Inning-by-inning runs, with totals for runs, hits and errors.
Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
KCA	0	2	0	0	0	2	0	0	1	5	8	0
BOS	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	2	10	4

IV · THE GAME · MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Carl Yastrzemski

Outfielder · 11 April 1961 · Boston Red Sox · 22 August 1939, Southampton, New York

One club, twenty-three years, and a statistical arc you can see in the table: early promise, middle dominance, late decline — all of it recorded.

At a glance

Career: 3,308 games · 3,419 hits · 452 home runs · 1,844 runs batted in · .285 average
Debut: 11 April 1961, aged 21, at Fenway Park
Last game: 2 October 1983, for the Boston Red Sox
Seasons: 23, all with Boston

Look closer

The debut was a loss with ten hits
On 11 April 1961 Boston made ten hits to Kansas City's eight, but lost 5–2. The difference was errors: Boston made four, Kansas City none. The runs arrived in different rhythms — Kansas City scored twice in the second, twice in the sixth, once in the ninth; Boston once in the third, once in the eighth. Ten hits scattered across nine innings strand runners. The game took three hours and twenty-eight minutes in front of 10,277 people.
The peak was six seasons, 1965 to 1970
The batting average in those six years never fell below .278 and reached .329 in 1970. The on-base percentage — how often he reached base by hit or walk — never fell below .368 and reached .452 in 1970. The slugging percentage — total bases divided by at-bats, a measure of power — never fell below .431 and reached .622 in 1967. Those six seasons also contain the two years he hit forty home runs: 1969 and 1970.
The last five seasons show the decline plainly
From 1979 to 1983 the games played fell from 147 to 119, the at-bats from 518 to 380, the runs from 69 to 38, the hits from 140 to 101. The home runs fell from 21 to 10, the runs batted in from 87 to 56. The stolen bases disappeared entirely: three in 1979, then zero in each of the last four years. The batting average held near .270 except in 1981, when it fell to .246. Age is visible in a table if the table is long enough.

The story

On 11 April 1961 the Boston Red Sox and the Kansas City Athletics played a day game at Fenway Park. Boston made ten hits, Kansas City eight. Boston lost 5–2. The linescore shows why: Boston made four errors, Kansas City none, and the runs arrived in different shapes. Kansas City scored twice in the second inning, twice in the sixth, once in the ninth. Boston scored once in the third, once in the eighth. Scattered hits leave runners stranded; clustered runs win games. The game took three hours and twenty-eight minutes. The attendance was 10,277.

That was Carl Yastrzemski's debut, aged twenty-one. He played his last game on 2 October 1983, also for the Boston Red Sox. Between those two dates he played 3,308 games, all of them in the same uniform.

The season table divides into three movements. The first six years, 1961 to 1966, show a player learning the league. The batting average climbed from .266 in 1961 to .321 in 1963, fell back to .278 in 1966. The home runs rose from eleven to twenty, the walks from fifty to ninety-five. The strikeouts fell from ninety-six to sixty. By 1966 he was playing every game: 160 of them.

The middle years, 1965 to 1970, are the peak. The batting average never fell below .278 and reached .329 in 1970. The on-base percentage — how often he reached base by hit or walk — never fell below .368 and reached .452 in 1970. The slugging percentage — total bases divided by at-bats, a measure of power — never fell below .431 and reached .622 in 1967. He hit forty home runs twice: in 1969 and 1970. In 1967 he played 161 games, scored 112 runs, drove in 121, hit forty-four home runs, and posted a batting average of .326. In 1970 he walked 128 times, stole twenty-three bases, and hit .329. Those two seasons anchor the table.

The third movement is the long decline. From 1971 onward the figures fall in steps. The games played dropped from 161 in 1970 to 148 in 1971, then to 125 in 1972. They climbed back above 150 in the mid-1970s, then fell again: 105 in 1980, ninety-one in 1981, 119 in 1983. The home runs fell from forty in 1970 to fifteen in 1971, climbed back to twenty-eight in 1977, then dropped to seven in 1981 and ten in 1983. The stolen bases disappeared: twenty-three in 1970, then single digits through the 1970s, then zero in each of the last four seasons. The batting average held near .270 through most of the decline, but fell to .246 in 1981.

Age is visible in a table if the table is long enough. Twenty-three seasons is long enough.

Why it mattered then

A player who stays with one club for twenty-three years becomes a fixed point in that club's geography. The city watches him learn the league, dominate it, then age out of it, all in the same uniform. The table records not just performance but duration — the fact that he was there in 1961 and still there in 1983, that a fan who saw the debut game at twenty-one would have been forty-three when he retired. The peak years, 1965 to 1970, were six seasons of sustained excellence: batting averages above .300, on-base percentages above .390, slugging percentages above .490. The 1967 season in particular — 161 games, 112 runs, 121 runs batted in, forty-four home runs, a .326 average — is the kind of year a club builds a decade around. The decline that followed was equally visible: fewer games, fewer home runs, no stolen bases after 1979. But he kept playing, and the club kept playing him, which is its own kind of loyalty.

Why it matters now

The career is a shape you can see in the numbers themselves: the climb, the peak, the descent. Most players do not last long enough for all three movements to be visible. Yastrzemski played twenty-three seasons, which is long enough to watch the arc complete itself. The debut game in 1961 was a loss with ten hits and four errors. The last game in 1983 was twenty-two years later, in the same ballpark, in the same uniform. The season table records the entire span: 3,308 games, 3,419 hits, 452 home runs, 1,844 runs batted in, a .285 batting average. The total is large because the duration was long. The peak was six years, 1965 to 1970. The decline was longer: thirteen seasons, 1971 to 1983. The table does not hide that. It records what happened, season by season, in a single column of numbers that runs from age twenty-one to age forty-four. One club, twenty-three years, and a statistical arc you can follow across the entire span.

The surprising detail

The stolen bases tell their own story. In 1970 he stole twenty-three of them. In 1979 he stole three. From 1980 to 1983 — four full seasons, 446 games — he stole zero. Speed is the first thing age takes, and the table records its disappearance with unusual precision. The home runs lasted longer: twenty-one in 1979, sixteen in 1982, ten in 1983. But the stolen bases vanished completely, and stayed vanished. A player who could steal twenty-three bases at thirty-one could not steal one at forty-one.

What is disputed

Every figure here comes from the MLB Stats API. Statistical categories were not all recorded consistently across the twenty-three seasons covered, and some records for the early 1960s were compiled retrospectively from contemporary scoring. The totals are the ones the league publishes today rather than anything independently recomputed here.

Remember this

One club, twenty-three years, and a career built in thirds: the climb, the peak, and the long decline — all of it in the same uniform.

Test yourself

Boston made ten hits to Kansas City's eight in the debut game, but lost 5–2. Using only the linescore, what explains the result?

Go deeper

Image: Eric Kilby, CC BY-SA 2.0. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. Source.

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