Wire to Wire

by George Cantor

  In the Cleveland game, however, he picked up from Petry and absolutely stuffed the Indians for four innings: two hits, no runs, four strikeouts.

  And from that time on, he was untouchable. Over the rest of the year, Hernandez would pitch 122 more innings and give up just 21 runs.

  Going into the season, Sparky had said he needed the one closer he could depend on. He found him in Willie Hernandez.

  13. The MVP

  “People talk to me about that season like I came out of nowhere.”

  Guillermo “Willie” Hernandez is sitting at one of the long tables in the Tigertown cafeteria in Lakeland, Florida. He takes a long pull from the beer he is holding in his left hand.

  “But I had some good moments before that season. I pitched in the World Series the year before that with the Phillies. I pitched in an All-Star Game. But everybody forgets that. It’s like my whole career was 1984.”

  He pauses for a moment and a smile appears.

  “Of course, there isn’t much that can compare to that. Even after the season ended and I went back home to Puerto Rico, the phone never stopped ringing. Friends, media. It gave me a great time.”

  All of Detroit’s minor leaguers have their meals in this hall during spring training. History looks down on them from its walls. Uniforms of Hall of Famers and photographs of Tigers greats, many of them who began their professional careers eating in the Tigertown cafeteria, surround the hall. It is a constant reminder of the legacy of this franchise, and that is the intent.

  There is no picture of Hernandez. Nevertheless, his place in that legacy is secure, interwoven firmly for what happened during a single season. He has come back to Lakeland for a Tigers Fantasy Camp and as the attendees enter the hall for the closing banquet, many stop by his table for a greeting. Hernandez beams affably.

  While it is true that the Tigers had bounded off to their record-breaking start before he began asserting himself, Hernandez was the man who locked the championship away. And that is how he is remembered.

  “I was always three pitches ahead that year,” he says. “I’d come out of the bullpen and I already knew what I’d be throwing my first three pitches to this guy.

  “You know, I threw the ball better in other years. You can ask Lance Parrish. I threw the ball better in 1985. But I never had better location. Anywhere I wanted to put that ball, that’s where it went.

  “And then there’s luck. I believe in luck. If they hit me hard, it went right at somebody. If a pitch was close, I’d get the call from the ump. I don’t know how these things happen, why one year everything should go your way. It was a lucky season, that’s all.”

  Hernandez threw a screwball, and there seems to be something nasty about left-handers who master that pitch. Carl Hubbell went to the Hall of Fame with it. Luis Arroyo came out of the bullpen to win a championship for the 1961 Yankees with it. Mike Cuellar used it for years and won a World Series with the 1970 Orioles.

  “That was my big advantage,” says Hernandez. “The American League hitters had never seen my screwball before.

  “People ask me how it felt coming in to pitch all the time with the ball- game on the line. Wasn’t I nervous? Hell no, I wasn’t nervous. I knew what I was going to do. The batter didn’t.

  “I just watched the batter. If I was coming in, that usually meant we were protecting a lead, and that meant there was more pressure on the hitter because his team was behind.

  “I just stood there and watched him, to see if he was fidgeting around or if he was calm. If I saw him start moving around, looking unsure of himself, I just told myself, ‘Fuck him. I got him.’

  “Because it is mental. So much of baseball is being ready in your mind, and I told myself, even before they traded me to Detroit that spring, that this year I was going to be ready.”

  Hernandez was 29 years old in his big year. The deadly screwball, however, had been something less than sensational for him in his previous seven seasons, spent mostly with the Cubs as a set-up man. In his entire career, he had saved a total of 27 games—or five fewer than he would with the Tigers in 1984. The Cubs even tried him as a starter one year, with indifferent results.

  “When you have confidence,” he says, “everything fits together. You just go with the current. I can’t explain it any better. It’s like you’re in total control but you’re also being carried along by this great force.

  “The other thing is that this was the first time I had a catcher like Lance. He was like a magician. He knew what I wanted to throw every time. It was halfway through the season before I shook him off the first time.

  “He walks out to the mound like he’s surprised and asks me what’s the matter. I told him nothing. I just wanted to keep him alert. It was unbelievable the way we were on the same wavelength.”

  It almost hadn’t happened. Toronto wanted Hernandez and pursued him avidly all through spring training. But the Phillies demanded Jesse Barfield, one of the Blue Jays’ top young outfielders, a potential 40-homer-a-year guy.

  Toronto general manager Pat Gillick said he’d think about it. But in two spring exhibitions, Toronto battered Hernandez, and Gillick lost interest. He decided to go after Goose Gossage instead, but San Diego outbid Toronto for him.

  So the Blue Jays went into the season without the big closer they needed and the Tigers got Hernandez.

  “I think they made a mistake,” says Hernandez, and that little smile appears again.

  “He sure didn’t become the greatest pitcher in the world until that year,” says Atlanta manager Bobby Cox, who managed Toronto in ’84. “We sure tried to get him. Maybe we should have tried harder. Who knew?”

