One thing you can say about the late, great Tony Conigliaro. He never stopped making headlines. In a partly tongue-in-cheek column, famous Globe writer Harold Kaese capitalized on Tony’s “crybaby” image, which seemed to remain even as he grew into his twenties.
“Tony Conigliaro,” he begins, “has looks, physique, intelligence, charm. He has a marmalade voice, a Herculean swing, a calculator’s coordination. He has youth, stability,and a hefty salary. (It was close to $20,000, not bad for a fourth year player in 1967)….Then what more does this 22-year old from Swampscott need? Wrist warmers.”
Conig had been quoted as saying: “The reason I’ve been hitting so well down here is that it’s warm…I’m a wrist hitter. I can’t snap my wrists when I’m cold…I hit 10 home runs in spring training last year, then got off to a terrible start. Too cold….Last year we played going north, and my wrist suffered…I’m going to find some gloves that go up over my wrist and see if they help.” The piece also quotes Tony as saying that as a rookie at Fenway three years earlier, “ice in the grass was crunching my feet when I ran out to right field.”
If Conigliaro had grown up in Arizona instead of Revere and Swampscott, you could understand. But in his years at St Mary’s High, he must have played on some very cold days in early April and done very well. It made little sense. “Tell your grandmother to knit Tony some wrist warmers,” wrote Kaese.
The second part of the column mentions Tony’s winter activity- a safari in East Africa. The three-week hunt had cost him $3500, a good chunk of salary. Kaese tells that he shot zebra, impala, eland, a leopard, a cape buffalo, and gazelles, trophies which would soon decorate the home of his parents. Teddy Roosevelt would have been proud.
How times have changed in the past 45 years. If a famous player did that today, animal rights groups would be alll over him and the team. Plus, with a player of Tony’s caliber worth millions, the club would never allow it. But just one year later, Jim Lonborg went skiing, and we know what happened there.
Later that spring, Conigliaro was hit in the shoulder by a pitch and suffered a hairline fracture of the scapula. As Sox Nation held its breath, Conig was back swinging in a few days. But despite all the advice to pull back a bit, he would continue to crowd the plate. August 18 was only five months away.
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