NEW YORK -- "Henry Owens? I've seen him written up a couple of times," William J. Rohr said Monday afternoon from his law office in Palm Springs, California.
No, Rohr said, he wasn't aware that Owens, a 23-year-old rookie left-hander with the Boston Red Sox, was making his major league debut Tuesday night in Yankee Stadium.
"Are you going to see him before the game?" Rohr said. "You tell that left-handed SOB that headline is already taken."
Short of a no-hitter, there isn't anything Owens can do Tuesday night against the New York Yankees that will top what another Red Sox rookie left-hander did in his big league debut on April 14, 1967, in Yankee Stadium.
Back then, William J. Rohr, attorney at law, was 21-year-old "Billy" Rohr, and he came within one out of throwing a no-hitter against the Bombers in the Bronx, veteran catcher Elston Howard ending his bid with a soft single to right on a full-count pitch. The afternoon was immortalized on the "Impossible Dream" record album that became a treasured possession of kids throughout New England, Sox broadcaster Ken Coleman dramatically recounting the tale of the "kid pitcher from Toronto knocking on the door of fame."
And it made an instant celebrity of Rohr, who was congratulated in the dugout after the game by Jackie Kennedy, little John-John in tow.
"I'm in the dugout, fishing around for my glove and my jacket," Rohr said, "and I see this hand coming out of a white shirt and suit grabbing my arm. This guy says, 'Mrs. Kennedy wants to meet you.' She had little John-John with her. She was very sweet, very nice.
"I signed a ball for John-John. I didn't have the presence of mind to ask the little nipper to sign one for me. I'm sure that would have sold for a lot more than the ball I signed for him."
Such moments are not easily forgotten.
"Every second week in April," Rohr said, "somebody will say, 'Do you remember April 14?' Ya think?
"Except, I've got to tell you: Over the years, I've taken some poetic license. Ellie now swings and misses at that last pitch."
Besides, Rohr said, it should never have come down to that hanging curveball he threw to his rookie catcher, Russ Gibson. With the count 1-and-2, he said, he threw a fastball right over the plate at which Howard never offered.
"Gibby stood up," Rohr said. "And Ellie took one step across the plate. He was on his way back to the dugout. I don't think it was because he'd lost his balance.
"And old Cal Drummond, Hall of Fame umpire, his right arm started to go up, but he just couldn't bring himself to do it."
Like Owens, Rohr is from Southern California. Owens grew up in Huntington Beach, the surfer's paradise. Rohr grew up a short freeway ride away in the bedroom town of Bellflower, which later was home to Nomar Garciaparra.
"I used to ditch school now and again with my buddies and surf at Huntington Beach Pier," Rohr said. "I think the statute of limitations ran out decades ago. I can pretty much own up to anything now."
Rohr was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates as an 18-year-old in 1963, then went to the Red Sox at the end of that year for $15,000 in the first-year player draft MLB conducted in those days.
In 1966, he took a regular turn for Boston's Triple-A team in Toronto, going 14-10 with a 3.55 ERA in 29 starts. The manager of that team was a no-nonsense type named Dick Williams, though Rohr still remembers Dick's young son, Rick, climbing into the luggage racks on the Greyhound buses on road trips and terrorizing the players sitting below, dropping stuff on them among other antics.
"Oh yeah, I remember little Ricky," Rohr said of the younger Williams, now a pitching coordinator for the Atlanta Braves. "There were more than a few guys who wanted to strangle that kid."
The Red Sox promoted Dick Williams to manage the big league team the following season, 1967. Rohr was among the rookies Williams took with him.
The Sox opened the '67 season at home with two games against the Chicago White Sox. Jim Lonborg, the ace, won the opener, with the help of a three-run home run by the third-year shortstop, Rico Petrocelli. Bucky Brandon pitched the second game, one the Sox lost.
The next day, a Friday, was the Yankees' home opener. They were going with 38-year-old Whitey Ford, the left-hander who was in the final season of a Hall of Fame career. The Sox were countering with Billy Rohr.
"I don't recall being especially nervous," Rohr said. "Jim Lonborg, who was my roommate, took me out for a nice steak dinner before the game. I had a little trouble sleeping that night, which I guess was understandable, so I remember keeping my roommate up, going over the Yankee lineup."
There really wasn't time the morning of the game, he said, for any bouts of anxiety.
"I do remember warming up in the bullpen, and all these kids screaming at me, saying stuff about my mom and dad, calling me names. I didn't know at the time that I was supposed to hate them. I thought I was just supposed to pitch against them. 'OK, miscreants, enjoy your day off."'
