Wire to Wire

by George Cantor

  He had led the league in innings pitched and strikeouts the previous year, won 20 games for the first time, and finished more than half the games he started—an almost quaint statistic in a game that was about to become dominated by managers obsessed with using as many relief pitchers as the roster allowed.

  He also led the league in wild pitches, something he did six times in his career, because he was now armed with the most devastating pitch in his repertoire—the split-fingered fastball.

  Roger Craig had helped him perfect the pitch and it transformed Morris from a very good pitcher into a great one. He had been criticized for relying too much on a change-up as his off pitch early in his career. The split finger gave him another option, a far tougher one.

  It was a difficult pitch to control. But he was absolutely fearless about throwing it in tough spots. So while his wild pitches increased, so did his effectiveness. He accepted the tradeoff.

  The afternoon of April 7 was clear and cold in Chicago, one of those crystal early spring days when a sharp wind off the lake blows the haze away. The game was on national television, Morris against Floyd Bannister.

  His control wasn’t the best. But it was soon apparent that on that day Morris had world-class movement on his pitches.

  “I was sitting next to Milt Wilcox in our dugout,” recalls Petry, “and by the third inning I turned to him and said, “‘There’s no way they’re going to hit him today.’ I wasn’t thinking no-hitter. But that’s the kind of stuff he had. The split finger was absolutely awesome.”

  Chicago’s leadoff man, Rudy Law, had sent a long fly ball to Gibson on the right field track in the first. But that was as close as the White Sox could come to a hit, inning after inning.

  In the fourth, Morris walked the bases full. But then Greg Luzinski hit into a double play, starting with the force at the plate, and Ron Kittle struck out.

  Chet Lemon had hit a double and a homer, and Gibson and Whitaker had each driven in a run, staking Morris to a 4–0 lead. The only question by the seventh was whether he could make it all the way through.

  Almost one year before to the day, on the same field, Wilcox had carried a perfect game into the ninth before Jerry Hairston broke it up with a single. And Hairston was still Chicago’s top pinch-hitter, waiting on the bench to hit against Morris.

  “I was more concerned with Tom Paciorek,” says Morris. “I thought he was the best hitter on that team and he was due up in the seventh.”

  But Sparky had been thinking ahead, too, and before the Sox came to bat he put Dave Bergman into the game for Barbaro Garbey at first base for defense.

  Sure enough, Paciorek blistered a drive down the line, the hardest hit ball of the day. Bergman stabbed it over his left shoulder, a play the right-handed Garbey probably couldn’t have made.

  In the next inning Hairston came off the bench, like a recurring nightmare. He also sent a hard shot down the line, but Bergman got to his knees, blocked it, and stepped on the bag. Sparky’s shift had saved the no-hitter twice.

  “When you have to dive to save a no-hitter, you dive,” says Bergman. “No questions.”

  Carlton Fisk led off the ninth. Morris got him on a grounder. Harold Baines was next and he went out the same way.

  The Tigers were on the dugout steps. No one tried to keep it a secret. One Chicago fan had been yelling “No-hitter” at Morris since the sixth inning in an effort to rattle him. Morris appeared to be calm, but the strain was showing as he pitched to Luzinski. He walked him, his sixth pass of the game.

  Kittle was the next hitter, and Morris finished him off in the grand style, with a strikeout. It was the first no-hitter by a Detroit pitcher in 26 years, since Jim Bunning had stopped Boston and had to get Ted Williams for his last out.

  “I sat on the bench when Wilcox came close the previous year,” said Morris. “Believe me, it was much easier being a participant than a spectator.”

  Kittle, knowing Morris’ reputation as a high-average bowler, ruefully remarked, “I’d rather have seen him throw a 300 game.”

  The celebration continued in the clubhouse and then into the dinner hour, with Parrish, Trammell, Petry, and Tom Brookens joining Morris for champagne and a late meal. Afterward, he couldn’t get to sleep.

