 |
| My father Jack (far right) along with (L to R) House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill, Carl Yastrzemski, & my father's boss Sidney |
In the fall of 1979, my father Jack went to work for
Kahn's-Hillshire Farm. At the time my
family lived in Maryland and my father was responsible for the sales of
Hillshire Farm kielbasa and smoked sausage products. His territory encompassed the entire state of
Maryland, the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia, and parts of
Delaware. During that time, Boston Red
Sox outfielder Carl Yastrzemski worked as a spokesman for Kahn's-Hillshire
Farm. Being a well-known baseball player
with a memorable Polish last name, Yastrzemski was the perfect fit to help the
company grow its kielbasa and smoked sausage market share. When Yastrzemski and the Red Sox came into
town to face the Baltimore Orioles, my father got the unique opportunity and
rare privilege to work alongside and get to know a future Hall of Fame baseball
player. Over the years, my father has
recounted his memories of Yastrzemski and shared his autographs, pictures, and
other keepsakes given to him by the Red Sox legend.
 |
| Autographed Yastrzemski cards given to my father |
Carl Yastrzemski's lengthy major league career spanned from
1961 to 1983. During his career,
Yastrzemski won numerous awards including an MVP, three batting titles, and
seven Gold Gloves for his left field defense.
Moreover, he achieved several milestones including 3,000 hits, 450 home
runs, 600 doubles, along with 1,800-plus RBI and runs scored. In 1967, Yastrzemski became one of a select
group of players to complete the Triple Crown by leading his respective league
in home runs, RBI, and batting average. Yastrzemski
spent his entire major league career playing for the Boston Red Sox and became
affectionately known by the nickname Yaz.
In 1989, Yastrzemski was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on his
first year of eligibility with a whopping 94.6% of the vote.
Yastrzemski was raised on a 70-acre potato farm on the
Northeastern side of Long Island in Bridgehampton, New York. Coincidentally, my father also grew up on a
farm, spending his formative years on the 160-acre family homestead in the
small town of Twin Lakes, Minnesota. Growing
up on a farm helped instill the hard work ethic that enabled Yaz to complete 23
seasons in the majors and play in an astounding 3,308 games--an all-time record
at the time of his retirement. Like Yaz,
my father was known for his dedication to the job and could certainly be
described as a workaholic. Although my
father had the strength and speed to play sports, his lack of hand-eye
coordination prevented him from seriously taking part in athletics. Not surprisingly, my father did not closely
follow sports though this likely helped him foster a good working relationship
with Yaz who has generally kept a low profile for a famous baseball player and
probably appreciated the chance to work alongside someone who was not star
struck by his presence.
As the salesman in charge of Kahn’s-Hillshire Farm’s
kielbasa and smoked sausage market share for the Baltimore-Washington area, my
father was given the opportunity to take Yaz to lunch to meet with buyers from
the area’s supermarket chains when the Red Sox slugger came to Baltimore to
face the Orioles. The buyer for the
grocery store plays a key role for a company looking to expand their market
share as they decide what products are put on the shelf and which ones they
promote in their weekly newspaper ad. My
father described his lunches with Yaz and the supermarket buyers, "The Red
Sox and Yastrzemski would come to Baltimore twice a year to play their
games. Yaz would stay in his hotel and
the next morning I would meet him about a quarter to twelve." In the days before pagers and cellphones, my
father said Yaz had his own way of screening calls to his hotel room, "So,
I'd go by his hotel and I'd ring his room and he would answer the phone in a strange
voice and I'd say, 'Is Yaz there?' and he'd say, 'Oh, hi Jack! How ya
doin'? I'll be right down.' And then I'd drive him over to the restaurant
where we'd meet one of the supermarket buyers and have lunch for maybe two
hours.”
