thirty when I made my comeback with Boston. Now, like everyone else, I would always wonder what could have been. Tony is still the youngest player to ever lead the AL in home runs, when he hit thirty-two in 1965 at age twenty, and he might have hit 500 homers if he had the long, full career at Fenway Park that he looked to be heading toward.
Just as Conigliaro had surprised everyone by becoming a star almost overnight in the 1960s, we had two guys who did the same thing for us in ’75: Jim Rice and Fred Lynn. Both won starting jobs in the outfield early in the year, and they went on to have the two best rookie seasons I’ve ever seen.
Rice, six-foot-two and all muscle, started out as a DH when Tony C got hurt. Then, to get Cecil Cooper into the lineup, Rice took over in left to continue the great Red Sox tradition of Hall of Fame players at the position: from Ted Williams to Carl Yastrzemski and now to him. Jim Ed was a soft-spoken gentleman from South Carolina and a great all-around athlete with unbelievable strength. He broke bats with check-swings and could hit a golf ball further than some pro golfers.
That summer Rice, a right-handed hitter, smashed a line-drive home run at Fenway that went over the old center-field wall to the right of the flagpole and completely out of the ballpark. Tom Yawkey and several sportswriters, all of whom went back to the days of Jimmie Foxx and Babe Ruth in the mid-1930s, agreed it was the longest homer they had ever seen hit there. Peter Gammons had a great line when he wrote in the Boston Globe that the July 17 shot off Kansas City’s Steve Busby, which left Fenway heading north, would be “stopped only by Canadian customs.”
Aaron took one look at Rice in action and predicted he would break his record for career home runs. For the next several years, it looked like a good bet. Nobody had a fiercer work ethic than Jim Ed, who gave one hundred and ten percent and played almost every day despite numerous nagging injuries. He had a reputation with fans and sportswriters for being moody, but he was really just a shy guy who didn’t like the constant media attention you get playing in Boston. And although most fans loved him, he also dealt with a lot of racist crap yelled at him by assholes sitting in the Fenway bleachers. Few people knew about it because he didn’t complain.
Rice’s .309 average, 22 home runs, and 102 RBI in ’75 would have made him an easy Rookie of the Year pick any other year. But we also had Lynn—who hit .331 with 21 homers, 105 RBI, and a league-leading 47 doubles, 103 runs scored, and .566 slugging percentage. Lynn had less pure power than Rice, but he could crush the ball too. In one game at Detroit that June, Freddie had three homers, a double, and ten runs batted in. That’s the kind of support a starting pitcher (me that night) only expects from a guy wearing an “S” on his chest.
I got on Lynn all the time his first year for being a clean-cut Southern California boy, but he really was a good kid and already the most complete ballplayer in the league at age twenty-three. He had a great batting eye, could run like a deer, and never made a mistake in the field or on the bases. His sweet, left-handed swing was made for Fenway Park; in seventy-six home games that year, he batted .368 with a .451 on-base percentage. Lifetime, he would have a .347 average, .601 slugging percentage, and .420 on-base percentage in 440 games at Fenway.
The problem with Freddie was keeping him healthy. Lynn was fearless in the outfield, diving across the grass for line drives and jumping against and above walls for long flies. He wasn’t as big or muscular as Rice but had tremendous leaping ability and caught anything hit near him. Great defense is a pitcher’s best friend, so I was very happy to have Lynn behind me for five years. The same goes for Rice, who worked harder on his fielding than fans ever knew and over time became very good defensively—especially at playing the Green Monster. Johnny Pesky hit hundreds and hundreds of fly balls to Rice, many of them off the Monster, and it paid off. As a rookie, Jim Ed didn’t make a single error in left.
Lynn and Rice were dubbed “The Gold Dust Twins,” and they were the talk of the league by midseason. Their great performance that summer took some of the pressure off of Yastrzemski, who was now a fifteen-year veteran and still an excellent player at thirty-five years old. Yaz moved to first base full-time so Rice could play left and Cooper DH, and fans no longer booed Carl if he went through a dry spell at the plate. Jim Ed and Freddie also helped us get through the period until Fisk’s return in late June. When Pudge did come back, after nearly a full year out with his knee and arm injuries, he was better than ever—hitting .331 with 10 homers and 52 RBI in just seventy-nine games. The man was simply amazing.
