The Tigers of '68

by George Cantor

  “That was my job,” he shrugs. “That’s what they paid me for. I don’t give a damn about batting average. Show me how the man hits with a runner on second. That’s how you measure. How do you hit when the game is riding on what you do? But I was on a mission that year. I’d missed a lot of ’67 with a bad wrist. I knew that one pinch hit could have made the differenee, the way that race went. After spring training they tell me that I just made the team. That it had come down to me or Lenny Green. Nothing against Lenny, but I thought they were crazy. I was an angry man. I was going to show ’em once and for all how wrong they were about me. After the season, Campbell doubled my pay. I went from $18,000 a year to $36,000.1 played seven more seasons and never got to forty. I was stuck. I guess I wasn’t the only one. How do you think it made Cash feel, after all those years with the club, when they sat him down in the stretch in ’67? Or poor Ray Oyler. Sit him down for the World Series for an outfielder. How did that make him feel?

  “They told me that the designated hitter rule was coming in and that it was made for me. It worked for one year. I was the DH in 1973, hit twelve homers, drove in fifty runs, got the most times at bat since I was breaking in. Then the next year Kaline was going for 3,000 hits, and he couldn’t run anymore. So it didn’t take any genius to figure out who the DH would be. Good old Gates would sit down again. After that, it was too late. I was thirty-six years old, it was over for me. I never got that chance.”

  Brown still lives in the same Detroit house (“I’m happy in the ghetto”) he bought as a player. He has not worked since leaving the Tigers after the 1984 season. A plastics company he invested in went bankrupt. Still, none of the aura has faded. During the course of lunch, a steady stream of diners stopped by the table. They just wanted to shake Gates’s hand, say hello, tell him that they remember.

  “It’s funny the things that bother me now,” he says. “I always prided myself on being ready whenever they called on me. Except that when Billy Martin managed that team there was never any telling what he would do. He’d play Hitler if he could win a ball game for him. He sent me up to hit for Willie [Horton] in the 1972 playoffs, and I never expected it. For Willie? Come on. One of the best clutch hitters in the game? I never saw it coming, and I wasn’t focused. I popped up and killed a rally. We lost the playoffs and a chance to get back to the series by one run. That haunts me. I failed.

  “In the later years, you know, Campbell used to call me about once a week from Florida. After he was retired. He must have really been bored if he wanted to talk to me. I guess you could call our relationship kind of a love-hate sort of thing. We had our moments. After he died, they told me that he’d left me a little something and that he’d wanted me to be a pallbearer. Only four players showed up for his funeral—me, Freehan, Wilson, and Kaline [who gave a eulogy]. I guess that tells you what they thought of him. If he hadn’t asked for me I don’t know if I’d have gone.”

  Somehow, it doesn’t square. It seems a shame that a man who once was chosen as a symbol of character should be left with such bitter memories of those times. His luncheon companion tells him that upon parting. He would always remember Brown, he says, as a kind, considerate man who would go out of his way to help someone with a problem.

  “Thank you,” says Gates.

  CHAPTER 17 Deadline USA

  The first week of August brought a comeback that was not entirely welcomed by the Tigers. The newspaper strike was over. The two dailies were back in business after a work stoppage of almost nine months. Eager to regain readers and advertisers, both papers pounced on what had become, unquestionably, the biggest local story of the year—the Tigers. Columnists and sidebar writers were attached to the team full time. In the words of one editor, “We are going to cover every game from now on with five men and a small dog.” Promotions were developed to piggyback on the excitement. The Free Press began a Magic Moment contest in which readers were invited to pick the exact date, hour, and minute at which the Tigers would clinch the pennant. First prize was two tickets for the series. The paper also revived a popular feature from the sports pages of the ’30s—Iffy the Dopester. This persona, developed by a former managing editor, the late Malcolm Bingay, had enchanted readers of another era. Writing in a style best described as part Damon Runyon and part Bugs Bunny, Iffy had become a literary symbol of those earlier Tiger triumphs. Now he was resurrected as a link to the treasured past for both the paper and the city.

