Carlton Fisk: Tough Guy

Opening Day is still a fresh memory, but like the too-quickly passing days of a good summer vacation, the Major League Baseball season has already reached its midpoint. While most players are taking a needed breather from the season’s grind, the best-of-the-best will be playing in the All-Star Game on July 15. The National Portrait Gallery holds several portraits depicting legends from our national pastime, including this portrait of Carlton Fisk, an eleven-time All-Star. The portrait is painted by Susan Miller-Havens, and is on view on the third floor of the museum, in the "Champions" exhibition.   

A prominent baseball expert has ranked Hall-of-Fame catcher Carlton Fisk (born 1947) as the sixth greatest major-league catcher of all time, behind only Yogi Berra, Johnny Bench, Roy Campanella, Mickey Cochrane, and Mike Piazza. Fisk’s offensive statistics and his longevity are remarkable. He holds the record for the number of games played as a catcher (2,226), and is second only to Piazza in home runs hit as a catcher (351). A major-leaguer for twenty-four seasons—first with the Boston Red Sox, then with the Chicago White Sox—Fisk made the All-Star team eleven times.

Although statistics are important, Fisk is much more than the sum of his numbers. The catcher’s position in baseball is physically the most demanding, but Fisk’s longevity and his ability to come back from serious injury mark him as a tough guy even among catchers. He played the game hard, demanded a lot from his teammates, and even expected the opposition to play the game the right way.

In one memorable episode, Yankee player Deion Sanders, a talented football player who thought he could play baseball, hit a pop fly and, with Fisk yelling at him to run it out, refused to run to first base. When Sanders next came to bat, Fisk angrily told him, loud enough to hear on the Yankee bench: “If you don’t play it [the game] right, I’m going to kick your ass right here in Yankee Stadium.” The shocked Sanders later apologized.

There is one game that many fans consider the defining moment in Fisk’s career: game six of the 1975 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox. The Sox were a very strong team that year, and the “Red Sox Nation” was hopeful that the “curse”—allegedly dooming Boston in World Series competition after it sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919—would be broken. But Cincinnati had its “Big Red Machine,” boasting one of the most powerful batting lineups in baseball history.

In game six, with the Reds holding a 3-2 game advantage in the series, the game went to extra innings.  The score was tied 6-6 when Fisk led off the bottom of the twelfth inning.  He blasted a blasted a ball high and deep down the left-field line. It was unquestionably a home run, if it stayed fair.

All those in Fenway Park and watching on TV will never forget Fisk at home plate, jumping wildly up and down, frantically waving the ball to the right side of the foul pole, using all his body language and willpower to direct the ball fair. Mind may have triumphed over matter, because the ball hit the foul pole for a game-winning home run.

The “curse” would hold, as the Reds went on to take game seven and the series, but Fisk expressed it best: “The Red Sox won that series, 3 games to 4.” Susan Miller-Havens, who works out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializes in sports figures, and painted this portrait and three others of Fisk from video sources.