The rest of the team was also rock solid. Burleson was an excellent defensive shortstop, a .280 hitter, and the type of intense, driven guy everybody wanted on their team—kind of like Dustin Pedroia would become later on for Boston. Evans continued his development into an All-Star-caliber ballplayer and combined with Lynn and Rice to give the Red Sox their best all-around outfield since World War I. Cooper found a regular lineup spot as a .300-hitting DH, and to add some more depth at second base, we picked up Denny Doyle from Philadelphia—who surprised everyone with a .310 average and twenty-two-game hitting streak after becoming a regular in the second half of the season.
Having the league’s best all-around offense was a big plus, but it was our deep pitching staff that helped us move into first place in the AL East and hold it through the summer. Wise—who I called “Owl Man”—bounced back from his injury-wracked first Boston season to lead the team in wins with a 19-12 mark. Lee won seventeen for the third straight year, going 17-9, while Cleveland was a much-improved 13-9. Moret went 14-3 as a swingman and became a key fifth starter down the stretch. Dick Drago and Jim Willoughby were strong performers out of the bullpen, with Drago carrying the load in the first half and Willoughby giving us a big boost with his sinkerball when picked up in midseason.
Lee may have been known as “Spaceman” for the wacky stuff he said, but I saw him as really more of a deep thinker. When it came to a true spaceman, the wildest cat of all in our clubhouse was probably Bernie Carbo. He was a great pinch-hitter and fourth outfielder who, like Jackie Bradley Jr. on the 2018 Red Sox, could hit the longball and carry a team by himself when hot. Bernie came to us in a trade from St. Louis and brought to Boston a stuffed gorilla he named “Mighty Joe Young.” He carried that thing everywhere, and like with Yaz’s Columbo Coat, I made a point of threatening to do away with Carbo’s monkey.
As for me, it was a season of ups and downs. I was 2-3 in April with a real bad ERA, and for once I had a hard time separating the game from the other things going on in my life. My parents were not getting any younger, and more than anything I wanted them to finally get the chance to visit me in the United States. I had tried to make arrangements for them to come in 1972 and in ’74 when it looked like we might make the World Series. But Fidel Castro was still not letting anybody out of Cuba, even just for a few weeks, no matter how old they were.
“How much longer?” I asked Boston Herald sportswriter Joe Fitzgerald during a 1975 interview at my new house. “It’s been fifteen years [actually fourteen] since I’ve seen them. All my life they gave me the best they could, and all they ever wanted was what was good for me. My father’s seventy now, and he’s not well. Yet he still works in a garage down there, and here I am, living like this, and I can’t even send him a dime for a cup of coffee. He doesn’t know my wife. He doesn’t know my children.”
It looked like a hopeless situation. Then, in May of ’75, came a new opportunity.
I had known Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts for a long time, and a friend of mine, our family doctor Nathan Shapiro, was especially close with him. Dr. Shapiro found out that another senator, George McGovern of South Dakota, was going to Cuba to meet with Castro on a sort of unofficial diplomatic mission. So Dr. Shapiro talked to Senator Brooke about my situation, and he agreed to write this letter and give it Senator McGovern to share with Castro:
May 2, 1975
Prime Minister Fidel Castro
Republic of Cuba
Havana, Cuba
Mr. Prime Minister:
I am hopeful that Senator McGovern’s visit to your country will prove beneficial to the efforts to normalize relations between our countries. While achievement of normalization will be difficult, it is an objective that merits the attention of both our governments.
My specific interest in writing you is to seek your assistance on a matter of deep concern to myself and one of my constituents, Mr. Luis Tiant. I am sure you know Luis as a star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.
Luis’s parents, Luis Eleuterio Tiant and Isabel Rovina Vega Tiant, reside at Calle 30 3312, Apt. 9, Mariano, Havana, Cuba. He has not had the chance to spend any significant time with them for many years. Naturally, he has a great desire to do so.
