Under a Grapefruit Sun: Red Sox Spring Training A Quarter Century Ago

When Jim Lonborg induced Minnesota's Rich Rollins to pop up, and shortstop Rico Petrocelli stepped back and cradled the softly-looped fly ball, the '67 Red Sox had done the impossible--they had overcome 100-to-1 odds, climbing out of ninth place the year before to capture the American League pennant. It had been 21 years since the Sox last reached the post-season.

Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of fans streamed out onto the Fenway infield mobbing Lonborg, who lost a shirt and his shoelaces as he struggled through the delirious crowd to get to the clubhouse. Two or three dozen fans climbed the backstop screen toward the broadcast booth. Others dismantled the scoreboard in left field. Many just tore out handfuls of grass and stuffed their pockets. It truly was, in the words of Red Sox radio announcer Ned Martin, "pandemonium on the field."

As Peter Gammons once wrote on this great season, "The Red Sox were always New England's team, yes, but it took the Impossible Dream of 1967 to turn it into a romanticized mystique and keep the legion of fans coming by the millions.... It wasn't always the way it is now, and might never have been but for '67."

This encyclopedic book is a comprehensive tribute to the men of the Impossible Dream team, comprised of individual original biographies (many based on fresh interviews) of all 39 players that year, plus each of the four coaches, manager Dick Williams, and GM Dick O'Connell. The bios are supplemented with 28 essays and appreciations of this remarkable season by an all-star lineup of authors featuring Andy Andres, Mark Armour, Gerry Beirne, Joe Castiglione, Ken Coleman, Dan Desrochers, Gordon Edes, Peter Gammons, Tom Harkins, Dick Johnson, Bill Nowlin, Harvey Soolman, Glenn Stout, Dan Valenti, and Saul Wisnia.