Another link to my youth passed away, something that is happening more and more frequently these days. Harmon Killibrew was "only" 74. In 1967, I got to see him play several times. He was all that was good about the late '60's, even as the country was torn apart by an unpopular war that was claiming far too many lives. Baseball was our diversion. We escaped with the pitching of Tom Seaver and Sandy Koufax who retired before I had a chance to see him pitch. And there were the home run kings..Reggie Jackson made his debut in June of 1967 and in 118 at bats his rookie year he hit..1 home run..Harmon Killebrew was at his peak in 1967. He played every game and hit 44 home runs, 113 RBI's and walked 131 times. He was as good as they get..And he played for Minnesota.. In his 22 years in major league baseball, his total career earnings were less than 2 million dollars..a lot less..He only had 4 seasons where he earned over 100,000 thousand dollars and in 1960, his salary was $20,000. Today he'd be in the 20 million a year range..Maybe more.
1967 was my year of hopes and dreams. There were proms and the pressure of finals and graduation. And after graduation on a Friday night, I had 2 days downtime before heading to New York matriculate on the science of broadcasting and to find fame and fortune as a "big time, sensuous rock and roll disk jockey". There were dreams of a white picket fence and a beautiful wife and daughter welcoming me home after a hard day slaving over a hot microphone. Fancy and expensive cars, cool sharkskin suits..(Maybe my future would have been better served in the Mafia with the suits.) I made them all happen, just not as expected. Actually the sharkskin suit's were the first to go, replaced by leisure suits and apache scarves.
But 1967 was the perfect year and the one I use to judge just where I am as a person and where we are as a society. And that's where Harmon Killebrew comes in. I had a whopping budget of $60 a week to pay for our dorm at the Prince George Hotel on East 27th which was 24 bucks a week, $13.50 to buy a round trip ticket to Waymart, Pa on Friday Afternoon , a few bucks to wine and dine while there, and the rest to eat..or go to a Yankees or Mets game..sometimes 2 or 3 if I didn't eat much. General admission at the time was a buck and a half and the subway was still 15 cents so it was a cheap 3 hours of thrills. And the night I spent in the WPIX broadcast booth with Joe Garagiola and Phil Rizutto, knocking off a few White Owl cigars was a freebie so that week I could take in an extra game. Over the course of the summer, it was the subway to Shea to see either Seaver and Koosman or to the house that Ruth built to see the Yankees and Mantle and Ford, both of whom were in the twilight of their careers as the Yankees had a dismal .444 winning percentage. The Mets were worse with a .333 winning percentage. Tom Seaver won 16 of the Mets 61 wins. But win or lose, baseball was fun and a cheap escape.
1967 was also the year we didn't care about the deficit or the national debt. Few of us even knew they existed. The government left us alone, more or less, except at tax time. Cars didn't have electronics that made driving so easy that we became bad drivers. Gas was 35 cents a gallon or less which is why I learned it was cheaper for me to drive back and forth from New York to Waymart than to take the bus. Plus I had an extra 10 bucks in my pocket which meant I could have a couple more hot dogs for dinner during the week.
So while most of us had forgotten Harmon Killebrew since he retired, he was part of what was right and good in America in 1967. Even the Viet-Nam War was considered just and good. We cared for the welfare of our neighbors and we believed that we were our brother's keeper, not the government. I knew few people who owned new cars, and those that did kept them for a very long time.
Killebrew would probably been a farmer in Iowa being known only to those in his community. But he did have the ability to hit a baseball over 500 feet and to be a role model for thousands of other kids who wanted to hit a baseball over 500 feet. Without steroids or corked bats. Just a natural talent and a love for the game. That's what baseball and life were all about in 1967
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