Luis’s career as a major league pitcher is in its latter years. It is impossible to predict how much longer he will be able to pitch. Therefore, it is hopeful that his parents will be able to visit him in Boston during this current baseball season to see their son unembolden.
I have contacted the State Department and have been assured that the granting of visas to enter the United States will be no problem. Therefore, with your help, I am confident that a reunion of Luis and his parents is possible this summer. Such a reunion would be a significant indication that better understanding between our peoples is achievable.
I look forward to receiving your response.
Sincerely,
Edward W. Brooke
It was a long shot, but I had a couple things working in my favor. Castro had been an amateur pitcher himself when he was younger, and I knew he loved the game. When I played in the Cuban winter league in 1960 and ’61, he used to come in the clubhouse to talk with all the players. Even if he didn’t remember me, I’m sure he knew about my father. What I didn’t know was if my family’s baseball background would be enough to get him to grant our request.
Senator McGovern took Senator Brooke’s letter to Cuba. He was going to give it to Castro at their first meeting, but Castro was not in a good mood. It turned out to actually be a positive sign because of what had made him upset.
“He [Castro] was late for the meeting with my wife and me, and he apologized,” McGovern recalled later. “He said kind of sheepishly, ‘I’ve been to a baseball game. We’re having what is the counterpart to your World Series.’ Then he said with a real sadness, ‘My team lost, and I’ve been kind of down about that since.’ I knew the minute he talked with such sorrow that I was halfway home on anything pertaining to baseball.”
Later that night, as Castro’s mood improved, the senator took out the letter and handed it to him. Then he asked a question:
“Do you know who Luis Tiant is?”
“The father or the son?” Castro replied. “I know about them both.”
“The one pitching for Boston in the big leagues. He wants to bring his mother and father to Boston to see him pitch.”
Looking closely at the letter, and then putting it into his pocket, Castro said he would see what he could do about the request. And when McGovern came back the next day, he got the best news possible.
“Luis Tiant will be able to see his parents,” Castro told him. “They can go to Boston, and they don’t have to stay just for the games, or for the World Series if they are in the World Series. They can stay there as long as they wish.”
Decades later, McGovern called it “a remarkable feat,” adding that, “I don’t know of any [other] time Castro personally intervened and said, ‘It’s OK for you to leave.’”
Call it the magic of baseball.
I was in California with the Red Sox to face the Angels when a reporter called on May 8 and gave me the details. My parents, he said, were scheduled to come in August—flying from Havana to Mexico City and then on to Boston. It was still a long time away, and I kept hoping and praying they would be alright until then. But after fourteen years, I could wait three months longer. My dream appeared to finally be coming true.
In the meantime, I focused my energy on doing what I could to help the Red Sox achieve their dream of making the playoffs for the first time since 1967. Two days after learning about my parents, I pitched a four-hitter against the Angels. Even though I lost, 2-0, I considered it a victory of sorts after my poor April. I was shutout in my next start, too, dropping my record to 3-5, but again pitched well enough to win.
I felt it was only a matter of time before the great offense our team was generating for other pitchers would start clicking for me. Later in May, that happened. Backed in consecutive starts by ten, six, eleven, and thirteen runs, I won all four—starting me off on a 10-3 midseason stretch. It wasn’t like my hot streaks in ’72 and ’74—my ERA during this run was still over 4.00—but my arm felt so good that I wasn’t that concerned about allowing a few extra runs in lopsided games. If the situation demanded it, I felt sure I could bear down in the lower-scoring ones too.
The important thing, as I always said, was to pitch good enough with the stuff you have on any given day. Look at June 26, just the fourth game Fisk had played since his year-long layoff. We were facing the Yankees at Fenway, where I had beaten them seven straight times, and the place was packed with the biggest crowd of the year. It was the start of a four-game series, and New York had a one-and-a-half game lead in the East. If we could win three of four, we’d take over first heading toward the All-Star break.
