05/25/2026
When I hear "bad luck" I think of Tony C. What a shame. RIP
He was 22 years old and already faster to 100 home runs than anyone in American League history. The kid from Revere, Massachusetts was not supposed to be this good this soon. He just was.
Tony Conigliaro reached the major leagues at 19 without a single day back in the minors. On the first pitch of his first at-bat at Fenway Park, he hit a home run. Not a bloop. Not a seeing-eye single. A home run, in front of Robert Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, and the Governor of Massachusetts, at a game played in honor of a recently assassinated president. That is the kind of life Tony C lived — big, loud, and lit up with possibility.
By 1965, he was the youngest home run champion in American League history. By 1967, at 22, he was an All-Star with 20 home runs in only 95 games, barreling toward something that looked less like a career and more like a legend being written in real time.
Then August 18, 1967 happened.
Jack Hamilton's pitch caught Conigliaro flush on the left cheekbone. The crowd at Fenway knew it was bad from the sound alone. A fractured cheekbone. A dislocated jaw. Severe damage to his left retina. He was carried off on a stretcher. He was 22 years old.
He didn't play another game that season. He didn't play at all in 1968. The Red Sox — his Red Sox, the team he'd grown up dreaming about — went to the World Series without him.
What happened next is the part people don't talk about enough.
He came back.
In 1969, with vision so damaged it would have ended most careers before they began, Tony Conigliaro returned and hit 20 home runs. In 1970, he hit 36 and drove in 116 runs — career highs, both — later admitting he had played most of that season with his left eye nearly closed. Think about what that actually means. He was one of the best hitters in baseball while essentially seeing out of one eye.
Greatness, rebuilt from ruin.
But the story took another cruel turn. Shortly after that brilliant 1970 season, the Red Sox traded him to California under circumstances his brother Billy called a betrayal, pointing the finger at a teammate who wanted to protect his own position. Tony's vision kept deteriorating in 1971. He retired at 26.
He tried to start over. Broadcasting. A restaurant. An Emmy award in San Francisco. New chapters, hard-won. But on January 9, 1982, while being driven to the airport by his brother Billy after a job interview in Boston, Tony suffered a heart attack. Then a stroke. Then a coma.
He never fully recovered.
For eight years, his parents and brothers cared for him around the clock — bedridden, unable to walk, barely able to speak. In 1983, Frank Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, and Willie Mays gathered at Boston's Symphony Hall to raise $230,000 for his care. The game's greatest names, showing up for Tony C because the game remembered what he had given it, even if the game had also taken so much back.
He died on February 24, 1990. He was 45.
Peter Gammons titled his Sports Illustrated tribute simply: "A Life Torn By Tragedy." The Red Sox wore black armbands all season. They later named an annual award in his honor — given each year to the player who best overcomes adversity through the spirit and determination that were Tony's trademarks. Fenway Park has a section called Conigliaro's Corner. His old high school retired his number and named its gymnasium after him.
The records stayed on the books. The youngest American League player to reach 100 home runs. Still there. Still his.
He deserved so much more time. But he made the time he had feel like a lifetime.