  “It was always hard for me to turn off my mind after a game,” he says. “My body could shut down. But my mind was always racing and this one was the worst of all. I didn’t shut my eyes all night.”

  Some of his adversaries in the media credited a growing maturity for Morris’ ability to harness his gifts, but they soon found out nothing had changed.

  “You learned to look at him carefully before approaching him,” said veteran columnist Joe Falls. “Sometimes he’d sit there and give you some of the most intelligent insights into baseball that you’d ever heard. Other times, he’d bite your head off. And still other times, he’d just get up and walk right past you, like he’d never seen you before.

  “When George Will was writing his book on baseball, Men at Work, I suggested that he talk to Morris because he could speak so intelligently about pitching. When the book came out, I saw that he hadn’t done it. I asked him why and he told me that Morris had refused to cooperate.”

  Morris is now in media himself, as an analyst on Tigers broadcasts. Some of his former teammates say he has mellowed. At his induction into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, those who attended the dinner were astonished to see tears in his eyes when he apologized for his run-ins with the media.

  In his last years with Detroit, before leaving for Minnesota, he was castiga-ted as a hard-eyed mercenary who cared only about the paycheck. But when Sparky organized a charity to benefit Detroit Children’s Hospital, Morris came to him privately, told him he wanted no publicity, and handed him a check for $50,000.

  He seems to feel the greatest degree of comfort, however, when he is in Montana, hunting bears. The bears don’t ask dumb questions.

  Jack Morris leaps in the air after recording the final out of his no-hitter in Chicago on April 7—a win that provided ample fuel for the Tigers’ remarkable 35–5 run to start the season.

  Does Jack Morris belong in Cooperstown?

  His 254 career wins would certainly indicate a strong affirmative. That’s significantly more than Don Drysdale, the pitcher to whom he is often compared. His career earned run average of 3.90 is rather drab, almost one full run higher than Drysdale’s. But Morris spent most of his career in a hitter’s park, and his ERA was jacked upward during his last two seasons, when it ballooned to around 6.00.

  Morris’ greatest achievement, however, was starting World Series games for three different teams. His seventh-game, extra-inning, 1–0 win for the Twins in 1991 was one of the greatest individual performances in Series history. That cemented his reputation as a fierce competitor and a clutch performer.

  There is also this to consider: aside from the 1981 Dodgers, no team that won a Series prior to 1984 has failed to place at least one player in the Hall. Morris may be the best shot for the ’84 Tigers.

  9. Smoke and Mirrors

  The Tigers finished mopping up the White Sox with a 7–3 win on Sunday. Rozema, the fourth starter, went four, but it was Lopez with four innings of one-hit relief who got the win.

  The Mexican pitcher, who resembled a right-handed Mickey Lolich around the abdominal region, looked to be at the top of his game. He was throwing as hard as ever, the same Señor Smoke who had been the key man out of the Detroit pen for the past five seasons.

  He had been a steal, part of a throwaway trade with the Cardinals in 1978. Lopez had been kicking around the Kansas City and St. Louis farm systems for years, but his trips to the majors were unimpressive.

  He was 30 years old when he reached Detroit, dangerously close to the age where teams would not even give him a look. But when he got there, something clic
ked. He had saved 66 games and won 40 more for the Tigers.

  But Sparky was already changing his mind about the role he wanted Lopez to fill. He still felt the need for a primary closer and wanted to take a long look at Hernandez in that role. Lopez would pitch mostly as a set-up man and in long relief.

  Lopez wasn’t overjoyed about that. It was, in fact, a blow to his pride, and on rare occasions a hint of resentment would come slipping out. But in 1984, with everything clicking into place as if preordained, anyone with a grudge against Sparky was keeping it to himself.

  Maybe it was better living through team chemistry. Maybe it was genius. But every move the manager made was a winner, and no one wanted the joyride to end.

