On his 82nd birthday, a celebration of Carl Yastrzemskis living legacy in Red Sox history

On the day he turned 22, Carl Yastrzemski had four hits against the Washington Senators. It was something of a turning point in his career.

Up to that point, Yastrzemski was a Red Sox rookie replacing a Red Sox legend, and he’d had done little to suggest he was a fitting heir to the Ted Williams legacy. Through Yastrzemski’s first 115 big-league games, he’d hit just .248 with modest power. Manager Pinky Higgins had occasionally dropped him to eighth in the order.

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“In my first year, I started off very slow,” Yastrzemski once said. “I actually think that was on account of Ted. I was trying to emulate him.”

Those four hits on his birthday, though, spurred a tremendous finish to Yastrzemski’s rookie season and set his career in motion. He hit .321 and slugged .521 the rest of the way in 1961. Two years later, he was an All-Star. Four years after that, he was the MVP of the Impossible Dream season. Twenty-two years after that, he was elected to Cooperstown.

Four hits on his birthday, and the rest was history.

Sixty years later, on this, his 82nd birthday, Yastrzemski holds a remarkably rare distinction in a 121-year-old franchise. Yastrzemski is the greatest living Red Sox player, an undisputed fact — Wade Boggs played half as many games for the organization; Roger Clemens won most of his Cy Young awards elsewhere — that can be celebrated and still not fully appreciated.

The Red Sox franchise has been around since 1901, yet only three people have ever comfortably been the Greatest Living Red Sox Player. This franchise has had Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Carlton Fisk, Pedro Martinez and Mookie Betts. It’s had 36 Hall of Famers and retired 11 uniform numbers (including Jackie Robinson’s No. 42). But with all of that history and lore, the torch of Greatest Living Red Sox Player has been passed among the smallest of fraternities.

Cy Young, 1901-1949

There was perhaps an argument for Jimmy Collins as the Greatest Living Red Sox Player in the very beginning. He was the third baseman and manager when the team got started in 1901, and the fact that he’d spent the previous five seasons playing in the National League for the Boston Beaneaters meant he had some local clout.

But Young, too, bailed on the National League to play for the brand-new Boston team in 1901 — when it was not yet called the Red Sox — and at 34 years old promptly had one of the greatest pitching seasons of all time: 33 wins, a 1.62 ERA, and a 0.97 WHIP in the organization’s debut. If there already had been an award named after him, Young almost certainly would have won it. By Baseball Reference’s WAR calculation, his 1901 season was nearly twice as good as Collins’, thus giving Young a strong claim to the title of Greatest Living Red Sox Player right from the start, a distinction he carried nearly to the grave after giving the Red Sox eight seasons of excellence and one championship.

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Tris Speaker soon would become the franchise’s greatest living hitter, Ruth’s unique greatness would fully form in New York, and Jimmie Foxx eventually arrived with his legacy already established from his time in Philadelphia, but for almost 50 years the Greatest Living Red Sox Player would remain Cy Young — a singular player with a singular legacy on the mound.

Ted Williams, 1949-2002

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment Williams became the Greatest Living Red Sox Player, but it was undoubtedly while he was still playing and while Young was still alive, and it was probably before Williams’ 31st birthday.

Williams played almost all of 1949 at just 30 years old. He set career highs in hits, home runs, RBIs and walks, won his second MVP award and — it turns out — reached 71.5 career WAR. At some point that summer, he passed Young for the highest WAR in Red Sox history – Young died six years later — then spent the next 11 years setting the bar higher and higher.

As great as Yastrzemski was, he never came particularly close to Williams’ accumulated total of 121.9 WAR, 14th highest in baseball history according to Baseball Reference. Williams is the greatest Red Sox player of all time and was the greatest living Red Sox player until his death in 2002.

Carl Yastrzemski, 2002-present

The man who replaced Williams in left field came closest to replicating his greatness at Fenway Park. Yastrzemski debuted in 1961, immediately after Williams retired, and by the end of the decade he already was among the greatest Red Sox of all time. His 53.3 WAR in the 1960s is higher than the career WAR of Dustin Pedroia and nearly as high as the career Red Sox WAR of David Ortiz (only Ortiz’s Minnesota years put his career WAR higher).

And that was before Yastrzemski made the All-Star team every year of the 1970s.

Yaz's place in Sox statistical history

Yastrzemski’s singular 1967 season still stands as one of the most memorable in franchise history, and it’s arguably the greatest individual performance by any position player not named Ruth. Yastrzemski was a marvel then and remained an icon through his retirement in 1983, his Red Sox career second only to Williams in terms of performance and legacy. Yastrzemski’s career WAR of 96.5 ranks 22nd in baseball history, sandwiched between Joe Morgan and Eddie Mathews.

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In the half-century since Yastrzemski’s debut, great Red Sox players have come and gone. They’ve won championships and MVP awards, and many have become iconic in their own right. But there is no man alive today whose Red Sox career matched or eclipsed Yastrzemski’s, a distinction held only by a few players in the long history of this franchise.

(Top photo: Billie Weiss / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)

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