Carl Yastrzemski Collects His 3,000th Hit

On September 12, 1979, Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox grounded a single between first and second base past the diving Willie Randolph of the New York Yankees in the eighth inning at Fenway Park. It was his 3,000th career hit. The Red Sox won the game 9-2, and Yastrzemski became the first American League player in history to record both 3,000 hits and 400 home runs.

Yastrzemski had entered the game stuck on 2,999 hits after going hitless in his previous two games. The pressure of the milestone had weighed on him. The Fenway faithful packed the park on a Wednesday night to see if their captain could reach the number against the team's greatest rival. He went 0-for-3 before delivering the single off Jim Beattie in the eighth.

The game stopped for a brief ceremony. Yastrzemski's family joined him on the field. The crowd stood and cheered for several minutes. Then play resumed, and Yastrzemski, characteristically, went right back to work.

He had arrived in Boston in 1961 as Ted Williams's replacement in left field, an impossible assignment for a 21-year-old from Long Island. He won the Triple Crown in 1967, the last player in the American League to do so until Miguel Cabrera in 2012. He carried the Red Sox through the 1967 Impossible Dream season almost single-handedly, hitting .523 over the final 12 games to drag Boston into the World Series.

Yastrzemski played 23 seasons with the Red Sox, all of them in Boston. He never played for another organization. He retired after the 1983 season with 3,419 hits, 452 home runs, and 1,844 RBIs. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1989 on the first ballot. The 3,000th hit on September 12, 1979, confirmed what Red Sox fans had known for years. Yaz belonged alongside the greatest players the game had produced.