  Gibson pounded another homer in this game, too. The one in Minnesota had been to dead center field off an outstanding left-hander, Frank Viola. The one he hit in this game landed high in the Comiskey upper deck in right, the longest shot for any of the Tigers that year.

  Sparky had taken to batting Gibson eighth against left-handers and fifth against righties, and he had started all five games in right field. Before this game he had been hitting below .200. But that didn’t matter to Anderson. He was seeing something new in Gibson. He couldn’t put a name to it—a restored sense of confidence or determination—something. And he liked it very much. This was the player he always hoped he would see when he made the ill- considered Mickey Mantle comparison several years before.

  Other signs were equally encouraging. Trammell was hitting .400, Lemon had a hit in every game, and the team had made only one error. And now they were going home.

  The Tigers were 5–0.

  Opening Day in Detroit is an undeclared civic holiday. It is simply taken for granted that courts are recessed, business executives lock their office doors, and every politician with half a brain shuts down his schedule. They join students cutting class, autoworkers who had phoned in with the flu, street corner hustlers, and anyone else who could cajole, coerce, or commandeer a ticket.

  The weather can be 38 degrees with flurries, but it is still the day that spring arrives in Motown. That’s understood. You may be wearing long johns and a parka with a hood—and require additional fortification with strong waters—but this is a day to welcome the end of winter.

  All along Michigan Avenue, the major thoroughfare between downtown and Tiger Stadium, the celebration goes on. For many it starts three or four hours before game time, and the crowds spill out unsteadily from the bars along the route, across the sidewalk, and into the street.

  From the Lindell AC and Musial’s and Nemo’s. From private parties and corporate soirées. By limo, bus, cab, and foot. A human flood, all flowing toward Michigan and Trumbull, as they had for every April in the 20th century.

  Occasionally there will be an opener that is actually warm. In 1960, the temperature had climbed to a record, into the 80s, and shirtless customers, both men and women, screamed in ecstasy as Rocky Colavito hit his first home run as a Tiger.

  This opener wasn’t quite that good. Still, the sun was out and the temperature was in the 50s. The low 50s, but better than most years. That seemed to be an omen, too.

  The official attendance was 51,238. The team had taken to closing some sections of the park most days because of structural concerns. But everything was available for the opener, from the third-deck eagle’s nests just below the roof to the cave-like recesses in the lower deck of dead center field, almost 500 feet from the plate. Not an empty seat anywhere you looked on that day.

  The Tigers were coming home at 5–0.

  Texas starter Dave Stewart couldn’t deal with all that and didn’t even make it out of the first inning. He was wild, walking Whitaker and Trammell. Then Evans came up for his first time at bat in Tiger Stadium.

  In a scene that was almost a replay of Colavito’s homer, 24 years before, he drilled a fastball into the right field seats. It was 3–1 for the Tigers and the ballpark levitated.

  Petry went on to finish a complete game four-hitter for a 5–1 win.

  Now it was 6–0. No Tigers team had done that since 1911. That ballclub started with a rush, won 27 of its first 32 games, led the league into the middle of summer, and then deflated. It went 29–37 the rest of the way and finished 131⁄2 games behind the first-place Athletics.

  Sparky may not have known the details about that particular collapse, but he knew it had happened before and could happen again. Not much bothered the manager, but that thought did. He knew that an avalanche could not only stop rolling, it could sometimes reverse.

  But not yet. Morris came back and beat Texas again, 9–4, giving up only two runs, while Lemon knocked in three with a home run.

  The start was 7–0, and that was the best in Tigers history.

  Next it was on to Boston and the fourth Opening Day on the schedule. Fenway Park was a tough place for the Tigers even in good years. Detroit was usually stacked with left-handed power to take advantage of their home park, a fact that availed them naught with the Green Monster in Boston.