 |
| Yaz started working for Kahn's-Hillshire Farm in 1976 |
Yastrzemski started working for Kahn's-Hillshire Farm in
1976. Yaz’s role with the company went
beyond just being a famous ballplayer who appeared on their packaging and in
their ads. In fact, a New York Times article from September
1979 stated that Yaz “spends two weeks a year at the (Kahn’s-Hillshire Farm
company) headquarters in Cincinnati watching how meats are processed and
learning the business.” My father also
mentioned Yastrzemski being serious about Kahn's-Hillshire Farm's products and
said the Red Sox outfielder would talk baseball with the buyers but
also "talk about the ingredients and how it was made as well as point
out that Hillshire Farm was the number one kielbasa and smoked sausage brand
and the only one advertised nationally"
My father first took Yastrzemski to lunch with one of the
supermarket buyers during the 1981 baseball season and continued to set up
lunch meetings with the legendary ballplayer through his final big league
campaign in 1983. Over the course of
those three years, my father and Yaz made the rounds, going to lunch with
nearly all of the supermarket buyers from the Baltimore-Washington
area--meeting with not only buyers from large supermarket chains such as Giant,
Safeway, and Grand Union but also smaller chains like Magruder, Food-A-Rama,
and Jumbo. "So, 1981 to 1983 was
when I would meet Yaz for lunch and have a buyer there and they could talk baseball,"
my father explained. "We did that
three years in a row, twice a year and we had lunch with a buyer either two or
three afternoons each time depending upon how long he was in town, always at
least two. What was really neat is that
I had one buyer, Giant, who was the biggest supermarket in the
Baltimore-Washington area and Yaz would call him up to double check and make
sure he had Hillshire in the ad and would say, 'Hey, ya got Hillshire in the ad
for Thanksgiving? You gotta take care of
Jack.' And he'd call him up three weeks
before Christmas, 'Hey, ya got Hillshire in the ad for Christmas? Hey, ya got Hillshire in the ad for Easter? Ya got Hillshire in the ad for Fourth of
July?' And I'd go in and see the buyer,
and the buyer would tell me, 'Ya know Yaz calls me up and checks up on me to
see if I'm promoting your stuff.'”
I never had the pleasure of meeting Yaz, though I would have
been too young to remember him even if had.
I asked my father to describe Yaz's personality and what he was like and
he said, "Yaz was good to me. He
was always nice to me and the people we had lunch with. He introduced me to other ballplayers on the
team and he liked my boss, Sidney as well."
Yastrzemski is not the only Hall of Fame baseball player my
father has had the opportunity to meet. Since
my father's boss, Sidney worked out of New York City, my father did a lot of
traveling between the D.C. and New York City Metropolitan areas so it was not
uncommon for him to spot famous people. In
fact, my father regularly took the Eastern Air Lines Shuttle between Washington
(now Reagan) National and La Guardia Airports where he once briefly met Johnny
Cash and often saw national evening news anchors including Sam Donaldson who he
humorously described as looking "demonic" in person. During one of his business trips to New York
City, my father crossed paths with a legendary former New York Yankees player. "I went to a sales meeting at a hotel in
Rye, New York which is north of New York City," my father recounted. "At 7'o clock, I got on the elevator to
come down and eat breakfast and Joe DiMaggio was on the elevator. I said, 'Aren't you...?' and he said,
'...Yeah, I'm Joe DiMaggio.' He said, 'I
thought I was getting out of here before anybody'd recognize me. Then he asked me, 'You want a
signature?' I said, 'Sure.' And he signed a piece of paper for me and got
off the elevator and that was it." From
what I remember the piece of paper DiMaggio signed for my father was from a
small, light green manila notepad. Unfortunately,
at some point during my childhood the signed piece of paper was lost.
 |
| Yaz introduced Red Sox teammate Dwight Evans to my father |
Due to working alongside Yaz, my father also got the unique
opportunity to walk into a major league locker room when the Red Sox outfielder
invited him and his boss, Sidney, into the visitor's locker room at Memorial
Stadium after games against the Baltimore Orioles. "Sometimes Sidney would come down from
New York when the Red Sox had a game in Baltimore and we would go to the
game," my father remembered. "On
a few occasions, Sidney and I got a chance to see Yaz in the Red Sox locker
room after the game. Yaz introduced us
to all these players, so it was quite a scene.
Dwight Evans was real personable, he was real friendly to Sidney and
I. I got to know Dwight Evans and he
knew us by name. He really liked Sidney
and liked me." Evans was one of
Yastrzemski's closest friends on the team.
During the early-1980's, Evans evolved into one of the game's most
dominant sluggers after being primarily known for his Gold Glove-defense in
right field earlier in his career.
Yastrzemski retired from baseball at the end of the 1983
season, bringing an end to a distinguished career that spanned 23 major league
seasons. A testament to his hard work
and dedication to the game, Yaz played well into his forties--with his final
games coming just a few weeks after turning forty-four years old. Unfortunately, Yaz's Red Sox were unable to
make a run at the AL East Division title in his final campaign, putting
together a lackluster 78-84 record to finish 20 games out of first place. By contrast, my family's hometown Baltimore
Orioles captured the AL East with a dominant 98-64 record to advance to the
postseason behind the strength of solid performances by veteran mainstays such
as Eddie Murray as well as up-and-comers like Cal Ripken Jr.
With the Orioles in the postseason, Kahn's-Hillshire Farm
saw the playoff games as an opportunity to strengthen their relationships with
the local supermarket buyers. "I
got a phone call from the Vice President of Sales and he told me he was sending
me a check by overnight mail that would be at my house at 9 o' clock in the
morning," my father recalled. "I
was instructed to go to this fancy hotel in the business district of downtown
Baltimore and that I was going to get eight tickets to every playoff game and
then when they got in the World Series, I got eight tickets for every World
Series game. I was to give those to the
buyers of the supermarkets and give them each two tickets to go to the
games. However, before the first World
Series game, Sidney told me, 'Take four tickets and take you and your family,
and give the other four away and make sure you and the family go to one
game.'"
