Jim Lonborg-What Could Have Been
Jim Lonborg was born in Santa Maria, California, on April 16th, 1942. Signed as a free agent out of Stanford University by Boston in 1963, Jim Lonborg struggled his rookie season of 1965, when he was 23 years old. The Red Sox were a sorry bunch, going 62-100, and Jim Lonborg finished the year at 9-17. The next season was much better, as Jim Lonborg had a .500 record at 10-10, posting an ERA under 4.00 and giving up less hits than innings pitched. However, there was no hint of what was on the immediate horizon for either Jim Lonborg or the Boston Red Sox in 1967.
From out of nowhere, the Red Sox became contenders in what would be called the “Impossible Dream” season of 1967. Jim Lonborg fulfilled his potential in a way that no one could have imagined. With a record of 22-9, Jim Lonborg won the AL Cy Young Award. Starting 39 games, Jim Lonborg completed 15 of them to an ERA of 3.16, with 246 strikeouts and 45 less hits than innings pitched. He clinched the pennant for Boston with a 5-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins on the last day of the season, and then Jim Lonborg faced the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.
The 1967 Cardinals were a team that had won a world title 3 years earlier, and would be right back in the Series in 1968, so they were a powerful team. Bob Gibson, rested and ready, dominated Boston in the first contest at Fenway Park, striking out 10 and yielding only 1 run, a homer to the opposing pitcher, Jose Santiago, in a 2-1 victory. Jim Lonborg would face off with St. Louis the next day, and the Boston ace pitched the game of his life.
The game was scoreless into the fourth inning when Triple Crown winner Carl Yastrzemski led off the bottom of the frame by blasting a home run. In the seventh, with the score now 2-0 in favor of the home team, Jim Lonborg issued a walk to Curt Flood. He was the first St. Louis base runner all day! Jim Lonborg had not given up a hit to that point. A three-run Yastrzemski homer in the last half of the inning gave Boston a 5-0 lead, and with Jim Lonborg on the hill, the only doubt left was if he could pitch a no-hitter. Tim McCarver grounded out to second to begin the eighth inning. When Mike Shannon was thrown out by shortstop Rico Petrocelli for out number two, the crowd was buzzing. But then Cards’ second baseman Julian Javier doubled off of Jim Lonborg to break up the no-hitter. Undeterred, Jim Lonborg got Bobby Tolan to ground out to second and then he pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for a complete game one-hitter. Jim Lonborg had faced only two batters over the minimum in the 5-0 Boston triumph.
Two days later, with the Series now in St. Louis, Boston’s Gary Bell was touched for 3 early runs and the Cardinals went on to a 5-2 win. When Gibson shut the Red Sox out 6-0 the next day on just five hits, things looked bleak for Jim Lonborg and Boston. However, with Jim Lonborg on the mound for Game Five, the Red Sox pushed across an unearned run in the third against St. Louis starter Steve Carlton. The game stayed that way until Boston added 2 more tallies in the top of the ninth. In the bottom of the inning, Jim Lonborg was one out away from another shutout when Roger Maris homered off of him. After Orlando Cepeda grounded out to third baseman Joe Foy, Jim Lonborg had another win, this one a three-hit masterpiece.
The Red Sox, given life by the pitching of Jim Lonborg, got home runs from Yastrzemski, Petrocelli, and Reggie Smith in Game Six to force a seventh game with an 8-4 win. Boston sent Jim Lonborg to the mound on only two days of rest, where he faced off against the equally brilliant Bob Gibson, pitching three days since his Game Four blanking of Boston. On this day, there would be no storybook ending to the “Impossible Dream”, just an ending. Jim Lonborg gave up 10 hits over 6 innings, and Boston was soundly beaten by the Cards for all the marbles by a 7-2 count. Gibson struck out 10 batters, and in a particularly cruel twist, homered off Jim Lonborg in the fourth. The light hitting Javier (pronounced Havier) also added a solo shot; a Boston newspaper would run a cartoon of a kid scribbling on a wall “Hulian Havier is a Herk”, since Javier hit well over .300 for the Series and had spoiled the no-hit bid of Jim Lonborg in Game Two.
The 1967 World Series featured a total of five future Hall of Famers; Gibson, Cepeda, Carlton, Lou Brock, and Yastrzemski. Perhaps it could have been six, had Jim Lonborg not gone skiing on Christmas Eve of 1967. A bad fall injured his knee, and Jim Lonborg would never be the same pitcher. He would go a combined 13-21 the next two seasons, and missed most of 1970 with various ailments. After he managed a 10-7 mark in 1971, Jim Lonborg was traded to Milwaukee, where he won 14 games the next year with a sub 3.00 ERA.
No longer the power pitcher that he once was, Jim Lonborg had to reinvent himself on the mound. He had struck out almost 250 men in his 1967 Cy Young season, but the most he would ever fan in one year again was 143. Dealt to the Phillies after but one season as a Brewer, Jim Lonborg would play baseball for seven years in Philadelphia. His best year for Philly was 1976, when Jim Lonborg went 18-10 with a 3.08 ERA. At the age of 37, in 1979, Jim Lonborg retired from baseball with a career record of 157-137 and a 3.86 ERA.
Had Jim Lonborg been playing today, there would assuredly be a clause in his contract prohibiting him from such activities as skiing. Also, today’s medical procedures possibly could have completely restored his knee to its prior strength. After he left baseball, “Gentleman Jim”, as he was known during his playing days, put that Stanford education to good use. He attended Tufts Dental School in Massachusetts and became Dr. Jim Lonborg, with his own dentistry practice. The good doctor currently lives in Scituate, Massachusetts with his wife Rosemary, with whom he had 6 children. Jim Lonborg, now 64 years old, enjoys the New England seasons, gardening, reading golfing, and of all things, skiing.