  The Detroit clubhouse, however, was not altogether idyllic. Cash was still grumpy about his shortage of playing time. McLain’s star turns were beginning to get on everyone’s nerves. Lolich was still struggling and in August was exiled to the bull pen—just as he was at about the same point of the 1967 season. For those who looked down the road, a more serious disruption loomed with the recovery of Kaline. Mayo was once more called upon to juggle four healthy starters for three outfield positions.

  But the unhappiest man in the Detroit clubhouse was Joe Sparma. The pitcher had a penchant for driving his managers crazy. He threw harder than any other Tiger starter, and when he was good he was very, very good. But when he was bad, he was all over the place. He could not locate home plate with a compass and a metal detector. After one such performance a few years before, interim manager Bob Swift had raged, “The son of a bitch looks like he never threw a baseball before in his life.” Sparma played winter ball before the 1967 season and came to spring training in a groove. He went 16-9, his best year by far, and pitched five shutouts. But in 1968 it was the old Sparma who showed up once more. In one start he would be overpowering and, in the next, struggle to get past the third inning. An exasperated Mayo finally took him out of the rotation. “I can’t start him, and he’s too wild to pitch relief,” he complained. “What am I supposed to do—take him out and shoot him?”

  “You couldn’t even play catch with the guy,” says John Hiller. “He’d have to come to a pitching set just to throw the ball back close enough for you to catch. Same thing when he threw to first on a ball hit back to him. When he played for Montreal, Gene Mauch wanted to station his shortstop in back of the catcher when Joe gave an intentional pass. He never knew where the ball was going to wind up. It was all mental with him. When he was on, he had better stuff than Nolan Ryan. He just never figured out how to harness it.”

  What especially infuriated managers was a perceived lack of seriousness on Sparma’s part. There was also a suspicion that he could stand to lose a few pounds and that part of his problem was that he was out of shape. He was the cheeriest of men, something of a gourmand when the bill of fare featured pasta. He was also among the Tigers not known to turn away a drink. He didn’t shave before his starting assignments, and with a thick growth of black beard, he did his best to glower from the mound. But it all was an act. He was, in reality, a pussycat.

  He had been a high school star in Massillon, a quarterback who went on to play for Woody Hayes at Ohio State. But Sparma’s strong point was the passing game. Hayes, of course, regarded the pass as a confession of weakness, used only by lesser schools that did not recruit offensive linemen. He played Sparma infrequently. So Sparma left school as a junior to sign a baseball contract. Although his minor league record was only 4-9, it took him just a season and a half to reach Detroit. Anyone who threw that hard just had to win.

  But all the promise seemed like a memory now. Sparma felt that he was being picked on; alone of all the starters, he was the one in whom Mayo had no confidence. Worse yet, the manager gave him no clues. He complained privately about the lack of communication with his manager to his close friend, Freehan, and brooded about it endlessly. The blowup came on August 14· Sparma had been knocked out early in two previous starts but also had pitched rather effectively in a long relief assignment, striking out five Red Sox in less than three innings. So he was given another chance to start in Cleveland against Luis Tiant, who already had shut out the Tigers twice. Mayo did not want Tiant to get a lead. Freehan put Detroit into an early 1-0 advantage wit
h a homer. But it was a typical struggle for Sparma. Through three innings, he struck out three and walked two. He got another strikeout to start the fourth. Then Jose Azcue singled, and suddenly Lolich was up and throwing in the bull pen. Sparma watched him, puzzled, and seemed to lose his concentration. When Max Alvis followed with a walk, Mayo made his way to the mound. He called for the ball from a disbelieving Sparma and brought in Lolich.

  Sparma was furious as he sat in the clubhouse. He had nowhere to go because the team would fly to Boston right after the game. He had a beer, and then a few more. When the game ended with a 3-0 win, Lolich giving up just three singles the rest of the way, Sparma was still steamed. He felt he had been humiliated, that his manager had failed to tell him what was expected of him. On the flight east, he sat down next to Free Press columnist Joe Falls and unburdened his soul. Everything that had been bothering him came spilling out. “I don’t know if I can play for that man anymore,” he said. Falls wrote it as Sparma said it, and the column was played strongly in the following morning’s paper.

