Forty years? Sometimes, it hardly seems like 40 days.

I've seen five Super Bowls in person since 1967. I've attended two Major League Baseball playoff series, hundreds of professional sporting events and thousands of games at the college and high school levels in various sports since then, yet very little stands out so vividly in my memory as what happened during the summer and fall of that memorable year.

It was the summer of Yaz, of Gentleman Jim, of Rico and Reggie and Tony C. It was the year in which Red Sox baseball was transformed from a fading, vestigial remnant of greatness past into the dominant theme of New England sports for decades to come.

It was the Impossible Dream.

Say what you want about the World Series victory over the Cardinals in 2004. To me, that still pulls in at a distant third on my list of great baseball memories - with the '04 ALCS comeback against the Yankees in second place - behind the 100-to-1 shot that went from ninth place in the American League in 1966 (and yes, the Yanks were 10th that year) to the cusp of greatness a year later. To understand that, you must put it in the context of the times - MY times.

I was 13 years old in 1967, a baseball fan like many others, yet one whose only exposure to the sport had been at the deteriorating ballyard on Jersey Street where barely 600,000 fans a year made the trek into Boston to see a miserable baseball team often made memorable by the height of its futility.

Remember Dick "Dr. Strangeglove" Stuart? The first baseman they called "Stonefingers?" If you're my age, you do. He was the slugger who hit 75 homers in just two years with the Sox (1963-64) and committed 53 errors. And he was the best of a bad lot.

But in the spring of 1967, a fiery manager named Dick Williams came to town, his hair in a Marine Corps bristle-cut and his mindset just a little more liberal than Parris Island. His last stop over an undistinguished major league playing career was Boston, but he was given a chance to rise through the organization's managerial ranks, he did so quickly, and when he arrived in Scottsdale, Ariz., as the parent club's manager in 1967, he vowed to bring discipline to a club famous for its country-club ways.

He also made a bold pronouncement - that the Red Sox would win more games than they would lose. In the context of the times, that was almost laughable.

However, there was some very good young talent on that club. The infield was solid - George Scott, Mike Andrews, Rico Petrocelli and Joe Foy around the horn from first to third, with Dalton Jones and midseason pickup Jerry Adair providing depth. Mike Ryan and Russ Gibson were serviceable behind the plate, but that solidified when aging ex-Yankee Elston Howard (who broke up Billy Rohr's near no-hitter in April) was brought on board.

The pitching was solid, if not great. Jim Lonborg, the lanky right-hander, was a legitimate ace and would win the Cy Young Award, but the Sox staff spread success among the likes of José Santiago, Lee "Stinger" Stange, Gary Bell, Gary Waslewski, Dan Osinski, Bucky Brandon and Sparky Lyle, and big John Wyatt coming out of the bullpen.

In the outfield, rookie Reggie Smith shined in center field, and the pride of Swampscott, Tony Conigliaro, was the Golden Boy in right, already on a pace to become one of the homer-hitting greats - until a fateful night in August, when a rising inside fastball from the Angels' Jack Hamilton caught Tony C on the left cheek and damaged the retina in his left eye, sidelining him for the season and forever altering his baseball path. The Sox went out and got Ken "Hawk" Harrelson from the Kansas City Athletics to fill the gap, but there would always be a hole in the Fenway Faithful's hearts over Tony C's loss.

And, of course, there was the man they called "Yaz."

Carl Yastrzemski didn't look all that imposing in person, standing just 5-foot-11 and weighing in at 182 in his prime. But in 1967, he had the sort of season that would make today's steroid-enhanced freaks green with envy - a .326 average for the season, 44 home runs, and 121 RBI, all three leading the American League to mark the last time any player has won the Triple Crown in either league. Not only that, but he also led the Red Sox in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, games played, at bats, runs scored, total bases, doubles, walks and extra-base hits. And it's not just the fact that he did it, but the way he did it that was so impressive.

For a latter-day perspective, take what David "Big Papi" Ortiz did in the 2004 playoffs and extend that over the course of an entire season, and especially from July through October. That's the impact that Yaz had on the 1967 season. Papi was Mr. Clutch in 2004, but Yaz was Mr. Everything during the Impossible Dream.

Amid all of the excitement, it was still a tight race for the pre-divisions AL title. Four teams - the Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins all pulled into September battling tooth and nail for the winner-take-all pennant and subsequent meeting with the Cardinals in the World Series.

The White Sox faltered first - poetic justice, given that ChiSox manager Eddie Stanky had called Yastrzemski "an all-star from the neck down" during the heat of battle. Then, coming into the last weekend of the season, the Red Sox and Twins were to battle head-to-head at Fenway while the Tigers had a chance to sneak past both in a series against the California Angels on the West Coast.

It all came down to Oct. 1, the final day. There would be no talk of getting the pitching rotation ready for the playoffs - Lonborg took the mound for the Red Sox against the Twins and beat them, 5-3, to put the Sox at 92-70 and a game ahead of Minnesota. There isn't a New Englander still alive today who doesn't remember the late Ned Martin's " and there's pandemonium on the field!" call after the final popup of that game settled in Petrocelli's glove as he backpedaled into short left field.

Meanwhile, the Tigers had won the first game of their doubleheader with the Angels to draw within a half-game of the Sox. A victory in the second game would force a playoff, and thousands of New Englanders huddled around their radios to listen to the nightcap, the broadcast of which had been picked up by Boston's WHDH.

For me, those two-plus hours were spent in the back yard of my parents' house, transistor radio in hand, trying desperately to either keep tuned to WHDH's weak signal or the more powerful after-dusk signal from the Detroit station.

And when I finally heard that the Angels had won the nightcap, 8-5, I did cartwheels of joy in the darkness. A childhood dream had come true.

In the days that followed, the play-by-play of the World Series against the Cardinals was piped through the halls of Mansfield High, where I was a freshman, via the school's public address system. Even if all of today's playoff games weren't scheduled at night, it's doubtful a contemporary sports championship would be viewed as significant enough to disrupt a day of learning in any local school.

But back then, it was history in the making. Although the '67 Sox failed to beat the Cardinals, their success still permanently changed how baseball would be regarded in New England - although thankfully, the '04 edition finally got the job done and stopped the "curse" talk.

Times change. I turned on the television the other night and found a commercial for a birth-control pill being sold under the registered trademark of "Yaz." Seriously! That should be blasphemy in New England - although there is a touch of unintentional irony, too. After all, our "Yaz" was a home run king!

Aside from people having short memories, and not knowing what nicknames should be off-limits for other uses, there are other reasons why you'll never see the Impossible Dream recreated in modern times.

People are a lot more cynical about sports these days. Either they believe only in the inevitability of failure, or their hero-worship is so complete and so blind, it obscures any possible perception of reality. Locally, too, fans approach a 162-game baseball schedule with the every-game-counts intensity of a 16-game football schedule, and that leads to overreaction at every turn.

Nationally, baseball has lost a lot of its luster in competition with other sports, or because of the shadow cast over it by its superstars' abuses of performance-enhancing drugs - although in Boston, the trials and tribulations of the Red Sox still seem to hold the No. 1 position in the hearts of most local sports fans over the possibly more-deserving Patriots.

That may be partially attributable to the still-faintly-present afterglow of that magnificent 1967 season. For those of us who were there 40 years ago, in a time when heroes could still be heroes, nothing will ever compare to the saga of a team that came out of nowhere and overcame adversity along to way to make a truly Impossible Dream come true.

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com