Carl Yastrzemski’s Triple Crown season in 1967 fueled a passion for Red Sox baseball.

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When I think of Carl Yastrzemski, two things come to mind.

One is the season for the ages he had in 1967. The other is how, in 1979, the year I began working at The Journal, he would sit in front of his locker in the clubhouse at Fenway Park and conduct postgame interviews with a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Which, in turn, makes me think — not so much of how those habits may have led to the triple-bypass surgery he underwent Tuesday — but of how much things have changed since then.

It was Yaz who, that unforgettable summer of ’67, changed the history of baseball in Boston.

Generations of Red Sox fans have grown up thinking that the Sox have always been in contention for the pennant, and that Fenway has always been full.

But that was hardly the case the first six seasons Yaz played in Boston, starting in 1961, when, as a 20-year-old rookie, he faced the daunting task of replacing the legendary Ted Williams in left field.

I suppose the more appropriate word would be “succeeding,” because nobody could replace the Splendid Splinter —– arguably the greatest hitter in baseball history.

And just how “successful” Yaz was in that regard in those early years is debatable. Williams hit the last 29 of his 521 career home runs in 1960, when he was 41 years old. Yaz, in his first six years in Boston, never hit more than 20. While Williams batted less than .316 only once in his 19 years with the Red Sox, Yaz hit more than .300 only twice in his first six seasons. In 1966, he batted .278 with 16 homers as the Sox finished ninth in the 10-team American League, 18 games under .500, just a half-game ahead of the last-place Yankees.

Average attendance at Red Sox games that year was 10,014, which was a significant improvement over the year before, when they’d averaged only 8,052.

That all changed in 1967 — largely because of Yaz.

In a book he wrote with Al Hirshberg the following year, Yastrzemski described that ’67 season as “a dream season that had made us the darlings of baseball fans everywhere, for we were underdogs of the most hopeless variety — a ball club which had been a 100-to-1 shot to win the pennant when the season began.”

The second half of the ’67, Yaz and Hirshberg wrote, “had seen us in the thick of a fantastic, four-club battle in which we played musical chairs between first and fourth places with the Twins, the White Sox, and the Tigers.”

It all came down to the final weekend and two games against Minnesota at Fenway. And it was Yaz who was the difference in those games.

On Saturday afternoon, he had three hits, including his league-leading 44th home run, in a 6-4 victory that set up a Sunday showdown in which Boston’s best pitcher, Jim Lonborg, squared off against the Twins’ ace, Dean Chance.

The Sox were trailing, 2-0, in the fifth when Yaz came to the plate with bases loaded and no outs.

As he had all season, Yastrzemski delivered again in the clutch, lining a single over second base that tied the game. Boston went on to score five runs that inning and wound up winning, 5-3.

When, later that day, the Tigers lost the second game of a doubleheader to the Angels in Detroit, the Red Sox had won their first pennant in 21 years.

Two years earlier, in 1965, the musical Man of La Mancha — based on Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel, Don Quixote, — opened on Broadway and won five Tony awards. The hit song was “Impossible Dream.”

That also was the title for a classic — at least in New England — recording, narrated by Red Sox announcer Ken Coleman, commemorating the historic, ’67 season.

“This is really a love story,” it began, “an affair twixt a town and a team — a town that had waited and waited for what seemed an impossible dream.”

That love affair, begun in 1967, has continued to this day, growing in intensity, and finally resulting in World Series championships in 2004 and 2007.

And it was Yaz who provided the spark.

He won the Triple Crown in ’67, batting .326, hitting 44 homers and driving in 121 runs. No player in either league has won it in the 41 seasons since then.

Like Williams, Yaz became a Hall of Famer, playing 23 seasons for the Sox, earning All-Star honors in 18 of them and — a much better fielder than Ted — winning seven Gold Gloves. He finished his career with 3,419 hits and 452 homers.

His franchise-changing achievements in 1967 were celebrated not just in story — countless stories, actually — but also in song.

“The Red Sox baseball symphony,” Coleman said on that wonderful, old LP, “developed a dominant theme.”

At which point, Boston radio personality Jess Cain burst into song: “Carl Yastrzemski. Carl Yastrzemski. Carl Yastrzemski — the man we call we Yaz. We love him!

“Those rival pitchers on the mound all shake,” Cain sang. “They dread each windup that they have to take, when No. 8 is standing at the plate, and then he swings — wow, there it goes it again!”

Yaz turned 28 that long-gone summer of ’67.

Fortunately, doing well after his surgery, he’ll be 69 tomorrow.

jdonalds@projo.com