“FENWAY'S BEST PLAYERS”

1967-1971 #23   SPARKY LYLE In 1964 the Red Sox drafted Sparky Lyle and sent him to pitch at Winston-Salem, at the Double-A level. It was his toughest year in baseball, pitching only in relief, and his control was ghastly -- walking in runs and having difficulty getting anyone out. Working extremely hard on his control he got a promotion to the Red Sox Eastern League farm club at Pittsfield. At spring training he met Ted Williams. After watching him pitch one afternoon, Williams asked him what he thought was the best pitch in baseball. Not knowing the answer, Williams told him it was the slider because it was the only pitch he couldn't hit consistently, even when he knew it was coming. It gave Sparky the determination to work hard and figure it out for himself. He said that meeting changed his life because he worked exhaustively on making the ball spin the right way and break. Needless to say, he perfected his slider, and it remained his signature pitch for most of his career. Lyle began the 1967 season with the Sox Triple-A club in Toronto, but when the Red Sox sold Dennis Bennett to the New York Mets in June, they called him up, because with Toronto, he had an ERA of 1.71. In the "Impossible Dream" year, Spraky had a mediocre season and did not appear in the World Series due to a sore arm. In 1968 however, he had 11 saves, settling into a role as the team's primary left-handed reliever. The following season, he chalked up 17 saves and had 93 strikeouts. It made him one of the best relief pitchers in baseball. Over the next few seasons, he logged 36 more saves, leading the Red Sox in that category for three straight seasons. He became one of the game's dominant relievers of the 1970s, but most of his best seasons came with the Yankees. You see, Lyle was a prankster and had a habit of dropping his pants and sitting on birthday cakes to get a laugh. According to Bill Lee, that's what precipitated the Danncy Cater trade. Sparky sat on Tom Yawkey's birthday cake and the next day the trade happened. In what many Red Sox fans consider the team's worst trade of the past 50 years, Sparky was traded during spring training in 1972, to the Yankees for first baseman Danny Cater and a player to be named later (Mario Guerrero).