Tony C - I Can't Get Over You

One of the things I do on a (nearly) daily basis is visit baseball-reference.com to view the list of players born that day and read the history log. Sometimes it's the expected info, other times it's a kernel of odd or neglected history. Like the bleachers burning down at Fenway in the 1930's, or the spat between Babe Ruth and Harry Frazee through the newspapers. Players and owners taking shots at each other through the media is nothing new.

Most days it's a quick visit to the site, maybe an interesting tidbit to share with my inivisipeeps on our history page. Occasionally, it's something that gives me pause. Today is one of those.

Born this day, in 1945, Anthony Richard Conigliaro. Tony C.

Tony Conigliaro had the makings of a superstar. In an era dominated by pitchers, he maintained a .270 batting average, a .334 on base percentage, and averaged 26+ home runs a season. He led the AL in homers in his second season, hitting 32 in 1965. He reached 100 home runs when he was 22, youngest player to reach 100 home runs in the AL, younger than A-Rod, younger than Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, or Ken Griffey Jr.

Tony C, born in Revere, MA, graduated from Lynn, MA high school, was a home grown hero for the Red Sox. In his first plate appearance at Fenway, he hit a home run.

He was handsome, he was talented, he was popular. Like current-day superstars, he dabbled in show business, recording some songs, dating starlets.

Tony C gave hope to Boston's fans that the Red Sox could win the pennant and return to the World Series. He was part of the Impossible Dream team of 1967. Following a number of losing seasons, the Red Sox of 1967 were not expected to do well as the season opened, but they proved to be a new, different team, led by Carl Yazstremski as he won the last* triple crown in major league history. In August, as Boston caught up to the league leading White Sox, Tony C's place in baseball history was sealed.

On August 18, Tony C was beaned at the plate by Angels' pitcher Jack Hamilton.

The injury was big news, and the image of this baseball god-to-be became the haunting reminder of what the Red Sox lost, what Tony lost, what all of baseball lost.


He was out for the season, nearly blind in his left eye. He made a comeback in 1968, sporting a new batting helmet with an extension designed to protect his eye and cheek. He put together a couple more good seasons with the Sox, was trade to the Angels in 1971 where it became clear his career as a hitter was over. Tony was not done with baseball yet as he mounted a campaign to return as a pitcher and did in 1975 for a short time.

Tony was preparing to return to Boston, as a broadcaster, when he suffered a heart attack, quickly followed by a stroke that left him in a vegetative state. He died eight years later in his parents' home. He was 45.

Although I never saw Tony C play, I can easily imagine what it would have been like to see him play. I can do no more than sigh the lament "if only" and share his story with those who never heard of "Tony C," of "Conig." Most fans know landmarks of Fenway, Pesky's Pole and its partner that Fisk hit his historic homer off, the Green Monster, they may even know about the red seat in the bleachers where a man was hit by a Ted Williams' homer, but they probably aren't aware of Conigliaro's Corner, the small triangle of seats where the bleachers meet the left field wall. Tony had trouble seeing the ball coming out the pitcher's hand against the back drop of bright clothing, so that section is covered with tarps during day games.

When Tony made his original comeback, he wrote a book, with Jack Zanger, about his career, about the injury, and the fight to return to baseball. Written pre-Ball Four, it was an optimistic story of overcoming a serious injury, while downplaying how devastating the injury actually was. Years later, David Cataneo wrote a fuller, richer account of Tony's life, Tony C: The Triumph and Tragedy of Tony Conigliaro, a wonderfully moving book of a working class hometown hero who lost it all.

Shhh...My Story's On

Back when I was in school, my mother was a faithful follow of a soap opera. She didn't watch soap operas in general, she had her favorite, Another World and its spin-off, Somerset, and when they were on everything came to a halt, household tasks were in suspended animation.

I'll admit that for a couple years I watched along with Mom. Somerset came on right about the same time I arrived home from school. I lost the habit and interest when I went away to college, but it was in college that I was introduced to professional baseball. So in a way, I was primed for the Yankees of the late seventies, the Bronx Zoo years.

I wouldn't say I was a fan of the team, but I found the daily dramas highly entertaining. Stirring drinks, firing and hiring and firing and hiring and, pine tar, all of it contributed to making the Billy-Reggie-Thurman-George Follies the most fascinating show baseball had to offer at the time. The loss of the captain not only was a personal, human tragedy, it heightened the continuing drama in New York.

When I came back to baseball, after my self-imposed 14-year exile, I looked for some remnant of that ongoing saga. But there was nothing. Baseball was well behaved, players and owners were sedate.

The Dirt Dawgs proclaiming themselves Idiots who cowboyed up was a welcome ray of hope for a return of a dramatic comedy of manners in baseball. Nomar's whining, Manny being Manny, Kevin Millar reclaimed from Japan, all of these only made the Red Sox more lovable. Not only did they provide entertainment on the field, they provided it off as well.

So the latest news flashes, Barry Bonds on trial, Roger Clemens headed to court, Alex Rodriguez exposed, Roberto Alomar accused, all of it is wonderful. It is not a distraction. It is not irrelevant. It's value added entertainment.

People will say what players do in their private lives is none of our business, but I say anyone who is willing to place themselves in a position that will attract the attention, and money, of the public has relinquished the exclusive rights to their privacy. Like they say about what you should exclude from emails (and internet posting), if you wouldn't want to read it on the front page of the New York Times, keep it to yourself. If you would be ashamed to have your grandmother learn it about you, don't do it.

Bonds, Clemens, and Pay-Rod (oh I've enjoyed the newest crop of nicknames for the best shortstop not playing shortstop: A-Fraud, A-Roid, heehee), what they did was not private. It was not personal. Their indiscreet acts were designed to affect their performance and therefore affect The Game. To those who claim steroids, HGH, and other performance enhancement drugs have no effect, that the superior hand-eye coordination and physical workouts solely are responsible for the jump in production, the ratcheting up of ability, I have to pose the question If these have no effect, why would players use them, continue to use them over a long period of time?

Alomar's situation is different. It is a matter of some privacy, but his case also serves as a springboard for discussions about gender and stereotypes. Discussions that address HIV, AIDS, homosexuality, bisexuality, heterosexuality, ethnicity, and race all can be opened by posing questions about Alomar's situation, real and hypothetical. It is hard to imagine a more difficult position for a man to consider coming out in than as a black Latino baseball player. All three of those identities are bound up in tough rules of masculinity, and when they are combined, the pressure to remain closeted is increased exponentially.

We know there are gay men playing baseball. Professionally. In the majors. But the likelihood that any of them will come out any time soon is minuscule. And as once there were no black men, no men of color playing in the majors, denying boys the model that they could build their dreams around, it is important that young people, boys and girls, see people who resemble themselves on the professional diamond. Girls need to have the reality of playing baseball, not just softball, as possible, as achievable. Gay children, even if they aren't yet aware of their orientation, need to see positive examples of gay men and lesbians within the professional sports world, in baseball in particular.

Football players are caricatures of masculinity. Hockey players, and boxers, exude male strength. Basketball players display strength through endurance and contact on the court. Race car drivers are powerful, controlling high energy machines. Even jockeys, whose physical stature seems to counter the masculine ideals, are virile thanks to their command over race horses. Baseball is the sport that has been considered suspect in terms of manliness, so it continues to be excessive in its own version of machismo, definitely not an environment that would invite openness necessary for a person to come out with any sense of comfort or safety.