The fans were into it, starting with the “LOO-EEE! LOO-EEE!” chants as I made my walk in from the bullpen. New York took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first, and I realized pretty early that I didn’t have my good fastball. So I had to go to Plan B and really mix things up, throwing more curves and sliders and sneaking in fastballs here and there.
We came back with three in the fourth, and it was still a tight 3-1 game in the seventh when Fisk hit his first home run of the year. After seeing how excited he was skipping around the bases, I just couldn’t let us lose. The Yanks got a bunch of runners on in the late innings but didn’t score again after the first.
“The rest of the night belonged to Tiant, whose pitches, twitches, and annoying gestures were enough to drive the Yankees to the nearest bar,” Larry Whiteside wrote in the Boston Globe. “He teased them as only El Tiante can do, then closed the door with a quick fastball.”
After the game, which we won 6-1, Yankees second baseman Sandy Alomar did a good job summing up how I always liked hitters to think when they came up against me.
“He’s the kind of pitcher you can’t say, ‘I’m going to wait and look for a certain pitch,’” Alomar told reporters. “He’s got so many pitches, so many motions, it’s difficult to get set. He keeps you off balance.”
That game gave us the momentum we needed. We did win three out of four in the series to move back into first, and we stayed in the top spot all the way until September.
As we continued to win and pack Fenway, our team became somewhat of an escape for people dealing with bigger issues outside the ballpark. For the second straight fall, the beginning of the school year was expected to include protests and violence around the busing crisis. Black and Latino fans told me later that my success gave them a reason to root again for a Red Sox club that many of them—or, in some cases, their parents—had turned against because it had been the last major league organization to have Black ballplayers and was labeled as racist.
“To me, Tiant represented a beacon of strength,” says Jeff Anderson, an African-American who grew up a Red Sox fan in the Bromley Heath Housing Project in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. “He was a person of color who had otherworldly athleticism, and it made you gravitate towards him. He was somebody who led by example, just by his presence, and was a towering figure who let his pitches do all the speaking for him.”
Anderson, who says he didn’t even know there was such a thing as dark-skinned Latinos until “a Black kid in the Bromley-Heath playground started speaking Spanish to me,” admired my ability to “display my Latin pride without angering the white establishment.” This helped Anderson convert some of his older family members back to being Red Sox fans. They knew the stories about the Sox having chances to sign Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays before any other team, and remembered Black pitching ace Earl Wilson being traded from Boston after he “made waves” by telling sportswriters he had been denied service in a pub during spring training in Florida.
Watching on from afar, in Cleveland, I had learned too. I let it all hang out on the field and spoke my mind off it, but I also knew what I should and shouldn’t talk about.
“Tiant had a swagger, but because of the climate, he had to be careful about it,” says Anderson. “During this period, you couldn’t have a Muhammad Ali-type athlete in Boston. So Tiant’s humility spoke of an inner strength. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be braggadocious, nor was he going to allow himself to be marginalized by mainstream Boston media. He was going to be who he was.”
Latinos felt the same connection to me as African-Americans, and not just because of busing.
“When Luis Tiant came to Boston, he probably didn’t realize what he was walking into, but it was a really tough time,” recalled Jorge Quiroga, a longtime Boston newscaster. “A big backlash not only against [busing], but also against the growth of the Latino community and the beginning of the Latino community demanding its rights. He walked into this situation that was by all accounts—and history will verify—it was a nasty time in Boston. He [Tiant] became absolutely adored by the fans…and he softened the edges of the backlash.
“I can’t tell you how proud we were. We all basked in his glory.”
Hearing these sentiments now means a lot to me, but what I most cared about doing in July and August of 1975 was getting healthy. My back was acting up again, and in an attempt to compensate for the pain without telling anyone, I unknowingly changed my delivery. The change gave me tendinitis which led to arm weakness. Before I learned of the problem and how to fix it, I was getting lit up like a Christmas tree.
After a win over the Royals raised my record to 13-8, with a 3.51 ERA, I won just two of my next nine starts and allowed nearly six runs per outing. Opponents batted .312 with a .510 slugging percentage against me over sixty-plus innings, the kind of numbers that will put you in the Hall of Fame. But here’s the great thing about my crisis: it did not impact the team at all! Fellow starters Wise, Lee, Cleveland, and Moret all stepped up to fill the void, so that during the five weeks I was struggling, the team actually gained a half-game in the standings—going 3-6 when I started and 18-9 in games started by everyone else.