  But it was already apparent that this was no ordinary year. Before the sellout crowd could even settle in, the Tigers had batted around and scored eight times in the first inning. Wilcox did not have his slider working. Not a big deal. This time it was Doug Bair coming out of the bullpen to hold off the Red Sox with four innings of one-run relief.

  The final was 13–9, and the total was 8–0.

  Only the weather seemed capable of stopping this team. The rest of the Boston series was rained out, and on the next scheduled date back in Detroit it snowed—not an unusual occurrence in April, but it meant four days off in a row. Time enough for a hot ballclub to cool down and, at the very least, to mess up the pitching rotation.

  For a brief interlude it seemed the charm really had deserted the Tigers. With a well-rested Morris pitching again, the Tigers carried a 3–0 lead into the eighth against Kansas City. But then Jorge Orta reached Morris for a three-run homer and suddenly it was a tie game and into extra innings for the first time.

  Morris left after nine in his standard infuriated state. So it was Hernandez, pitching a scoreless tenth, who got the win when Frank White, one of the best defensive second basemen in the game, bobbled an easy grounder with two outs in the bottom half of the inning to give Detroit the 4–3 win.

  Now it was 9–0, and everything still seemed to be breaking Detroit’s way.

  Then it ended. Petry wasn’t sharp the next day and a good-looking rookie, Bret Saberhagen, was. Dan Quisenberry, acknowledged to be the best closer in the league, did his thing for the last three innings, and the Tigers lost 5–2.

  They were 9–1, the exact record the ’68 Tigers had compiled after 10 games. Only in that year, they had lost the opener and run off a nine-game streak afterward.

  But this season’s record-setting run had ended. The question in everyone’s minds was whether the Tigers could sustain it. Some doubted. There were even some scattered boos after the loss. Talk about tough!

  Chicago was coming in the next day, though, and the questions would soon be answered.

  If Aurelio Lopez (center) had any objection to being the set-up man in 1984, it did not affect the way he pitched. Like everything else Anderson did that summer, the arrangement worked perfectly.

  It is a little known fact that for many years Tom Monaghan was confused with the author of this book. Or vice versa. We both are medium height, wear glasses, and have curly hair. For some people, that was enough to find a resemblance.

  While out on a television shoot in a Detroit neighborhood in 1984, my camera crew and I were suddenly surrounded by a group of curious onlookers. Someone had spotted me from a window and spread the word that Monaghan was in the neighborhood with a team of surveyors to scout out locations for a new ballpark. We denied it, but many in the crowd were unconvinced.

  This happened again at
Yom Kippur services at my temple in suburban Detroit. Someone came up to me and asked what I was doing there, since it was well known that Tom Monaghan was a devout Catholic.

  I thought that was amusing enough to mention it to Monaghan when I met him for the first time at the Tigers’ winter party the next year. He glanced at me, said, “I don’t think we look anything alike,” and turned away. End of conversation.

  And that settled that.

  10. Petry’s Lesson

  “When you’re a kid,” says Dan Petry, “you throw a ball against the side of the house and pretend that you’re pitching in the big leagues and no one can hit you. They can’t touch you. You’re unbeatable.

  “That’s the closest I can come to explaining what it felt like that season, being in the middle of that winning streak. It was like being a kid again, only this time the make-believe stuff was for real.

  “Two weeks after Jack pitched his no-hitter I carried one two outs into the eighth against Cleveland. But that’s the sort of feeling we had. Nothing was beyond our reach.

  “After a while, we could see it in the other team’s eyes. ‘Oh, God. Here they come again. We can’t beat these guys.’”

  We are sitting in a coffee shop in the Detroit suburb where Petry now makes his home. Many members of the ’84 Tigers came from California, and most of them went back when their careers ended. Petry stayed on in Michigan, even after being traded back home to the Angels.

  “This is where I became an adult,” he explains. “I mean that literally. I was 20 years old when I came up with the Tigers and, outside of Orange County, this was the only home I knew. When they drafted me I couldn’t even have pointed out Michigan on a map.