Remarkable Rookie

In the batter's box, he coils into a carbon copy of St. Louis' Stan Musial. His stance is closed, his right knee is slightly bent, and he scowls at the pitcher over a high-cocked elbow. When he unwinds, his swing is level and lightning-quick. His reflexes are so fast that even bad balls become good targets. In his first time at bat in a major league game, Boston Rookie Carl Yastrzemski sliced an outside fast ball into leftfield for a single. Next game against the Los Angeles Angels, he drove in two runs, hit a single and a booming 374-ft. triple. Said battered Angel Pitcher Jerry Casale: "He hit the single off a pitch right in on his fists. The triple came off a high fast ball. We gotta find out how to work this guy."

Finding out will not be easy. At 21, after two tune-up seasons in the bushes, Leftfielder Yastrzemski (pronounced Yah-strem-skee) is the finest outfield prospect in the American League. Boston sportswriters already are comparing him to Ted Williams, and the authoritative Sporting News has all but conceded him its Rookie of the Year award. In spring training, ex-Slugger Williams watched Yastrzemski take batting practice, exulted: "The boy has everything--poise a good eye, smoothness. He'll hit .320 in his first year." The prediction seems reasonable. At Raleigh, in the Class B Carolina League. Yastrzemski hit .377, won the batting championship by 66 points.

Last season, at Minneapolis in the American Association, he batted .339, was voted the league's top rookie. Grouses a rival American Association manager: "We tried to pitch him in every way possible: up and down, in and out. We jammed him, and we threw him slow breaking stuff. He still killed us."

Off the List. Son of a Bridgehampton, Long Island, potato farmer, Yastrzemski started swinging a baseball bat at three. At seven, he was fielding fungos hit by his father, a former semipro ballplayer.

Soon he was playing in neighborhood pickup games. "There were the five Yastrzemskis," he recalls, "the Skoniecznys--my mother's brothers--and my mother's cousins, the Jasinskis. Can you imagine a double play going from Skonieczny to Jasinski to Yastrzemski?"

In high school, Carl played five positions, hit a sizzling .540 and attracted contract-clutching scouts from 14 major league teams. But he turned down substantial bonus offers and entered Notre Dame instead. Not until sophomore year did he finally decide to play professional baseball. The scouts were as anxious as ever. Yastrzemski refused a $100,000 offer from the Cincinnati Reds, also got a special tryout from the Milwaukee Braves. He collected 23 hits in 24 trips to the plate, and the drooling Braves offered $115,000. They were turned down too. Milwaukee, Carl decided, was too far from Bridgehampton. The snooty New York Yankees were crossed off Yastrzemski's list when they made him dress with the batboys after a workout, refused to let his father into the ballpark without a pass. In the end, Carl accepted a Red Sox package that came to more than $100,000--including off-season board and tuition at Notre Dame.

Only Time. With Yastrzemski in left whippet-fast Gary Geiger in center and veteran Jackie Jensen back in right, the Red Sox outfield is the tightest defensive unit in the league. Quick-footed and well proportioned (5 ft. 11 in., 180 Ibs.), Yastrzemski pounces on ground balls with the catlike grace of an infielder. He has learned to play line drives on the carom off Fenway Park's short leftfield wall, and his throwing arm is deadly. On opening day, Kansas City's speedy Leo Posada tried to score from second base on a clean single to left. Yastrzemski threw him out drew a standing ovation from Boston fans. Says Red Sox Manager Mike Higgins:

"Many a time a man gets what he thinks is a double, and as he rounds first base he finds Yastrzemski already has that ball going into second."

But it is Yastrzemski's tremendous hitting potential, not his fine fielding, that makes him the most highly touted American League rookie since Mickey Mantle joined the New York Yankees a decade ago. Yastrzemski does not have the pull-hitting power of a Mantle, a Williams or a DiMaggio, but he can spray screaming line drives to all fields, will punch an occasional outside pitch into Fenway Park's inviting leftfield screen. "The boy looks like a hitter," says Manager Higgins. Everybody says he's a hitter. All he needs is the time to prove it."

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