While I was trying to work out my pitching problems, my parents were officially granted permission in mid-August to leave Havana and fly to Mexico City on the first leg of their journey to Boston. When it was confirmed that they were coming, Maria found out first and decided not to tell me right away because I was pitching that night. After she did tell me I almost hit the ceiling I was so excited.
They wound up having to stay in Mexico City four or five days because my father didn’t feel too good; it’s so high above sea level there that he said he couldn’t breathe. I spoke to them every day during this time, and eventually his condition improved enough to travel. After they finally got their visa, they flew to Boston on Thursday, August 21. I was waiting for them at Logan Airport with Maria, our three kids, a few friends, and what seemed like every newspaper and television reporter in New England. There were cameras everywhere.
I thought I’d handle my emotions fine, but when my father caught my eye and smiled as he came toward the American Airlines gate, I broke down crying. Then I ran over and gave him a big bear hug.
“Why are you crying?” he said. “The cameras will see you!”
“I don’t care,” I told him. “This is how I feel. I thought I was never going to see you guys again.”
It was the first time my kids ever saw me cry—but what could be a better reason?
Someone asked Dad, through a translator, if he was ready to pitch for the Red Sox. He said he was, but then my mother stepped forward to set the record straight.
“It’s been a long time since he has thrown a ball,” she said. “He’d have to go into training.”
Because we figured my parents would be very tired from their trip, we did not plan a big family celebration around their arrival. We drove home to Milton, watched ourselves on the news, talked for a bit, and then went to bed. The next day our photos were all over the newspapers, including one of all of us together on the front page of the Boston Globe and another of me and my father hugging on the front of the Boston Herald. Over the next week, there were many more stories, interviews, and TV reports.
Dad loved the attention.
“You know,” he said to me later, “that never happened to me in my life. All the years I played, people were never that nice to me.”
“Yeah, the people are nice here,” I agreed.
Then he gave me an example.
“You know what? I went to take a leak, and people came over and wanted me to sign an autograph while I did it!”
I laughed.
“I know. They do it to me too!”
At the time, even after what Castro told Senator McGovern, we were not sure if my parents would be allowed to stay in the United States indefinitely. Castro could always change his mind, we knew, and their visa was only for three months. We wanted to make the most of our time together, so every game I started at Fenway, I made sure they drove into the ballpark with Maria and the kids to watch. Dad came to most of the other home games too, and he was no longer hiding behind posts, like back in Cuba.
By now there was a third generation making his way in the family business. Luis Jr. was a right-handed starter for the Milton Little League All-Star team and had a pair of four-hit wins—including a 6–0 shutout—in a playoff tournament right around the time my parents came. I was very proud of him, as I have always been of all our kids.
The first major league game I pitched with my parents in the stands, and the first time they ever saw me play at any level since high school, was against the Angels on August 26, 1975. As Sherm Feller announced over the public-address system, “Ladies and gentlemen...please welcome on the greatest pitchers from the New York Cubans…” my father came out to the mound with me to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. The crowd gave him a huge standing ovation, this time chanting “LOO-EEE! LOO-EEE!” for the first Luis Tiant to play there.
We had learned that in 1945, Dad had pitched at Fenway while with the Cubans of the Negro National League. He could not remember how he did back then, but neither of us would ever forget this moment. I’m sure he was feeling proud, like he had finally made it to the white man’s league after all these years, but he didn’t say anything.
It was very emotional for me and for my teammates watching on from the dugout.
“Something like this,” Rick Wise said, “it makes you realize what life is all about.”
Handing me his jacket, Señor Skinny took the ball. Then he went into his windup and threw a fastball in to backup catcher Tim Blackwell. Dad didn’t like where the ball went, a little low and outside, so he asked for it back. This time he threw a knuckler for a strike, right down the middle. The fans loved it.
