On April 4, two teams will play the 2025 Red Sox home opener at Fenway Park.

A third team will reunite in the ancient emerald cathedral they once called home to celebrate their 50th anniversary, and for a moment, they’ll feel as though they’re back in their playing days again.

Yes, somehow, the 1975 Red Sox turn 50 this year. Fred Lynn’s Rookie of the Year and MVP season. Carlton ‘Pudge’ Fisk’s “If it stays fair!” walk-off home run. Jim Rice, Dwight Evans, Bernie Carbo, Rico Petrocelli, Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee, Carl Yastrzemski, Luis Tiant. 50 years ago.

No, they can’t believe it, either.

“Here’s how it’s going to play out when we see each other,” Lynn told the Herald. “It’s like going back in time and we’ll just feel like we’re in the locker room telling stories. Time will not have passed until we look at each and go, ‘Dang! You’re old!’”

Lynn keeps coming back in part because he’s become a Sox fan himself, watching games, often weighing in on X (formerly Twitter) with his trademark zest and joie de vivre. And chances to spend time with his teammates don’t come around very often these days. After spending more than half of every year together, they’re now apart for months, even years.

“It’s events like this that bring us all back together,” Lynn said. “(It’s) a connection with them forever, lifetime. … You’re with these guys every day for seven months, eight months really with spring training, so there’s a real bond that forms there.”

The beginning

This year’s home opener is four days before the 50th anniversary of Lynn’s first Opening Day. He was a 23-year-old outfielder with 15 big-league games under his belt from the brief call-up the previous September when the Milwaukee Brewers, then an American League team, came to town to open the season on April 8, 1975.

“I remember this clear blue sky, and it was like, 30 degrees. I was like, ‘Hey, the sun doesn’t work very well back here,’” Lynn, who grew up in southern California, said with a chuckle. “I was so excited, the fans were excited, but no one expected us to do anything that year because we had so many young players.”

The ‘75 team had several talented veterans, too. It was Captain Carl’s 15th season of what would ultimately be a 23-year career, all in Boston, and would be Petrocelli’s penultimate season. Tiant, the Opening Day starter, was entering his 12th year in the majors, and had been pitching professionally since his first pro season, with the 1959 Mexico City Tigers of the Mexican League.

Lynn and the fans, however, were focused on a different teammate.

“I was excited because Tony C was playing,” Lynn said. “Boy, he was a real fan-favorite. I’d just met him basically, and I liked him immediately, and I was just hoping he would do well.”

Tony Conigliaro was attempting a comeback from early retirement. The incandescent talent from Lynn, Mass. had signed with his hometown team at 17, debuted with them at 19, and dazzled Boston in the 1960s, until August ‘67, when his career was derailed by one of the most terrible hit-by-pitch incidents in baseball history.

The rookie named Lynn and the Lynn native were second and fourth in the Opening Day lineup. In the bottom of the first, Conigliaro singled. Then, with Petrocelli batting, he stole second while Yastrzemski stole home.

“He got a hit, the place went crazy. To me, that stood out more than anything else, that Tony C was making his comeback,” Lynn said. “I knew the history. Quickest player to get to 100 homers, fan favorite in Boston, the perfect fit for the ballpark the way he hit, and just a really likeable guy and a good teammate. It was just sad to see that he couldn’t see like he used to, it was rough. But I can say the highlight was when he got that hit on Opening Day. That was just electric.”

Sadly, Conigliaro’s eyesight was too damaged from the hit-by-pitch, and his attempt at a second act lasted 21 games. The rest of his life was one tragedy after another. He passed away in February 1990, eight years after suffering a heart attack and stroke from which he never fully recovered. He’d just turned 45.

But on Opening Day 1975, there was hope for Tony C and all who loved him.

The end

So much went right for those ‘75 Sox, who exceeded expectations and got as close as one gets to entering the Promised Land.

Tiant’s October resumé was one relief appearance in Game 2 of the ‘70 ALCS, but he rose to the challenge. Game 1 of the ALCS was a complete-game masterclass in which he yielded just one unearned run on three hits. ‘El Tiante’ made three starts in the World Series: a complete-game shutout in Game 1, another complete-game in Game 4, and the first seven innings of Game 6.

“The fourth game, (he) threw 155 pitches,” Evans told the Herald. “The manager came out in the eighth inning and was gonna talk to him (about exiting). Louie says, ‘Go back,’  and he turned right back! He finished the game, we won it.”

In fact, the Red Sox won all four of Tiant’s starts that post-season.

“He was a fierce competitor, I think people in Boston know that,” said Lynn. “To play behind him was a pleasure because he threw strikes, stayed in the game, he finished the game, and he just battled.”

Boston almost dismantled Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine. Twice, Lynn was in the perfect spot to witness a pivotal at-bat. He feels the first one deserves more love: Carbo’s pinch-hit three-run homer, which tied Game 6 in the eighth.

“I was on second,” he said. “I had ringside seats for both of those homers. That home run sometimes gets lost in that game (because of Fisk’s), but it was pretty doggone significant. If he doesn’t hit that homer, we don’t get there.”

Then, on-deck to bat second in the 12th inning, Lynn had the ultimate standing-room-only view when Fisk made history.

