COMMENTARY
The Red Sox, to their credit, did not ruin Christmas this year. That’s not nothing, given their historic knack for it and what’s on the table this winter.
New England awoke on Dec. 26, 1967 — no doubt thousands having slept in Red Sox gear they’d received for the first Christmas after the “Impossible Dream” — to a front-page-of-the-Globe picture of Jim Lonborg, playing in the Lake Tahoe snow with future Bond girl Jill St. John. Taken three days prior, the accompanying story was decidedly less sunny: The Cy Young winner, 25 and ascendant, “suffered a serious knee injury” on his final ski run that day and “may need an operation.