In Memoriam: George Thomas — Let George Do It

Before the 1967 World Series, at a team dinner in Boston, George Thomas leaned over to Carl Yastrzemski — the American League's Triple Crown winner, the man who had just carried the Red Sox to a pennant on his back — and offered him the finest piece of advice anybody handed out that October: "Don't get overconfident, Yaz. Right now, we have the same batting average in the World Series: .000." It was a joke. It was also a job description. For 13 seasons, George Thomas kept pennant races from devouring the men playing in them.

George Thomas, who played every position on the field except the one on the mound and kept the Impossible Dream Red Sox loose through the most beloved summer Boston baseball ever had, has passed away. He was 88. The news came from home: Pat Reusse of the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Thomas died on Friday, October 23.

He was a Minneapolis boy, the middle child of a real-estate man who had pitched semi-pro ball until a spring-training injury ended it, and a brother — Jerry, two years older — who became an All-American pitcher at the University of Minnesota. George was a three-sport athlete at Bloomington High, and in the summer of 1957, Tigers scout George Moriarty came to sign Jerry out of Minnesota. "The next thing I know," Thomas recalled years later, "he comes in from the car where they were talking, and asks me if I wanted to play!" He signed with Detroit on August 5, 1957, for a $25,000 bonus, after one varsity season as the Gophers' sophomore shortstop.

The bonus made him a bonus baby, and the bonus rule made him a prisoner of the bench: Detroit couldn't send him to the minors, so at 19 he mostly sat. His debut came on September 11, 1957, at Washington's Griffith Stadium — a strikeout pinch-hitting against Ted Abernathy, then two innings at third base, the second-youngest player in the American League. Then the rules changed and reality arrived: one more game in 1958, a fractured jaw in Birmingham in 1959, and a long apprenticeship proving he belonged.

His break arrived by expansion. On June 26, 1961, the first-year Los Angeles Angels bought him from Detroit, and at little Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, George Thomas finally got to play every day. He hit .280 with 13 home runs, starting in the outfield and at third base. His first big-league hit was a double off Billy Pierce. His first home run came off Warren Hacker two days later. His first grand slam arrived that September. "Let George Do It," The Sporting News headlined. For one summer, he did.

The Army took the next chapter — recalled during the Berlin Crisis, he missed most of 1962 and came back that July to find the magic gone. He and Lee Thomas — no relation — were billed as "T-N-T," and as George cheerfully admitted, 26 of their combined 30 home runs belonged to Lee. Traded back to Detroit in June 1963, he put together his finest season in 1964: a career-high .286 with 12 home runs, most of it in center field — the spring after the Tigers had taught him to catch, just in case. That was the start of the legend. By the time he was done, there was no spot on the diamond except the pitcher's mound where George Thomas had not stood at least once.

Boston got him in October 1965, in the trade that sent the beloved Bill Monbouquette to Detroit, and Thomas settled into the role he was born for: 222 games over six seasons, and by every account the funniest man in the clubhouse. Handed a rare run of four starts in a row once, he surveyed the lineup card in horror: "I can't play all these games. Bench me or trade me!" Manager Billy Herman marveled that a bench player could keep a last-place team in such good spirits. Boston never stayed last for long, though, because of what came next.

Then came 1967. Nobody in Boston needs to be told what 1967 means: a club that had finished ninth the year before, at 100-to-1 odds, won the pennant on the season's final weekend — the Impossible Dream. Thomas broke a finger in May and came back to play 65 games at everything: the outfield, third base, and one game even behind the plate. He roomed with Jim Lonborg, played bridge with Yastrzemski, and supplied the season's official tension relief. Deep in the pennant race, he looked out from the bench and announced to no one in particular: "This is the best pennant race I have ever watched."

The World Series went seven against St. Louis. Thomas struck out pinch-hitting against Nelson Briles in Game 3, and in Game 6 he trotted out to right field as a defensive replacement and grounded out against Hal Woodeshick — oh-for-two in the Series, right in line with that .000 joke at the team dinner, a joke he got to tell on himself for the next 59 years. "It's like having a child, or getting married," he said of that season. "It's a part of your life. A golden moment that never can be duplicated."

The years after were a master class in hanging around. Louisville for most of 1968. The morning in 1969 when he spotted Johnny Bench's surname stitched across the back of the Cincinnati catcher's uniform and announced, "Oh, I see we both play the same position — only you have it written on your uniform." A stretch as player-coach. A torn-up knee. Then 1970, when he hit .343 in part-time duty, drew a $200 fine and a five-day suspension for arguing with umpires in Detroit, watched the Red Sox win five of six without him, and rendered the verdict himself: "It appears Joe Cronin has found the weakness in this club. Me!" Boston's writers named him the club's Unsung Hero, and at the dinner he announced his goal for 1971: to play in two games in a row, for a change. He nearly made it. Boston released him that June; the hometown Twins signed him two days later; and on October 27, 1971 — fifty-five years ago today — Minnesota let him go, and the career was over. Thirteen seasons. Six hundred eighty-five games. A .255 average, 46 home runs, 202 runs batted in. Eight positions. One unforgettable summer.

He went home and stayed home, the way he started. Minnesota took him back as an assistant coach in 1972 and made him head coach in 1979, and his Gophers went 95–43 over three seasons, the last of them winning a Big Ten divisional title and reaching the NCAA tournament. The university still presents a George Thomas Most Improved Player Award. He worked for an audiovisual company in the Twin Cities until he retired. And in October 2004 — when the Red Sox finally won the whole thing, 86 years on — there was his daughter Kristin on national television, holding a placard: THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM on one side, GEORGE THOMAS FAN CLUB on the other. Thirty-seven years later, the fan club was still in session.

He was never a Met. His whole career ran through the American League in the years before interleague play, so he never so much as stood in against the Mets — but this page tips its cap anyway, the way it does for every man who played the game. Because every franchise has a George Thomas tucked away in its attic: the fellow who could stand anywhere, say the perfect thing at the perfect moment, and remind a clubhouse in the middle of a miracle that the miracle was supposed to be fun. The Impossible Dream came two Octobers before our own miracle in Flushing, and it ran on the same fuel — belief, youth, and somebody on the bench keeping everybody loose.

Somewhere, the bridge game is still going, and George is still watching the best pennant race he ever saw.

Rest easy, George. Thanks for keeping them loose.