Messing Around

Tony Conigliaro was the first major league baseball player I ever met. That, of course, seems like no big deal now, but in 1964, I was only 11 years old. While I was struggling through Little League mediocrity, Tony C was having an outstanding rookie season as a Boston Red Sox outfielder.

Meeting Conig was just one helluva deal for me.

Conigliaro had traveled to my hometown of Portland, Maine, on a day off to sign autographs as a publicity stunt for an automobile dealership. Every kid in town worth his Carl Yastrzemski baseball card showed up at the lot that day in order to get Tony C's signature.

Two mementoes save that encounter for posterity. One is a scrap of paper which I shoved in front of the star's hands as he sat at a small table. On the slip are the capital letters T and C each of which is followed by some illegible scrawls.

The second relic I owe to my dear dad, who always prepared, whipped out his Instamatic Camera and snapped a quickie of the two athletes.

The picture tells the story of my finest moment in sports.

Standing on the right by the chair is a scrawny kid in a Little League cap. The look on his face is so serious and so intense that the viewer knows this kid was aware of the tremendous impact this picture would have on professional sports in the 20th century. That kid is me.

Seated, resting his strong arms on the table is a well-dressed, rugged-looking young man. He looks bored as hell. That's Tony C.

Tony and I have both gone through a lot since then. I continued my lackluster diamond career through high school varsity stint. My major chore was to keep the raindrops from falling on the bench while the regulars were out on the field. I finally quit the game when I realized the emotional strain it was causing and the lives it was ruining. All mine.

The first few years of Conigliaro's career were stupendous. He led the league in homers in his second campaign and was later the youngest player ever to reach 100 career homers.

Few New England sports fans, however, will ever forget seeing the countless filmed replays of Tony C. crumbling to the ground after being hit in the face with a Jack Hamilton pitch on a hot summer night in August 1967.

The wirephotos from the hospital the next day were the most gruesome I have ever seen of a sports injury, T.C.'s left eye was swollen shut, and the entire side of his face was gruesomely blackened. The doctors said he was lucky to be alive and that he might not regain adequate sight in that eye.

Tony sat out the 1968 season because of poor vision. He returned dramatically in 1969 homering on Opening Day, and he had a banner year in 1970.

However, sentimental favorites don't always win out in pro sports and Conigliaro was then traded to the California Angels. He played only half the 1971 season with them, quitting in frustration in midseason after suffering a string of strikeouts. He insisted his eyesight was deficient.

For the next three and a half years. Tony Conigliaro the slugger was reduced to Tony Conigliaro the night club owner. When the Red Sox let him join their spring training camp in Florida this year, the experts didn't give him much of a chance to make the team.

T.C. however, is probably the gutsiest person in all of sports, attempting a second comeback after such a frightening injury and such a long layoff. After a slow start. Tony become one of the Sox's hottest hitters in the closing days of spring training.

Conigliaro is a local boy and the Boston fans have always loved him. On Opening Day Tuesday, they greeted him with standing ovations whenever his name was announced. In the first inning, he thrilled the spectators by lining a single to right field to set up the Sox's first run. As the cheering throng rose to its feet once more, a skinny college kid peered from his distant seat in the bleachers, unfortunately too far away to see Tony's face.

That didn't matter though. There was no way Tony C. could have looked bored just then.