“(Pat) Darcy, the pitcher, he’d thrown two perfect innings, all ground-balls; he’s a sinker-baller, and Pudge is a low-ball hitter. I don’t think they knew that. We did,” he said. “Pudge says to me on-deck, ‘Freddy, I’m gonna hit one off the wall, you drive me in.’

“First ball’s up, Ball 1. Next pitch is down and in and Pudge just cut it off. That was in his wheelhouse, down and in. The ball was out so quickly, it didn’t have a chance to go foul. It was a bullet.”

In that moment, it felt like the series would be theirs come Game 7.

“After Pudge hits the homer, basically we’re into the next day. We played two games in one day because it’s after midnight,” Lynn said. “I thought, now we’re in good shape, we definitely have momentum on our side. But momentum is a fickle thing in baseball.”

The aftermath

Even now, that final game weighs on Lynn and his teammates.

“That’s what I remember the most (about that season), unfortunately,” said Lynn, whose only previous losing experience had been in the ‘71 Pan American Games. “The biggest thing for me is losing Game 7.”

“(Losing the World Series) was a weird experience for me,” he said. “I didn’t even know how to react, to be honest. And I’m looking around the locker room and I’m thinking, ‘Man, we got some talent here, young guys, we’ll be there every year.’ Didn’t work out that way.”

And even now, that loss casts a pall over his personal achievements that year, his first of nine consecutive All-Star seasons, first of four Gold Glove awards, and becoming the first player ever to win both Rookie of the Year and MVP.

“All the things that I did individually, that was OK but man, losing the World Series, that was tough for me. I thought about it a lot,” Lynn said. “(Joe) Morgan just flicked it barely over second base for the game-winning hit, and on a wet day I couldn’t get to the ball. If it’s a dry field, probably catch it, but it was a swamp out there.

“Yeah, I still think about that kind of stuff. It’s crazy, but I don’t really dwell on things that I did well because to me, I’m supposed to do those things. But when my team loses, that’s not supposed to happen.”

Remember us

In the pantheon of all-time Red Sox greats, the ‘75-ers are among the greatest, both collectively and individually. Ten of them are in the club’s Hall of Fame. Yastrzemski, Rice, and Fisk make up 30% of the retired Red Sox numbers, and have bronze plaques in Cooperstown. Evans, Lynn, and Tiant should, too.

Yet this reunion, and every one hereafter, will be incomplete without Tiant. He passed away in October 2024, less than two weeks after he made one last trip to Fenway for the final game of the season.

“It’s just been really hard,” Evans, who was at that game with Tiant, told the Herald. “He was so precious. I miss Louie.”

This was Evans’ 56th spring training with the Red Sox. He’s spent nearly all of them with Rice and Tiant. Understandably, he and Lynn occasionally refer to Tiant in the present-tense; it’s a bittersweet combination of force of habit and wishful thinking.

“He’s a true treasure of baseball, he really is,” Evans said. “I learned a lot from him and I take that with me. He was a great example. You can never take those moments away from me.”

“I never played with anybody like Louie,” said Lynn, who described Tiant’s passing as leaving a ‘big hole.’ “He’s so funny.”

Of his ‘75 teammates, Lynn sees the most of Rice, Evans, Lee, and Fisk because of their ongoing involvement with the Red Sox. They’re regulars in Fenway’s Legends’ Suite each season and at fan events such as Winter Weekend. That group used to include Tiant, too.

“He was a good friend and we remained friends after my career was over,” said Lynn. “When we’d play golf with Rice and Evans, Luis would have a cigar (in his mouth) and then he had his cellphone on one side, kept up at his ear, and I’m laughing. How can this guy hit the ball? He actually played pretty well. I never knew he could play golf, and he was starting to take our money! So I had to take him a little bit more seriously on the golf cart.”

From his vantage point in the outfield, Lynn saw Tiant in a way few others ever did.

“As a centerfielder you get a great view of what the pitcher is trying to do,” he explained. “It was so much fun to watch him. He’s the only guy I ever played with – when he was on the mound he’d look at me when he’s throwing to the plate! Because of that crazy windup he had. He was a fun guy. He was all business during the game, but he was really fun after the game.”

JetBlue Park, the Red Sox’s spring training home, and Fenway Park, have tributes to Tiant on their outfield walls. Lynn was, however, surprised that the Red Sox won’t be wearing jersey patches in Tiant’s honor this season, the way they did after the deaths of Tim Wakefield, Jerry Remy, and Johnny Pesky.

“I think all of us that were his teammates, he has a place in all of our hearts,” Lynn said. “We don’t need to see a patch on, but the fans probably would enjoy that. Or maybe individual players might do something, who knows. But no one’s ever going to forget LT, that’s for sure.”

As time takes the world farther and farther away from that incredible season, that’s what Lynn wants: for ’75 to be remembered.

“It’s hard to say (50 years). That means we’re up there,” he said. “But it’s going to be fun to see the guys and for fans to look back.

“There will be some dads and grandads there who’ll say, ‘These guys were our guys.’ And then they’ll tell their sons and grandsons and granddaughters and daughters about us.”