  Reader reaction was unlike anything that a column by the popular Falls had ever received. The Free Press was accused of trying to blow the pennant, of wrecking the team’s harmony. Caller after caller demanded to know how the paper dared to come back after all these months and ruin things for the Tigers. Many of them cancelled their subscriptions.

  Falls was totally oblivious to any of this. He had filed his story, and because there was no game the next day, he and the paper’s baseball writer rented a car and spent the afternoon touring the North Shore. Only when he got back to the hotel for his phone messages did he realize what a storm had been stirred up. He was also told that there would be no repeat. Under the direct order of the managing editor, there were to be no more negative stories written about the Tigers this season. Falls was furious, but he was told that the position of the paper in the community was regarded as so tenuous that it simply could not afford to offend its readers with negative news (or, if you choose, honest reporting).

  Instead, the paper concentrated on Iffy and the Magic Moment. The following night McLain won his twenty-fifth game of the season and his sixth shutout. He was 15-1 over the last two months and had given up just six runs in his last five starts, all of them complete games.

  At times, he seemed almost bored by how easily it was going. When Boston put runners on third and second in this game, he simply reared back and struck out Dalton Jones, Carl Yastrzemski, and Ken Harrelson. It wasn’t even a contest. They couldn’t have hit him with a squash racket.

  The Tigers had hit a wall after the All-Star Game, going just 5-9 for the next two weeks and allowing Baltimore to sneak back into the race. But now they were on a 17-6 tear and very much in control once more.

  The previous weekend, when the Tigers had come back twice to upend Boston in a doubleheader, Gates Brown was standing on first after getting a hit. Red Sox first baseman George Scott sidled up to him and said: “You guys ain’t got a thing to worry about. You’re gonna win this easy.”

  But there were still those who worried that asking for the selection of a Magic Moment was a dangerous act of hubris—one that a team that had not won a pennant in twenty-three years may yet come to regret. Fate was being tempted. On the night of August 22, fate selected a most unlikely agent with which to strike back.

  CHAPTER 18 Mad Dog

  Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist Jim Murray once wrote that he had a soft spot in his heart for Dick McAuliffe. Not only did they both come from Connecticut, but the Tigers second baseman also reminded Murray of a bare-knuckled prizefighter. With his old-fashioned open stance and the way he lifted his right foot as the pitch came in and his dark Irish looks, McAuliffe made Murray think of John L. Sullivan.

  To Detroiters, a comparison was more readily made with another black-haired Irishman out of New England, Mickey Cochrane. Not only were the ethnicity and geography right, but both also had the same blazing will to win. You saw it in their eyes the moment they stepped across the white lines. If you wanted to beat them you were going to have to come at them and take it away. There would be no gifts.

  The Tigers called McAuliffe “Mad Dog,” but off the field it was a wildly inappropriate nickname. The personality transformation was amazing. He was a quiet, almost unassuming man. He roomed with Don Wert, another taciturn individual. For them, an exchange of “Good morning” constituted a major conversation. On the field, however, McAuliffe was driven.

  “Everytime I go out there,” he said, “I tell myself that maybe I’m going to do something today that nobody’s ever done before. So I’ve got to play it to the hilt.”

  When asked, McAuliffe would talk politely about almost anything. The notable exceptions were injuries, which he would never admit to, and the difficulty he had in picking up the ball when certain left-handers were pitching. In this regard, he was much like Freehan. The catcher had been advised to move in tight on the plate. As a result, he annually led the team in being hit by pitches. It was the one thing that Freehan would not discuss. He didn’t want it on his mind, didn’t want a simple mention of it to be construed as fear by the opposition. So it was with McAuliffe. Certain lefties gave him trouble, but he refused to accept it, would not discuss it. One of those lefties was Chicago’s Tommy John.

  “I don’t know how many times I’ve thought about that night,” he says in his Florida home. “I always was able to keep it under control on the field. I was never the guy in the middle of the brawl. But there was no doubt in my mind that John was throwing at me and he was doing it under orders. Something just snapped.”

