Red Sox trade batting champion Pete Runnels to Houston
The Red Sox memories time machine travels back to 1962 and a team that was an artistic failure. If this were a Broadway show, they would close the curtains at intermission. The loyal fans were well aware of the scam, and 733,000 attendance showed that. The Red Sox finished eighth (76-84) in a ten-team league.
A trip to Fenway Park had just one possible highlight: reliever Dick Radatz making an appearance. Then again, 42-year-old Dave Philley was contributing a .143 batting average. Or Carl Yastrzemski was proving a poor hitting substitute for Ted Williams.
Then there was an All-Star on the team who had just captured his second batting title as a member of the Red Sox. What do you do with a batting champion? Why do you trade him!
Left-hand hitting Pete Runnels was no novice to batting titles. Runnels had won one in 1960 (.320) and lost out to Williams in 1958 by a few points. Runnels had hit .320 in five years with the Red Sox, and the reward was finding a purgatory worse than Boston. That was Houston – then in the National League – and checked in with a 64-96-2 record.
The excellent news for Runnels is he would not have to travel a great distance to suffer. A native of Lufkin, Texas, so if Runnels wished to commute, it is a mere 120 miles. In Texas, talk that represents a short commute.
Just what did the Red Sox get in return? The Houston Colt 45’s were an expansion team, and in the expansion draft to stock the future Astros, they got lucky. A right-hand hitter from the Pirates was available, and Román Mejias was selected. Was this Jeff Bagwell in reverse?
Mejias “won” the Triple Crown for Houston. Not the NL Triple Crown, but he led the 45’s in home runs (24), RBI (76), and batting average (.286). So what do you do with your best offensive player? You trade him.
Mejias was 32-years-old, and big things were expected from the outfielder. If big is in big disappointment, then Mejias was a success. In 1963, Mejias did nothing noteworthy, hitting .227 with 11 home runs. On the other side of the coin, Runnels hit just .253 with one home run, but the deal makes baseball sense on one level.
Runnels was approaching the end of the line, and the 45’s were in the process of flooding the roster with young players. Runnels was a solid professional, and if a young team needed a guiding hand, Runnels would do. Being from Texas maybe that would sell a few seats?
Following the 1964 season, both were done as MLB players, but not with baseball. Mejias went to Boston’s Triple-A farm team in Toronto for a year. The following season Mejias played in Japan for just 30 games.
Runnels ended up on the Red Sox coaching staff for 1965-1966 and briefly managed the team on an interim basis in 1966. Runnels, who passed away in 1991 became a Red Sox Hall of Fame member in 2004.
Baseball is not a sport known for visionaries. Enlightenment seems to be omitted from the job description for ownership. Mavericks such as Bill Veeck and Charlie Finley become outsiders. Baseball runs not years but decades behind on social issues since they move at a pace that would make a sloth appear an Olympic sprinter. That brings into question Mejias.
Why would Houston dump their first Latin star? Why rid the team of a player that could be instrumental in creating a solid Hispanic market? Mejias had no real blots on his record that I am aware of regarding his playing days. Undoubtedly, Mejias suffered from the cultural dysfunction of being Black and Hispanic in America in the 1950s, with MLB providing little or no adjustment support.
And the Red Sox? Boston was attempting to do an image change and even a failed Mejias could have been of considerable value to younger players of color and cultural backgrounds. But baseball of the mid-1960s was stagnant on providing the much-needed support, especially to Hispanic players. They were on their own and it probably derailed many possible careers. That, however, is looking at the historical prism of the past via the present.
Tom Yawkey is an interesting sidebar. Mejias, being a Cuban, his family was in Cuba, with tender political tensions keeping them from immigrating. Houston management had failed, but Yawkey spared no expense or influence in exerting political and diplomatic pressure. Despite being a united family, it failed in Mejias becoming the power threat Boston envisioned.