As I handed him back his jacket, Dad whispered something in my ear:
“Go get ’em. Don’t worry about me being here.”
Then, in the dugout, one more thing—for me to pass on to the manager:
“Tell ’em I’m ready to go five.”
Maybe I should have taken Dad up on the offer. I got hit hard, was gone after six innings, and we lost 8-2 as my family watched on from the front row behind home plate. I wasn’t nervous; I wanted to win for my parents, but I kept my emotions inside. As a pitcher, you have to do that. It was just too hard for me to throw my regular game. My back was still hurting, and that had a big impact on my mechanics and where the ball ended up.
The loss dropped my season record to 15-13 and raised my ERA for the year to 4.17. This was after allowing under three runs per nine innings (2.83) for the previous three seasons combined. Some wise guy in the press box that night said it was too bad my mother and father came “a year too late” when I was no longer a top-flight pitcher. I didn’t let that bother me, and when a sportswriter asked how great it was to have my parents there to watch me, I shot back:
“It is great, but I hope they get another chance—at the World Series.”
Those hopes took a hit in my next start when the Oakland A’s knocked me around for six runs in less than three innings. If we won the AL East, we knew it would likely be the A’s we faced in the playoffs with a World Series appearance on the line. They had won the Series the last three years and were going for four straight with a veteran lineup featuring Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, and Joe Rudi—guys who really knew how to hit. I loved the challenge of beating them, but I just couldn’t do it this time. My sore back made it hard to stretch or go into my windup. I could barely bend down.
That was August 30. For the next twelve days, Darrell Johnson wouldn’t let me pitch in a game. We still had a six-and-a-half game lead over Baltimore after the Oakland loss, and Johnson probably figured there was enough breathing room to give me a nice rest. I wasn’t happy with the long layoff, but I figured if I couldn’t change his mind, at least I could use the time to try and figure out my problems.
Stan Williams had always helped me in the past, so now I turned to him again. We watched film of my delivery taken before and during my slump, and Stan noticed the unseen flaw in my delivery I had picked up while trying to protect my bad back: I was throwing my arm across my body like a tennis player instead of driving straight through. After working with him to fix this, and taking the twelve days rest between starts, I felt great.
What’s more important—or so I hoped—was that my parents would now have a chance to see me perform at something closer to my best.
That chance came on September 11. When I took the mound that afternoon against Detroit at Fenway, we were still in first, but the Orioles were now just five games back. Earl Weaver was promising they’d catch and then overtake us, just like they did the year before by winning twenty-eight of thirty-four down the stretch.
I needed to shut the Earl of Baltimore up, and three-hitting the Tigers with ten strikeouts was a nice first step. I had a no-hitter into the eighth inning before Aurelio Rodriguez hit a ground-ball single up the middle, but I really didn’t care about losing the no-hitter because we got the “W” and my back felt great. The Orioles also won that day and were still within striking distance when they came to Fenway a week later for two games—our final series of the season against them. If they won both, they would close within two-and-a-half games. They had their hottest starters going in Jim Palmer and Mike Torrez.
“We’ve crawled out of more coffins than Bela Lugosi,” Weaver said before Palmer’s matchup with me on September 16. Earl was still sure his team would come back, but this year felt different. We were peaking, not slumping, down the stretch.
Palmer-Tiant on September 16 felt like the seventh game of the World Series. Fans knew it was Baltimore’s last real chance to catch us, and Fenway Park was never louder. The official attendance was 34,724, but there had to be more than 40,000 people jamming the aisles and every little corner of the ballpark. Fire marshals looked the other way, and fans with more guts than cash to scalp a ticket climbed the billboards high above Kenmore Square to watch for free.
“When my dad pitched, everyone got along,” recalls Luis Jr. “There would be guys hanging from the billboards outside the park—Black guys, white guys, Latin guys. As you get older, you start to appreciate everything he did for the city, and how much he impacted people. But at the time, you’re just proud of your dad.”
A wonderful atmosphere, and the kind I liked best.
“Luis pitched better in big games,” says Fred Lynn, who was behind me in center field for plenty of them. “I think it was that bulldog in him saying ‘I’m not going to lose. I’m not going to be the reason my team loses.’”
