I never knew my parents had a 1963 yearbook until I found it in a box of stuff they just gave me. So here it is....click each to enlarge.

Check out the $3 box seats, etc.

The big deal at the time was the new manager for '63, the immensely popular Johnny Pesky. (He would be let go toward the end of '64 after two sub-.500 seasons.)

Wow, in '63 they were already lamenting the loss of the stickball-in-vacant-lot era. There weren't a lot of ads in the yearbook back then. Not a lot of color, either. (In more ways than one.)

Catch the Sox on HDH, TV and radio.

Close-up of Gowdy and a young Ned Martin from above ad.

The layout of the player pages. Yaz at bottom left.

I love this shot. From Opening Day 1962. [Correction: It's from the 1961 All-Star Game (the Fenway one, anyway); see comments below. Thanks to reader RomanMejias!] It's always weird to see the way the roof used to look before they built up. It's rare to see a close-up of the old wooden benches in the upper bleachers, but you can see them at bottom right. You can also see the bare concrete on the bullpen wall.

John Kiley, who is usually heard not seen.

I think "special" means "should have retired 15 years ago."

Helen! In my review of The Ballpark from 15 years after this picture was taken, I showed a picture of her and wondered if she'd been wearing the same glasses for 35 years. Guess not! She looked more 50s in the late-70s than she did in '63! Here's the '79-ish shot:

Good to see they got Helen some nice, modern equipment....

And surely you remember Vinnie Orlando from this post.

Nun's Day '62.

They showed pics of all the state days. Maine gave the team a tobba--, a tobog--, a big sled.

Showing that the electronic part of the scoreboard which showed the lineups (which was removed before the '76 season) was there in '62.

They used to let the season ticket holders meet all the players. Here's Yaz surrounded.

Nice reaction to getting a flu shot by Pesky.

Scottsdale made a huge deal when the Sox would come to town. There's a whole section on the spring training festivities, plus pics of the players with their families.

If I drank, maybe I'd drink this Rhode Island fave. That's your back cover.


Bonus pix! Finally, a shot of me at Army Baseball Camp, along with the late Robin Roberts.


And, a classic. As you know I was every bit of a die-hard Jets fan growing up as I was a Sox fan, until I finally just gave up on non-baseball sports a few years ago. Well, this one time, my family was on vacation in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and who do we spot, but the then-coach of the Jets, Joe Walton. So there I was, by chance wearing one of my Jets shirts at the time, face to face with the head coach. They took my pic with the extremely hairy Walton, who seemed pretty happy about the whole thing. (This was before the "Joe Must Go" chants started, I think.) A year or so later, my mom had the pic blown up, and it was on the wall at our old house for many years, and later decorated with little pictures of Joe Namath, Bill Parcells, and Ed Anzolone--you can see the back of the Parcells head folded up on the left. So here's a pic of the giant pic:


I'll be back after midnight or tomorrow, probably with some pictures of pink bats.