The last spots of dried champagne from the Boston Red Sox’s 1967 “Impossible Dream” season had faded away by the early 1970s. Oh, the Red Sox were still good, still breaking camp each spring as pennant contenders, and they still had Carl Yastrzemski in the lineup, but they no longer “owned” Boston the way they did during that magical Summer of Yaz.
But then Luis Tiant came along. It was as though a new character had been written into the cast of a sagging television series, except that the Red Sox didn’t sign Tiant as a gate attraction. They signed him because they needed pitching, which Tiant delivered at a very high level throughout the 1970s. As for everything else — including the engaging personality and the never-ever-to-be-forgotten images of “El Tiante” sitting in a hot tub with a Cuban cigar dangling from his mouth — that was an unintended bonus.
Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant soaks in a hot tub during spring training, 1973: pic.twitter.com/GJrLBnIj
— SI Vault (@si_vault) December 6, 2012
It was good scouting that inspired the Red Sox to sign Tiant after the roly-poly righty had been released by the Atlanta Braves in mid-May of 1971. But they had no way of knowing that Tiant would emerge as one of the most popular athletes in Boston history, so popular, in fact, that younger fans with only a vague understanding of the man’s sports bona fides would want to shake his hand and grab a selfie. So when it was announced Tuesday that Tiant had passed away at age 83, the sense of loss wasn’t limited to Boston Baby Boomers.
We are deeply saddened by the loss of Luis Tiant.
Anyone who met him, on or off the mound, knew he was a true force. A fixture of Fenway and Fort Myers well beyond his playing days, El Tiante was family.
We send our love to his wife, Maria, their children, and grandchildren. pic.twitter.com/idhRVDc76P
— Red Sox (@RedSox) October 8, 2024
To put it another way, Luis Tiant was a modern-day incarnation of Johnny Pesky, star Red Sox shortstop from 1942 to 1951 (save for the war years), who was still wearing a uniform and banging out fungoes when he was 90. Kids loved Pesky for no other reason than because he was cool. The kids didn’t care, and most of them didn’t know, that Pesky registered three straight seasons with 200 or more hits. In that spirit Tiant may have been the hippest, coolest cat ever to wear a Red Sox uniform, and just by being himself. The kids who flocked to late-in-life Looie probably didn’t know that he posted the lowest ERA in the American League in 1972, or that he was a 20-game winner in three of his eight seasons with the Red Sox, or that in 1968, when he was still with the Cleveland Indians, he went 21-9 with a 1.60 ERA.
What many of today’s youngins do know, as though it’s on the curriculum at elementary schools throughout New England, is Tiant’s funky, shaky, twisty delivery. It’s something I learned by watching Tiant pitch at Fenway when I was a teenager, something I took a stab at imitating during the hundreds of “sponge ball” games we’d play in the courtyard of Longfellow School in Cambridge, Mass.
There won’t be another Luis Tiant windup, RIP pic.twitter.com/2nzXMktTRs
— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) October 8, 2024
Today’s kids, we can assume, learned it at home. Tiant knew this to be true, During spring training several years ago he was kibitzing with the crowd behind home plate at one of the practice diamonds out behind JetBlue Park when a boy, 10 or 11 years old, stepped forward and did an impersonation of Tiant’s delivery that was so good you’d think we were all watching footage of El Tiante dealing to Johnny Bench in the 1975 World Series. “You probably learned that from your grandfather,” Tiant said, a line he probably used a bunch of times.
Tiant went 229-172 with a 3.30 ERA in his 19 seasons in the big leagues. The Red Sox foolishly let him go after the ’78 season, thus taking innings off the depth chart and joy out of the clubhouse. Tiant went to the Yankees in 1979 and still had enough twists left in him at age 38 to go 13-8 with a 3.91 ERA in 20 starts. He wrapped it up with a couple of seasons with the Pirates and Angels, and then returned to his longtime home in Milton, Mass.
Tiant often talked about his love for Boston, but there were hiccups. According to Saul Wisnia, whose book, “Son of Havana: A Baseball Journey from Cuba to the Big Leagues and Back,” is the definitive account of the pitcher’s storied life and career, Tiant experienced racism when his family looked to buy a bigger home in Milton, a leafy suburb just south of Boston. Tiant said he had picked out a house but was then told it had been taken off the market because the family decided not to sell.
“The truth, I found out, was that some people in the neighborhood didn’t want any more Black people living there,” Tiant says in Wisnia’s book.
Tiant, apparently not believing the owners had changed their minds about selling, went to the house and introduced himself. Turns out the house was very much still on the market and they were happy to sell it to him. A year later, after the Red Sox won the American League pennant (they lost to the Reds in the World Series), the town of Milton threw Tiant a parade. Tiant’s parents, Luis Sr. (a Cuban baseball legend who later pitched in the Negro Leagues) and Isabel, who were able to get out of Cuba and saw their son pitch at Fenway Park in 1975, also settled in Milton. They are buried in Milton Cemetery.
Boston #RedSox pitcher Luis Tiant gets Cincinnati #Reds batter Pete Rose to hit a fly ball to a sliding Carl Yastrzemski for the first out in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series at Fenway Park! #RIPLuisTiant #MLB #ElTiante pic.twitter.com/ma7sklisD9
— Baseball by BSmile (@BSmile) October 8, 2024
Over the years, during spring training, I’d often see Tiant and former Minnesota Twins star (and fellow Cuban) Tony Oliva having dinner with their wives at the Stonewood Grill in Fort Myers. There’d always be lots of laughing, but I suspected there was also some shared sadness whenever these two old ballplayers got together. Both men had storied careers — Oliva won three batting titles before being thwarted by knee injuries — but for years and years they waited for that hoped-for call from the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Oliva got that call in 2022. Tiant never got it.
“I’d love to be in the Hall of Fame someday,” Tiant told me in 2017. “I just hope they do it before I die, so I can drive out to Cooperstown with my family.”
Tiant’s career was remarkably similar to those of Catfish Hunter and Don Drysdale, both of whom are enshrined in Cooperstown. But this isn’t the time to break down the numbers, though you’re invited to meander in that direction. What’s important to remember today is that Luis Tiant arrived in Boston in 1971 as a broken-down pitcher trying to salvage his career, and that he liked it so much, and enough people liked him, that he decided to go around those neighborhood Archie Bunkers and put down roots.
Luis Tiant brought to Boston a smile as big as the CITGO sign. He brought courage and determination. He also brought that funky delivery, still being practiced by kids of all ages.
(Photo of Luis Tiant waving to the Fenway Park crowd before Game 1 of the 2013 World Series between Boston and St. Louis: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