Palmer had twenty-one wins for the year and had proven to be at his best when the chips were down. My goal was to keep Baltimore off the scoreboard as long as I could and hope we could break through against him. My general feeling about pitching was if you get me in the first three innings, I’m done—finished for that day. But if you don’t get me, then that’s my game.
My teammates did their job, getting me the lead. Petrocelli, like Yaz a holdover from Boston’s last playoff team in 1967, led off the third with a homer into the left-field screen to make it 1-0. Then Fisk knocked one to the same spot in the fourth. Pudge had been unbelievable since coming back from his broken arm, heating up in the last two months just when other guys on the club were wearing down. Montgomery had done a great job when Fisk was out and deserves a lot of credit for what we did that year, but it was crucial for us to have Pudge’s bat in the lineup for the stretch drive.
My back held up, Palmer settled down, and the score was still 2–0 heading into the late innings. We had help available in the bullpen, but Darrell Johnson knew I took pride in finishing what I started—like my father, watching from the stands, had always told me to do. Johnson kept me in, and I got the last eight straight to preserve the shutout. After the final out, Fisk ran over and hugged me like we had won the East already.
“Tiant was as good as we’ve ever seen him,” Weaver admitted afterwards. His bragging was suddenly all but absent.
In the summer of 2018, sitting high above the Fenway diamond where we had battled, Palmer—now an Orioles broadcaster—reflected on his and my rivalry.
“The thing about pitching is that it’s a blank canvas. Every game is different, and you try and draw or paint the best picture you can paint on that particular day. Luis was very good at that—he had deception, he had flair, and he was a money pitcher. He had a good slider and a good curveball and a fastball he could command. So he had quality pitches, and when you take the deception and the fact you really couldn’t sit on any one pitch, he could get you out three or four different ways and do it three or four different times.
“When you faced Luis Tiant, you knew you were facing an artist.”
By now another school year had started, and in Boston that meant more problems around busing. The boycotts and protests were still going on, and it wasn’t even just in the city; my son and daughter were having problems with other kids in Milton. But somehow the fans felt different when it came to me. I still don’t fully understand it all these years later.
Maybe it’s because they read about what I had gone through with my family and saw how I tried always to be upbeat rather than angry out on the field. I could be as mad as the next guy, believe me, but I didn’t think the ballpark was the place for that. The ballpark was where you went to forget your problems, not dwell on them.
Whatever the reason, the special connection I had with the people of Boston was a beautiful thing I will never forget.
“At the height of the busing crisis, the most popular person in Boston was a Black man who smoked a cigar in the shower,” says Dick Johnson, curator of The Sports Museum and a leading Red Sox historian. “He wasn’t overly glib or anything; he just took care of business and led by example. But I’m hoping what he also did was to make people think twice about their feelings on race, when their most popular player—the one who got the loudest ovations at Fenway Park—was a gentleman of color.”
The biggest ovations for all of us were still to come. Baltimore never got closer than three-and-a-half games in the final two weeks, and we clinched the East on September 27, one day after Reggie Cleveland and I pitched back-to-back 4-0 shutouts against the Indians in a doubleheader sweep at Fenway. In the end, we had the Yankees to thank; we lost, 5-2, to the Indians on the 27th, leaving our magic number at two, but that night New York swept two games from the Orioles to give us the title.
We had all already left the ballpark to go home after our game when Baltimore’s second loss made it official, so most of the guys celebrated by going to dinner with a few teammates and their wives. Nothing too crazy, which was fine. There was still plenty of work to do. If we wanted to reach the World Series, we would have to win a best-of-five playoff against the three-time defending world champion A’s to get there.
The next day, a Sunday, was our last regular-season game. As guys started coming into the Fenway clubhouse to get ready, Mr. Yawkey was waiting to congratulate each of them one by one.
“Thank you, Mr. Yawkey,” I said, thinking of the opportunity he and the team gave me back in 1971. We had a quick hug, and then he said something that stuck with me.
“Thank you, Luis. You were the man who did it.”