  It was a getaway night game at Tiger Stadium, a game with Chicago on August 22. The Tigers had handled the White Sox rather easily all year. Hiller had one-hit them a couple of nights before, and Price beat them with a tenth-inning homer the previous evening. McAuliffe was battling a 2-for-18 slump and was given a day off when another left-hander, Gary Peters, had started in the series.

  But he led off the first with a single off John and came around to score on two more hits. He batted again in the third with one out and the score still 1-0.

  “The first pitch was right at my head,” says McAuliffe. “I didn’t think anything of it. Probably was a pitch that slipped. Then the second one came up there, too. I was dug in pretty good. I never dreamed that he’d be throwing at me. I remember turning around to the plate umpire, Al Salerno, and saying, ‘Jeez, if that one had hit me it would’ve killed me.’

  “We worked the count to 3-2, and here comes another one, right at my head. I went down, and the ball went all the way to the backstop. OK. There’s an easy walk, I told myself, and I started trotting to first base. I really don’t remember being all that upset about it. I thought it was kind of stupid. But I looked out at John, and he looked back and said: ‘What the hell are you looking at?’

  “That did it. Next thing I knew I was running out there. I can’t really tell you what happened. I guess he must have ducked when he saw me coming, and I hit him on the left shoulder with my knee. I heard him give a cry of pain, and then everybody else was all over us. When it was over, John was walking off the field, clutching his shoulder. I got tossed out of the game, which I knew would happen, and I didn’t think anything more about it. It just seemed like one of those things that can happen in a pennant race on a hot night.”

  But the White Sox were infuriated. It soon became apparent that John, their top starter at 10-5, was lost for the season. There was some speculation that there might be permanent damage, jeopardizing his career.

  Chicago General Manager Ed Short immediately filed a complaint with the league office, demanding a suspension of McAuliffe. When McAuliffe checked his mailbox in the hotel in New York the following morning, he found a note from American League President Joe Cronin. It informed him that he was being fined $250 for the incident. That seemed fair enough to the Tigers.

  But Short, upon hearing of the fine, hit the ceiling. He phoned Cronin, detailed the injury
to John, and demanded a more substantive punishment. A few hours later, the Tigers were notified that McAuliffe would be fined an additional $250 and suspended for five days. That would put him out of the entire four-game series scheduled in New York and two more against Chicago—the last two games that the teams would play this season.

  Now it was Campbell’s turn to rage. He called Cronin at his office in Boston and informed his longtime friend that he was “nothing but a fat-bellied son of a bitch.” But the suspension stuck. (John was out for the rest of the year but made a full recovery. Oddly enough, he did blow out his arm six years later, and again it was thought that his career might be over. Instead, he became the first player to go through experimental reconstructive arm surgery and went on to pitch in three World Series.)

  Campbell’s anger over the suspension was well placed. With all the power in the Detroit lineup, it was still McAuliffe who made the engine run. That weekend turned out to be the longest of the year for the Tigers, one in which the magic ride came dangerously close to turning back into a pumpkin.

  Although McAuliffe was just twenty-eight, only Kaline and Cash had been with the Tigers longer. An ideal leadoff man, he knew how to draw walks and was a clever baserunner. He would lead this team in runs scored with ninety-five. Quick rather than fast, he also stole eight bases, enough to set the Tigers’ rather leaden pace.

  He had played all over the infield after coming to Detroit in 1961 until settling at shortstop two years later. It was a position chosen for him out of necessity. There were no shortstops in the system, and although he played it with more enthusiasm than skill, he was all there was. He got a good jump on the ball, and his glove was fairly sure. But he did not have an exceptionally strong arm and, as a result, felt compelled to hurry many of his plays. He led the league in errors one year and never gave an indication that he could make the difficult play consistently. But when Jerry Lumpe retired after the 1966 season, second base was open. Mayo moved McAuliffe into the vacancy, and it may have been the most adept switch of his career. McAuliffe blossomed into an outstanding fielder.