Reggie Smith, another rookie, led off the game with a home run off Ford. In the sixth, Rohr said, he took a line shot off the leg from Bill Robinson, the ball bouncing to third baseman Joe Foy, who threw him out. "I thought it broke my leg," he said. "I got it square on the shin. And I only weighed 175 pounds."
Foy homered in the eighth with Gibson aboard and it was 3-0.
"After the game," Rohr said, "my buddy Gibby said, 'Rohr pitched a pretty good game, but the hell with him, I went 2-for-4 against Whitey Ford."'
Tom Tresh was the first Yankees hitter in the ninth, and he hit a ball over the head of the Sox left fielder Carl Yastrzemski, whose desperation dive and subsequent catch remain one of the signature moments in Red Sox history.
Joe Pepitone flied out to right for the second out, and then, unexpectedly, Williams popped out of the dugout to visit the mound. He later would say he lamented making that visit; Rohr has his doubts.
"Dick Williams was not one to lament very much," Rohr said. "I do remember standing there thinking, 'What the hell do you want? Leave me alone. I'm busy.'
"Frankly, I couldn't tell you what he said. I'm not sure at the time I knew what he said. I'm sure it was well-intentioned. I'm sure he wanted to help me."
Rohr, as you've probably figured out by now, serves up his memories with a side dish of humor.
"I never really blamed him for that visit, until he passed away," Rohr said. "Now I'm pretty sure it was his fault."
When Rohr finally made it back to his hotel room after the game, there were two messages waiting for him. The handiwork, he was certain, of Gibson or Lonborg or Mike Andrews or one of the team's other pranksters.
"One was a telegram that read, 'Your salary has been raised a thousand dollars,' and was signed by Thomas Yawkey," Rohr said. "The other was a message that said, 'Ed Sullivan wants you to appear on his show Sunday night."'
Both messages were on the level. Yawkey, the Sox owner, had indeed bumped up his salary. And Sullivan, the host of the legendary variety show that was must-see TV on Sunday nights, had indeed issued an invitation.
That Sunday, the team went on to Chicago. Williams gave Rohr permission to stay back.
"A guy picked me up and took me over to the CBS studios, and we go up these back stairs," Rohr said. "Sure as shooting, we come to a door with a star on it, and the door said, 'Mr. Ed Sullivan.'
"The guy knocks on the door, and I hear this voice say, 'Is that the young left-hander?' The door flies open, and it's Ed Sullivan. He's in his BVDs, and he's got the yellowest, longest front teeth I've ever seen.
"He says, 'C'mon in, I want to tell you about how I pitched in such-and-such league.' They're trying to put makeup on him, it's getting close to the time he has to go on, and he wants to talk baseball."
Rohr was planted in the audience, where cameras zoomed in on him as Sullivan begins to recount Rohr's feat from a couple of days before.
"They had some tape from the game," Rohr said, "but it was of Carl making his catch, none of me pitching. I've always said I made the SOB world-famous. He will acknowledge that -- if nobody else is around."
After the show, Rohr was taken upstairs to a private gathering of the stars who had appeared that night and discovered he was still a celebrity magnet.
"Tony Bennett and Count Basie grilled me for about 35 minutes about baseball," Rohr said. "No, I didn't get a picture. Cellphones weren't around back then, and there were no reporters, so who was I going to get to take a picture?
"But it was terrific. Tony Bennett went on and on about what I did, how he had listened to the game."
It was wonderful, of course, while it lasted. It was over in a blink of an eye.
"My 15 minutes of fame died about as quick a death as any 15 minutes I've ever heard of," Rohr said.
Rohr would win only one more game with the Red Sox that season. He was knocked around in subsequent starts, sent back to the minors, recalled in September and sold the following season to Cleveland, where the Indians stuck him in the bullpen. He pitched four nights in a row, his arm didn't feel right afterward, and he never made it back to the big leagues.
"I was traded to Detroit, I think Montreal won me in a raffle, and that was it," he said.
Five years would pass, he said, before he could bring himself to go to a ballgame. "There's nothing about baseball not to love," he said, "until it's over."
He went to law school, he said, for the sole purpose of becoming an FBI agent, but in the end became a successful medical malpractice lawyer, first in San Diego, now in Palm Springs.
And on Monday afternoon, Bill Rohr said he wishes Henry Owens well.
"Back in the day, he said, 'if you had lined up 100 kids and said, 'What would you give to pitch on Opening Day in Yankee Stadium,' nobody would have had enough to give, because they would have given it all, me included.
"The difference is, I got to do it."