The Orioles defeated the Chicago White Sox in the ALCS to
advance to the Fall Classic against the Philadelphia Phillies who had their own
solid core of well-established veteran players which included Mike Schmidt,
Pete Rose, Steve Carlton, and John Denny among others. The Series opened in Baltimore and my father
decided to take my mother, my sister, and I to Game 1. Unfortunately, the O's were defeated by the
Phils in Game 1 with Joe Morgan and Garry Maddox going deep to lead the
visitors to a 2-1 victory. Being just a
young child, my only recollections from that night is that it rained during the
game and the Orioles lost. The seats my
father was given were a little past the first base bag and--as luck would have
it--situated just under the bleachers so my family stayed dry during the
game. Fortunately, the O's rebounded
from the Game 1 loss and took the next four games to win the Championship
behind the timely hitting of catcher Rick Dempsey who was named the Series MVP
and became both mine and my sister's favorite player for the duration of his
time in Baltimore.
Following his retirement from professional baseball,
Yastrzemski became marketing director of New England and Florida for
Kahn's-Hillshire Farm. With his new
position, Yastrzemski no longer regularly traveled to Baltimore, thus bringing
an end to his lunch meetings with my father and the supermarket buyers. Nevertheless, my father still had the
opportunity to cross paths with Yaz a couple more times. A few weeks after hanging up his cleats, the
Massachusetts Congressional Delegation honored the Red Sox superstar with a
"Carl Yastrzemski Day" reception at the Rayburn House Office
Building in Washington, D.C. By virtue
of their association with Yastrzemski, my father and his boss Sidney were
invited to attend the party which Kahn's-Hillshire Farm provided kielbasa
for. During the reception, my father and
Sidney got to briefly meet and have their pictures taken with Massachusetts
Representative Silvio Conte and Speaker of the House Thomas "Tip"
O'Neill, both of whom were close friends of Yaz and avid Red Sox fans. While growing up in Massachusetts, O'Neill
was given his nickname by his boyhood friends after James "Tip" O'Neill, a 19th century ballplayer who shared his surname. Coincidentally, "Tip" O'Neill,
along with Yastrzemski, is one of just fifteen sluggers credited with winning
the Triple Crown, having led the American Association in home runs, RBI, and
batting average in 1887. However,
O'Neill's accomplishment was unbeknownst to anyone at the time as RBI did
become an official stat until 1920.
 |
| (L to R) O'Neill, Yaz, Sidney, my father Jack, & Massachusetts Representative Silvio Conte at "Carl Yastrzemski Day" |
My father and Sidney had another neat experience involving
O'Neill due to their association with Yastrzemski. "In August 1985, the company had their
national sales meeting in Washington, D.C.," my father remembers. "After a morning meeting, we went on a
tour of the Senate and House of Representatives office buildings. While everyone was on tour, myself, Sidney,
and the salesmen from New England--six, seven, maybe eight of us in total--went
on a special side trip. Yaz had it
worked out so that we could all go by "Tip" O'Neill's office and get
a picture taken of us sitting at his desk while he was away at Congress. “Tip" O’Neill’s staff let us in and I
even got to put my feet on his desk with a cigar in my mouth. Yaz set all that up."
Although my father is not a sports fan, he made a point of
saving keepsakes and memorabilia from his time working with Yastrzemski to give
to my sister and me. Many of these
keepsakes were given directly to my father by Yastrzemski. Among them are autographed baseballs signed
by Yastrzemski to my sister and me. Unfortunately
even though the autographed baseballs were kept in enclosed glass displays, Yastrzemski’s
signature has faded over time. Another
signed Yastrzemski ball included autographs of three of his Red Sox teammates,
Mike Torrez, Dennis Eckersley, and Dwight Evans. Based on the signatures of the three players
sharing the ball with Yaz, my father was given the signed ball during the 1981
or 1982 season. Over the years, as I
learned more about Torrez, Eckersley, and Evans, the ball has come to have more
meaning for me. Mike Torrez is largely
remembered for giving up Bucky Dent's go-ahead three-run home run during the
one-game playoff between the Red Sox and Yankees for 1978 AL East Divisional
Title. Ironically, Torrez had won two
World Series games as a member of the Yankees to help them defeat the Los
Angeles Dodgers during the previous year's Fall Classic before signing as a free
agent with Boston for 1978. Despite
surrendering the infamous-Dent home run, Torrez had a solid 18-year career with
185 wins--60 of which came during five seasons with Boston. Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley had some of
his finest and worst seasons as a starter for the Red Sox before becoming a
dominant reliever with the Oakland Athletics.
