Yaz: We're overdue for Triple Crown

BOSTON - Former Red Sox outfielder Carl Yastrzemski thinks that being in a pennant race will help Detroit's Miguel Cabrera in his attempt to win the Triple Crown.

And Yaz should know: He's the last player to lead his league in batting average, homers, and RBIs in the same season.

"In '67, the Triple Crown was never even mentioned once," Yastrzemski said last week. "We were so involved in the pennant race, I didn't know I won the Triple Crown until the next day, when I read it in the paper."

Yastrzemski batted .326 with 44 homers, and 121 RBIs in 1967, when the "Impossible Dream" Red Sox clinched the AL pennant on the last day of the season. Yaz said only once did someone bring up the stat races to him, when pitcher Jim Lonborg told him he would help out by shutting down Baltimore's Frank Robinson.

Robinson, who won the AL Triple Crown the year before, finished second with a .311 batting average. Harmon Killebrew tied Yastrzemski with 44 homers and finished second with 113 RBIs.

"One thing that's going to help him is he's in a pennant race," Yastrzemski said.

Baseball had a Triple Crown winner every five years or so in its early days; in fact, it never went more than 10 years without one since the RBI became an official stat in 1920.

So when Yaz won a year after Robinson, few considered the possibility that it would be another 45 years before there would be another.

"I thought somebody would win it a long time ago," Yastrzemski said. "Somebody's got to do it, whether it's Cabrera this year, or whether it's going to be next year or the year after."

The waiting ended when Cabrera won the Triple Crown on Wednesday night.