  He pitched a total of seven shutout innings in the weekend series with Cleveland in May. When Sparky saw that he said to his coaches, “I think I can make some reservations in the Bahamas for September.”

  Hernandez pitched five more seasons with the Tigers but never again came close to pitching the way he did in 1984.

  He has been involved in several business ventures in Puerto Rico and is now thinking about running some cattle on a ranch in Santo Domingo. “I like to go out on my own when it comes to business,” he says. “Teams are for baseball.

  “I’ve got this room full of awards and trophies in my house. I never say that I won them. My teammates got those awards for me.

  “I don’t even think that they belong to me. They are all for my grandson. My son never had much interest in baseball, so what would they mean to him? But my grandson loves the game. That’s what’s important to me. That he has these things and he realizes his grandfather did all this.”

  After a pretty mediocre first month, Willie Hernandez found his groove in May and was virtually unhittable the rest of the way.

  14. Bless You, Boys

  And now the Tigers were chasing ghosts.

  As the streak reached 22–4, and the national media made the team a daily story, and the contemporary opponents fell farther behind, the statistical wizards looked deep into the record books.

  They found that the best start over the first 30 games of a season was set by the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers: 25–5. Those were the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Roy Campanella. Pretty illustrious company.

  Not only that, they went on to cruise to a pennant, and then became the first Dodgers team to win a World Series. So that was a record with some heft to it, something worth shooting for.

  The Tigers were zeroed in on the target. The team moved on to Kansas City and barely missed a beat, bashing the Royals three times in a row.

  They were now 25–4.

  Just as significant was the change Sparky had made in the batting order at the beginning of May. Gibson was now his number three hitter against right-handed pitching. He responded by batting .393 after being moved into that slot. />
  “The only argument I ever had as a coach with Sparky,” says Roger Craig, “is when I insisted Gibson had to be an everyday player.” Now he was not only everyday but at the nexus of the lineup.

  Gibson’s pounding the ball also protected Trammell, hitting in the number two slot. He batted .500 against Kansas City and was playing what Sparky called “the greatest shortstop I have ever seen.”

  Sparky and Tom Monaghan appeared on Good Morning, America on the day they were to go after the Dodgers’ record. Said Monaghan: “I can’t put into words what it means to be the owner of this ballclub.”

  That had become his standard mantra. He would repeat it endlessly throughout the season. While it was sincerely meant, crusty old Joe Falls was having none of it.

  “Why can’t he put it into words?” growled the columnist, after hearing Monaghan’s routine for, perhaps, the 50th time. “He’s had long enough to think of something to say by now.”

  But local sportscaster Al Ackerman already had come up with the words that would define the season. This was an era when the local sports anchor was supposed to be a journalist instead of a standup comic or a shill for the team whose games his station carried. Ackerman was a tough critic of the Detroit teams, but his criticism was always backed up with tough, incisive reporting.

  A few years before, he had read a letter from an elderly viewer who complained about how mean he was to the Tigers. Ackerman said he would turn over a new leaf. From now on, he said, any description of a performance by the ballclub, win or lose, would be preceded by a benign, “Bless You, Boys.”

  It was a funny bit, but as 1984 rolled along the phrase lost its ironic origin. It became a description of how Detroit fans, from little old ladies to hairy- knuckled workers on the Ford line, really felt about this ballclub.

  When a celebrity visited town, from politics to show business to athletics, Ackerman would send out a crew to tape him saying, “Bless You, Boys” to the camera. It had grown into one of the best running gags in the city’s sports history.

  The Tigers went for the 30-game record on a Friday night with more than forty-four thousand fans packed into the ballpark, the biggest crowd since Opening Day.

  It was a festival: loud and raucous and full of the old pizzazz. The Wave in all its variations rolled through the stands. They stood and cheered for another Gibson home run, for Wilcox’s six shutout innings, for another save by Hernandez.

  The California Angels never had a chance. The runaway train pulverized them, 8–2, and this Tigers team was officially in the record books.

  The next day they lost for the fifth time of the year, 4–2, in a game with odd, distant echoes of their last championship season.

  The pitcher who stopped them was 40-year-old Tommy John. It was his fight with Dick McAuliffe in 1968, an altercation that led to the suspension of the Tigers’ second baseman and leadoff man, that sent the team into its worst slump of the year.

  John had been pitching for the White Sox then and it was feared the injury to his arm incurred in the scuffle with McAuliffe might end his career. Sixteen years later, it was safe to say it hadn’t.

  The big hit for the Angels was a home run over the right-field roof by 38-year-old Reggie Jackson. He had been a young star with the A’s in 1968 and did his best to thwart Denny McLain’s bid for a 30th victory by hitting two home runs in that game. He was now a fading superstar, struggling to hit above .200, but he still had rooftop power at Tiger Stadium.

  The streak of 1984 was already part of baseball history. But there was still one final spurt left in it.

  Seattle came into town and the Tigers polished them off three in a row. Sparky complained that the wins were getting sloppy. Even Trammell had made an uncharacteristically careless throw in one of them. It bothered him, but no matter. They won whatever happened.