During his incredible 1992 campaign in which he won both the AL Cy Young
and MVP Awards, "Eck" became one of my all-time favorite players
after watching his ESPN interview with Peter Gammons. Dwight Evans' 2,505 games played in a Red Sox
uniform trails only Yastrzemski. When my
father would recount his time working alongside Yaz, Evans' kindness always
stood out to me. Evans finished his
career with nearly 2,500 hits and 400 home runs along with eight Gold Glove
Awards for his sensational defense in right field. In my early twenties, I became interested in
evaluating players with strong careers who were overlooked by Hall of Fame
voters and I was surprised to find Evans had fallen short of Cooperstown. Years later when I created my Tubbs Baseball
Blog website, Evans became my favorite overlooked Hall of Fame candidate to
write about.
 |
| Baseball signed by Carl Yastrzemski, Mike Torrez, Dennis Eckersley, and Dwight Evans |
After receiving positive feedback from supermarket buyers
during the playoffs and World Series, Kahn's-Hillshire Farm decided to continue
using Orioles baseball tickets to strengthen their relationships with
grocers. "Because I had a good
response of giving out the Orioles playoff and World Series tickets then, later
that Fall after the World Series, the company made up their mind they would buy
me a set of four season tickets for the '84 season," my father
explained. The seats my father and
Sidney picked out were much closer to the action than the ones given to them
for the previous year's playoffs. The
seats they selected were once again a little past the first base bag but now
only about twenty rows away from the field.
While most of those tickets were given to supermarket buyers, my father
took our family to a lot of games as well.
My father says he specifically set aside some Sunday
afternoon games to take us to and my sister told me that he made a point
to take us to ones that included promotions or giveaways such as On Field Photo
Night, Bat Day, Sport Bag Night, and Back-to-School Binder Night. My sister and I held onto most of the
giveaways we received at the O's games.
 |
| Keepsakes of Orioles promotional items including Polaroids of Cal Ripken Jr., Billy Ripken, & Fred Lynn |
Over the next few years, my father took our family to several
Orioles games each season. Unfortunately,
the O's struggled to follow up their championship campaign, languishing as an
also-ran team in 1984 and 1985 after spending much of the previous decade and a
half as a perennial contender in the AL East.
The O's appeared ready to turn things around in 1986, sitting just a few
games out of the AL East lead in early August before completely collapsing over
the season's final two months to embarrassingly finish dead last in their
division for the first time since the franchise moved to Baltimore. The O's continued to struggle mightily in
1987 and were only saved from finishing in the AL East cellar by a dreadful
Cleveland Indians team. During those
particularly difficult '86 and '87 seasons, my sister and I were among the few
fans who passionately cheered "Eddie!!!
Eddie!!!" for the O's beleaguered first baseman Eddie Murray who
was regularly booed by the Baltimore fans after a public contract squabble with
team owner Edward Bennett Williams turned much of the fan base against him.
Shortly after the conclusion of the 1987 season, my father
left Kahn's-Hillshire Farm and moved our family to Virginia. My father remembers his final interaction
with the Red Sox legend, "We had a national sales meeting in Boston in
1986 and I remember that this was the last time I saw Yaz. He came over to where the salesmen were
having supper that night and ate with us."
In 1989, Yastrzemski's playing career was forever immortalized with his
induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Even though our family moved away from a baseball town, going to Orioles
games and growing up with the stories, baseball cards, autographed memorabilia,
and keepsakes from my father's time working alongside Yastrzemski helped
shape me into a lifelong baseball fan.
----by John Tuberty
(More pictures from "Carl Yastrzemski Day" appear
below)
Sources: Baseball Reference, Carl Yastrzemski SABR bio, People, Boston Globe via The Free Library, Burlington Daily Times News via Newspaper Archive, UPI, The New York Times, SI Vault
 |
| Yastrzemski baseballs signed to my sister and I |
 |
| More photos from "Carl Yastrzemski Day" featuring my father, Yaz, Sidney, O'Neill, & Conte |
Photo Credit: 1980 Topps, 1982 Donruss, 1981 Topps,
and 1983 Topps of Carl Yastrzemski; 1983 Topps Dwight Evans; 1982 Topps of Carl
Yastrzemski, Mike Torrez, Dennis Eckersley, and Dwight Evans; all other photos
are from Tubbs Baseball Blog personal collection: black and white photos are
from "Carl Yastrzemski Day", ticket stub is from one of my family's
seats in Game 1 of 1983 World Series, Polaroids of Cal Ripken Jr., Billy
Ripken, and Fred Lynn are from 1987 On Field Photo Night
Other Articles by Tubbs Baseball Blog:
