Billy Conigliaro’s death makes us boomers feel really old



“Unbelievable. Our childhood has been wiped out over the past year.”

A longtime friend, Red Sox and baseball fan --- and aficionado of everything dealing with the 1967 Boston Red Sox --- emailed me that response today after I alerted him to the news that the late Tony Conigliaro’s brother Billy had died Wednesday at the age of 73.
Billy Conigliaro only played for the Red Sox from 1969 to 1971, when he was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, but he was forever linked with his brother Tony, who died in 1990 after collapsing on the way to the airport in 1982 after suffering a heart attack. Billy took care of his more famous brother from that point on until he passed.
While Tony will forever be linked to the 1967 Impossible Dream Team, Billy was traded to the Brewers after the ’71 season. He retired not long after that, in 1973, after spending that season with the World Champion Oakland Athletics under the guidance of Dick Williams, who was, of course, Tony’s manager in 1967 and was Billy’s manager when he broke in with the Sox in 1969. (Read the Boston Globe story on Billy Conigliaro’s death at https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/02/10/sports/former-red-sox-outfielder-billy-conigliaro-dies-73/)
Billy C’s death followed an astonishing number of prominent baseball deaths, as the death of baseball’s home-run king for decades, Hank Aaron, last month at the age of 86 was just the latest in a stunning series of 10 Hall of Famers to have died since last April. The other Hall of Famers who we’ve lost were Al Kaline (Tigers), Bob Gibson, Lou Brock (Cardinals), Tom Seaver (Mets, White Sox and Red Sox), Whitey Ford (Yankees), Joe Morgan (Reds, Astros), Phil Niekro (Atlanta Braves and other teams), Tommy Lasorda (Dodgers) and Don Sutton (mostly Dodgers).
Billy Conigliaro certainly wasn’t in the league of those Hall of Famers, but his passing is a big deal to Red Sox fans of a certain age as the Conigliaro brothers were two of the more popular Red Sox players of that era.
Tony, of course, was at the time the youngest player to hit 100 homers after breaking in with the Sox in 1964, and his beaning by Jack Hamilton on the night of Friday, Aug. 18, 1967, in the heat of one of the most dramatic pennant races in MLB’s pre-playoff history, is the stuff of Red Sox lore.
I’ve never seen a no-hitter, but being in the Fenway Park stands on the first-base side on the night that Tony C was beaned is why I’ve always been a proponent of having the Red Sox retire his No. 25.

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