  “I’m just happy to be getting out of here,” said Mariners catcher Bob Kearney after the sweep. “It’s like playing in a house of mirrors.”

  Then it was Oakland’s turn, and they went down three in a row, too. Petry, Morris, and Wilcox started and won, and one hundred eleven thousand fans turned out for the series. The Tigers had never drawn crowds like this in the middle of May over their entire history. Everyone wanted to come out and see this show.

  And now it was 32–5.

  Next stop was Anaheim, where the Tigers turned out to be as big an attraction as they had been at home. Many former Detroiters live in southern California, and they usually turned out when the Tigers came to town. But for that game they jammed the Big A. The three-game, midweek series drew one hundred twenty-five thousand people—and by decibel count most of them were pulling for the Tigers.

  It was just another three-game sweep, but this one swept them into yet another part of the record book. It was an anomaly of Detroit’s sensational start that all five of its losses had been at home. The team remained undefeated on the road. They came into Anaheim 14–0.

  Again the statisticians were sent poring deep into history. They found that in 1912 the Washington Senators, of all teams, had set the American League record of 16 consecutive wins on the road. The major league record was held by the 1916 New York Giants. They had won 17 straight road games in the midst of setting the all-time mark of 26 games without a loss (one ended in a tie). Both were now within reach.

  According to his manager, Trammell had become “the greatest shortstop I have ever seen” during the summer of 1984.

  15. Last Exit to Wonderland

  Whatever else the Tigers may have thought about their manager, they were grateful for one thing. He kept the pressure off them. Part of this was simply his personality. Sparky genuinely enjoyed the give-and-take with the media. He loved playing the role of the foxy strategist, the baseball seer who knows far more than he tells.

  He was infinitely patient, too. The only ones who annoyed him were the broadcast reporters who stuck a microphone in his face to get his response to the questions of others without ever asking anything on their own. Sparky referred to them as “bottom-feeders” and treated them as he would one of his own players who lapsed from his high standards of professionalism.

  But Sparky was affable to the media by design. He regarded it as part of the job description. The less his players had to worry about the press, the more time they had to concentrate on important things. He instructed publicity man Dan Ewald to “funnel” as many interview requests as possible to him.

  There was a price to all that, though. For most of that season, Sparky was a nervous wreck.

  “We’re all a little crazy in our own way,” he says. “We all go down to the river once in a while. I tried to keep it to myself but it bothered me.”

  None of that was evident through the series in Anaheim. Juan Berenguer, who had moved ahead of Rozema to fill the role of fourth starter, won the first game, with three shutout innings from Lopez. Petry, pitching in front of the hometown crowd, went 7–1 with a 4–2 win; the winning margin was provided by Parrish, another Orange County boy, on a two-run homer.

  Finally, Morris finished up with his second best job of the year: a four-hitter with 10 strikeouts, the only run scoring on an error by Garbey. He was now 9–1.

  The season was 40 games old, almost one-quarter over. The Tigers had shattered every record in the book. Their 35–5 start eclipsed anything that had gone before. Their closest rival was eight games in the dust.

  But sometimes baseball simply makes no sense.

  Seattle was a team going nowhere in particular. It was 21–24, and had been swept by Detroit the previous week even though the Tigers had played their sloppiest baseball of the year.

  The Mariners’ fans were so indifferent to the drama of the situation that only fifteen thousand of them showed up at the Friday night game.

  And the Tigers lost. Then they lost again Saturday, and they lost
once more on Sunday.

  Wilcox, Berenguer, and Petry were all hammered. The games weren’t even close. They went 7–3, 9–5, and 6–1. The Mariners simply blasted them. They left town at 35–8.

  If that mark were just standing off by itself, it would have been unbelievable. But it was not standing off by itself. It had come after the most remarkable season-opening streak in the history of the game.

  For the first time, it was noticed that the Blue Jays had managed to get off to quite a start themselves. They were now, in fact, just five games behind Detroit—and a five-game margin in the middle of May was nothing at all. And for the first time, Sparky turned around and saw a large, black hole creeping up on him.

  “They’d have lynched me,” he said. “If we would have lost the pennant after that start, they would have hung me from the flagpole. And I would have deserved it.

  “It’s one thing to build expectations that every season is going to be a great one. Bear Bryant did that and so did John Wooden. Their fans never expected them to lose. But they don’t come down the pike too often.

  “This was different, and maybe I piled too much on myself. But after that start, we had to win it all. Nothing else would have been enough. It was my worst year.”

  Owner Tom Monaghan, who had begun attending games by taking a private helicopter in from Ann Arbor and landing on the roof of a lumberyard across from the stadium, probably didn’t make Sparky feel any better.

  “Second place isn’t good enough,” he said. “If we don’t win this thing after the start we made, we’ll never get another fan inside this place. It would be heartbreaking for the whole city.”

  Gibson agreed with that assessment. He had grown up in the Detroit suburbs as a fan of the Tigers and he understood the possibility of colossal failure. But he buried his concerns under a fine show of bravado.