The Last Season of a Familiar Format
In 1967 Major League Baseball still had twenty teams, two leagues and no divisions. The team with the best record in each league went straight to the World Series, so the whole season funnelled toward a single pennant for each side. That year the American League produced one of the tightest finishes in its history, the National League produced a comfortable winner, and several developments off the field hinted that the game was about to change.
The pennant winners were the Boston Red Sox in the American League and the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League. The Cardinals beat Boston in seven games in October.
The American League Scramble
At the start of the season, few observers gave the Red Sox much chance. They had finished ninth in 1966 and had not won a pennant since 1946. Under new manager Dick Williams they became the centre of the season’s story, which is remembered as the Impossible Dream Red Sox season. Tony Conigliaro’s beaning in August and Jim Lonborg’s pitching were the two defining stories of the summer in Boston.
What made the race unusual was how many teams were involved. For much of September, four clubs were bunched at the top: Boston, the Minnesota Twins, the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox faded in the final days, but the other three arrived at the last weekend with the pennant still undecided.
The Twins and Red Sox met at Fenway Park for the last two games. Minnesota needed to win both. Boston won on Saturday and again on Sunday, 1 October, with Lonborg pitching. Meanwhile Detroit played a doubleheader against the Angels and needed to sweep it. The Tigers won the first game and lost the second, which left Boston at 92 wins and 70 losses, with Minnesota and Detroit both at 91-71. The White Sox finished 89-73. Four teams within three games of each other at the end is the part of 1967 that baseball historians return to most often.
The Cardinals’ Easier Road
The National League had no such drama. The Cardinals finished 101-60, comfortably ahead of the San Francisco Giants, who came second. Orlando Cepeda, acquired from the Giants in 1966, drove the offence and became the league’s unanimous Most Valuable Player. Lou Brock supplied speed on the bases, and Bob Gibson anchored the pitching staff until a line drive broke his leg in July. He returned in September in time for the Series. Manager Red Schoendienst, a former Cardinals star, guided the club through its first pennant under his direction.
Below the Cardinals and Giants, the league was conventional. The New York Mets finished near the bottom, but they had one reason to look ahead: a rookie right-hander named Tom Seaver.
Seaver’s Rookie Year
Tom Seaver joined the Mets in 1967 and won the National League Rookie of the Year award. He won 16 games for a team that lost more than 100, a record that suggested he could carry a staff. Few people could have predicted that the Mets would be champions two years later, but Seaver’s arrival is generally seen as the starting point of that rise. His season belongs in any account of 1967 because it shows that even weak teams could be built around one young pitcher.
The Great Hitters of the Year
The American League’s best hitter was Carl Yastrzemski of Boston, who won the Triple Crown in 1967, leading the league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in. He had a remarkable September, hitting well in nearly every game that mattered. Pitching still dominated in general, a pattern that deepened the following year. In 1968, often called the Year of the Pitcher, run scoring collapsed across both leagues, which led baseball to lower the mound and shrink the strike zone for 1969.
Signs of Change Off the Field
Several developments beyond the field already pointed to the baseball of the 1970s.
- The players’ union. Marvin Miller, a labour economist, had been chosen to lead the Major League Baseball Players Association in 1966. In 1967 the union began to negotiate as a real bargaining body, and the first collective agreement followed in 1968. Players’ rights to move freely would be fought over through the following decade, and Curt Flood’s legal challenge came a few years later.
- The Athletics’ move. Owner Charlie Finley had long wanted to leave Kansas City. In October 1967 the American League allowed the Athletics to relocate to Oakland, beginning the 1968 season on the West Coast. Kansas City was promised an expansion team, which became the Royals in 1969.
- Expansion. The 1960s had seen new clubs appear in Los Angeles, Washington, New York and Houston. More were planned, and the 1969 expansion into Montreal and San Diego, along with Kansas City and Seattle, would end the twenty-team era. That expansion is why divisional play was introduced, changes that would come with the 1969 season.
- Television. Baseball still shared the sporting calendar with the growing National Football League. The first Super Bowl was played in January 1967, and the sport had to compete for attention as color television spread into more homes.
A Season Between Two Eras
Looking back, 1967 can seem like the final summer of a familiar arrangement. Two leagues, ten teams each, and a straight run from pennant to Series would be replaced in 1969 by four divisions and a league playoff round. In the same stretch, the mound was lowered, players gained a union that would reshape the business, and the first major league team outside the United States was awarded to Montreal.
None of this was obvious in October 1967, when Boston and St. Louis played a seven-game Series that people still talk about. But the year’s sharp final weekend and the changes that followed make it one of the more consequential seasons in baseball history.