The Boston Red Sox yesterday announced that controversial slugger Carl Yastrzemski will be the captain of the team for the 1974 American League campaign.

The move broke a seven-year Red Sox policy of playing without a team captain. Yastrzemski was the squad's last captain, in 1966, during a wild season in which Billy Herman was fired as manager.

"Carl has shown through his work this spring that he has all the leadership abilities to be a team captain," Darrell Johnson, the new manager of the Red Sox, said yesterday. "General Manager Dick O'Connell and I are completely satisfied with his efforts and think he should be rewarded."

Yastrzemski lost his captainship in 1966 when Dick Williams took over the club after Herman's dismissal. At the time, Williams said: "We don't need a captain. I'm the chief and the others are Indians."

Yastrzemski yesterday said that things were different then, and that the post was no more than an honorary position. "Now I'll do what the manager wants," he said. "He wants things done his way and we'll do them. I respect him."

The Red Sox pilot said that Yastrzemski will serve, other than as a field general, as a "liaison" between the coaches and the players. "If he sees a man with a problem he can alert me and I can take over," Johnson said.