Column: Impossible Dream team didn't win it all, but 50 years later, legacy lives on

Fifty years after the fact, the 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox remain arguably the most revered team in Boston baseball history.

Imagine how they’d be regarded if they had won it all.

Given little chance at the start of the season – they had finished ninth, 26 games out first, in 1966  – the Red Sox shocked baseball by winning the American League but not before they outlasted three other clubs on the final weekend of the season in what is still regarded as the most exciting pennant race in modern history.

Led by Carl Yastrzemski, who had what teammate Ken “Hawk” Harrelson labeled “the most impactful season a player has ever had,’’ and Cy Young award-winner Jim Lonborg, the Red Sox went from 100-to-1 shots to a spot in the World Series.

In so doing, they changed the fortunes of the franchise and the baseball culture throughout New England. After drawing just  811,172 to Fenway in the previous season, the ’67 Sox attracted more than 1.7 million. They’ve never drawn fewer than 1.4 million since.

A mid-season winning streak made believers out of the fans, and maybe, the players, too.  A crowd of 10,000 welcomed them back from a road trip at Logan Airport, the most tangible sign yet that the team was winning the hearts and minds of New Englanders.

It’s been said before: For decades, the Red Sox story was told in black and white; in 1967, the picture burst into color.  In the course of one season, the team went from an afterthought to an essential piece of every New England summer.

“Definitely,’’ agreed Lonborg, who was on hand at Fenway Wednesday night as the 1967 team was honored in a pre-game celebration. “We were the ones who sparked the fire. And the fire is now Red Sox Nation. It’s great to be part of all that.’’

But after expending all their energy down the stretch – Lonborg was needed to pitch the pennant-clincher on the final day of the season – the Red Sox were no match for National League champion St. Louis Cardinals, who compiled the best record of any N.L. champion during the decade of the 1960s.

Incredibly, the next Red Sox championship was still 37 long years away.

What if, however, things had been different? What if Lonborg had been more rested? What if Bob Gibson hadn’t been so magnificent?

How would history have treated those Red Sox if they had closed the deal?

“That’s an interesting question,’’ said Lonborg, “because I don’t think some of the magic of this Impossible Dream team would have had the same feeling had we won everything. I think the fact that we got so close, and didn’t win, almost was a better ending  than having won it all and then expecting things to be perfect after that.

“It was bittersweet (to lose the World Series). But if I was a writer, I would have written (what happened) into the script.’’

Almost to a man, many of Lonborg’s teammates echoed the same sentiment Wednesday: sure, being world champions would have been great. But there was no feeling of failure, of having unfinished business, that the Sox didn’t win it all.

“I’ve said this many times,’’ said Mike Andrews, the second baseman on that club, “and I know it sounds crazy, but because of where we had come from, the 100-to-1 shot, because of the race itself coming down to the last game and then having to sit and wait to see if we were going to be in a playoff game, going into the World Series, we didn’t really have a chance to regroup.

“It was almost anti-climactic. (There wasn’t an empty feeling) at the time. I remember in 1986, sitting with my wife in our living room, toasting Mrs. Yawkey. I looked at every one of those (close calls), as ‘It’s going to happen. But when is it going to happen?  In hindsight, I wish we had won the seventh game. That would have been the perfect ending to the fairy tale.’’

Harrelson, who arrived in the final month and a half as a replacement for the injured Tony Conigliaro, was asked the same question.

“I wouldn’t change a day,’’ he said, beaming with a smile.

No regrets, no surrender.

Perhaps the ’67 team had a more lasting and important gift to give to generations of sports fans throughout New England.

“I think,’’ said Lonborg, “that it probably gave everybody hope that something could happen when you least expect it.’’

And that’s not a bad legacy to have, a half-century later.