Boston Red Sox All-Time 25-Man Roster
Catcher
Carlton Fisk (with Boston from 1969, 1971-1980)
.284/.356/.481, 1078 G, 4353 PA, 126 OPS+ (with Red Sox)
The original “Pudge”, Carlton Fisk was drafted by the Red Sox in the first round of the 1967 amateur draft that was held in January. When Major League Baseball created a draft for first-year players, there were originally three separate drafts. The June draft was the biggest and included recent high school and college graduates. There was also an August draft for players who participated in amateur summer leagues. The January draft was for players who graduated in the winter. Carlton Fisk was taken with the fourth pick in this draft, just after the Mets drafted Ken Singleton.
Fisk spent most of his first five professional years in the minor leagues. He got into two games as a 21-year-old in 1969 and another 14 games in 1971, but didn’t establish himself in Boston until 1972. That year, he exploded on the scene by making the all-star game, winning a Gold Glove award, the AL Rookie of the Year award and finishing fourth in AL MVP voting.
Early in his career, Fisk made it clear that he was a no-nonsense player. He would yell at his pitchers if he felt they deserved it and got into scuffles with opposing players because of his intensity. In a memorable play against the Yankees, Thurman Munson was thrown out on a missed suicide squeeze attempt by Gene “Stick” Michael and barreled into Fisk at the plate. As Fisk pushed Munson off him, Gene Michael grabbed Fisk and Fisk tossed him to the ground. A guy nicknamed “Stick” found out he shouldn’t get into a battle with a guy nicknamed “Pudge.”
Fisk struggled in his second year. He hit 26 homers and drove in 71 runs, but his batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage were all down greatly from his rookie year. He recovered to have a bounce back season in 1974 before getting injured on a home plate collision with Cleveland’s Leron Lee that tore ligaments in his left knee. The injury limited him to 52 games in 1974. Then he suffered a broken forearm when he was hit by a pitch in spring training of 1975 that delayed his start by two months.
Despite the injury, Fisk was very good in a half-season of play in 1975. He hit .331/.395/.529. The Red Sox won the AL East, then beat the Oakland A’s in the League Championship Series, with Fisk hitting .417. This, of course, led to the epic 1975 Fall Classic against the Cincinnati Reds, which included one of the greatest baseball games ever played: Game Six of the 1975 World Series.
This was the defining moment of Fisk’s career. After a back-and-forth battle with the Reds, the game went to the bottom of the 12 tied at 6-6. Fisk led off the inning and hit a home run that would be remembered by a generation of Red Sox fans for the rest of their lives.
That is still one of the great moments in Red Sox history and led to a memorable scene in the movie Good Will Hunting (“I had to see about a girl”). Of course, the team then blew a 3-0 lead in Game Seven and lost the series, but for a brief, shining moment, Red Sox fans could celebrate.
Fisk played five more years with the Red Sox and was an all-star in four of them. His tenure with the Red Sox ended after the 1980 season when general manager Haywood Sullivan failed to mail a contract to Fisk in time and Fisk became a free agent. He signed with the Chicago White Sox, changed his number from 27 to 72, and went on to hit 214 more home runs over the next 13 years.
When he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2000, he announced that he would wear a Red Sox cap into the Hall, despite spending more years with the White Sox. He said, “I would like to say that this has always been my favorite hat, and I will be wearing this hat probably for the rest of my career.”