Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--And America--Forever
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Pirates’ star Roberto Clemente was also ready to sit out the game, as well, but changed his mind after meeting with Pittsburgh manager Larry Shepard. “I preferred not to play,” Clemente later said.
National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, N.Y.
In Cincinnati, pitcher Milt Pappas was adamant that his team shouldn’t take the field against the visiting St. Louis Cardinals. After the game, Pappas resigned as player rep. Less than seventy-two hours later, Pappas was traded to Atlanta.
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Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers set the bar high for pitching excellence in 1968 by hurling six consecutive shutouts. His fifty-eight-scoreless-inning record would stand for twenty years until another Dodger pitcher, Orel Hershiser, broke it. Drysdale is shown in his first start after Robert Kennedy’s assassination. Note the black armband.
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Despite pitching five no-hitters in high school, some ballclubs considered Jim “Catfish” Hunter to be damaged goods due to a hunting accident. Athletics’ owner Charlie Finley was convinced that the right-hander could win at the big-league level and Hunter rewarded him with a perfect game in 1968.
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Few sluggers had more success in the “Year of the Pitcher” than Frank Howard of the Washington Senators. He hit ten home runs in six games early in the season.
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Nearing the end of his eighteen-year career in the major leagues, New York Yankees’ star Mickey Mantle proved he could still go deep, especially if he had a little help from his friends.
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While Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination “jolted” Bob Gibson, Robert Kennedy’s death “infuriated” the Cardinals’ pitching star. Admittedly, Gibson pitched better angry and he soon put together one of the best seasons by a pitcher ever to play the game.
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During the regular season, Bob Gibson compiled a 1.12 ERA—the third-best mark since 1900 and the lowest in a season not played in the “deadball” era. He completed 28 of his 34 starts, with 13 of them being shutouts.
Associated Press
After a disappointing 1967, Denny McLain established himself as the winningest pitcher in baseball. He became the first pitcher since Dizzy Dean thirty-four years earlier to reach the thirty-victory plateau.
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Ever the showman, Denny McLain used his 31–6 record in 1968 to make a big splash in the entertainment world. Here he shows an ailing Jerry Koosman of the New York Mets how to hit the right notes.
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As the ’68 season began, Tigers’ left-hander Mickey Lolich was determined to win the big games and deliver a championship to Detroit.
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Lolich often rode one of his several motorcycles to Tiger Stadium for his home starts. He said the wind in his face helped him relax.
National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, N.Y.
A major reason for Lolich’s inconsistency on the mound was the time he spent away from the ballclub due to his National Guard obligations. Despite the aggravation, Lolich often joked about the situation.
Associated Press
While Denny McLain won thirty-one games, many considered Luis Tiant of the Cleveland Indians to be as good or better in 1968. When Tiant started the All-Star Game for the American League, his mother back in Havana was able to catch a glimpse of him on television. Tiant had left his home country of Cuba six years earlier unsure of when he would see his family again.
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Only twenty-one years old during the 1968 season, Larry Dierker was a starting pitcher for the Houston Astros, going against the likes of Don Drysdale and Bob Gibson. But what rocked his world was witnessing the demonstrations in Chicago surrounding the Democratic National Convention late that summer.
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Nolan Ryan won only six games in eighteen starts in 1968 and nearly walked away from the game for good. He, like the Tigers’ Mickey Lolich, spent time away from the game due to his National Guard commitment.
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Detroit catcher Bill Freehan was a rock behind the plate. He hit a career-high twenty-five home runs in 1968 and played his entire fifteen-year career in a Tigers’ uniform.
The Detroit News Archives
The Tigers were reminded how valuable second baseman Dick McAuliffe, shown here turning a double play against the Yankees, was when he was suspended for five days after an altercation with Chicago White Sox pitcher Tommy John. The Tigers went winless during that stretch, allowing the Baltimore Orioles to briefly climb back into the race in the American League.
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Al Kaline won the American League batting championship in 1955 at the age of 20—one day younger than Ty Cobb, who accomplished the feat in 1907—and over the course of his career he became one of the most popular Tigers of all time. But Kaline missed significant time with a broken arm in 1968. Some argued the Tigers shouldn’t upset team chemistry by trying to get him back in the everyday lineup so late in the season.
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Although Willie Horton was born in Arno, Virginia, his family soon moved to Detroit and he grew up in the local Jeffries Housing Projects. Nobody was a bigger local hero in the Motor City, then and now, than Horton.
The Detroit News Archives
In 1968, Sports Illustrated called the Cardinals’ Curt Flood “Baseball’s Best Centerfielder.” After he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies following the ’69 season, Flood sued Major League Baseball over its reserve clause. The case would go all the way to the Supreme Court and eventually open the door to free agency.
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Brock was at his best in World Series play. In three Fall Classics, he batted .391 with 14 stolen bases.
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Nobody was faster on the base paths than St. Louis outfielder Lou Brock. His career standard for stolen bases (938) would stand until Rickey Henderson came along.
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After a stellar season in center field for Detroit, Mickey Stanley was shifted to shortstop against the St. Louis Cardinals. Tigers’ announcer Ernie Harwell warned it could be “a bad move.”
The Detroit News Archives
In one of the boldest decisions in World Series history, before Gamer One in St. Louis, Detroit manager Mayo Smith announced that Stanley would play shortstop. The gamble opened a spot in the regular lineup for outfielder Al Kaline, which soon paid off for the Tigers.
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Ahead three games to one, the Cardinals had a great opportunity to capture their second consecutive World Series when Lou Brock headed for home in pivotal Game Five. The St. Louis speedster was thrown out, however, on a perfect peg to the plate from outfielder Willie Horton to Tigers’ catcher Bill Freehan. Brock didn’t slide, missing home plate by inches, and the Tigers later rallied on Al Kaline’s bases-loaded single.
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Thanks to complete-game victories by Denny McLain and Mickey Lolich, the Tigers took the final two games in St. Louis to win their first World Series title since 1945. Moments after the final
out, the streets of Detroit, where there had been riots only the summer before, filled with fans celebrating their team’s victory for the ages.
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PART V
Rewriting the Record Book
Action is character.
—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Despite the riots in Chicago, the Democrats moved ahead with their selection of Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, as their presidential nominee. He would oppose Richard Nixon in the November election, and those new to the game, the ones who had supported Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, realized that when it came to the Vietnam War, the most divisive issue in the land, little was going to change in terms of public policy.
“After the convention, I was on pins and needles awaiting possible (federal) indictment,” remembered Tom Hayden, one of the Chicago Seven, who was charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot in connection to the Windy City protests. “I thought Humphrey had blown it. Later on, he did break with LBJ when it came to the war and rose in the polls, but it was not enough.”
Hayden grew up in southeastern Michigan, and in fact had played youth ball against several of the 1968 Tigers. Detroit catcher Bill Freehan remembered Hayden as “a little guy, always arguing with the umpires and getting thrown out of games.”
Decades later, Hayden reluctantly agreed with Freehan’s scouting report. “Bill has a good memory,” he said. “We were kids together and we both loved playing ball. I was scrawny, he was a big man. Bill had a great arm, even back then, and he’d sometimes pitch. I managed to get a clutch hit off him once, and made a diving catch in left field on a line drive of his, while he was otherwise mowing us down. Those remain the baseball highlights of my youth.”
In the late fifties and early sixties, before the riots and talk of revolution, the Motor City “played some of the best amateur baseball in America,” Freehan wrote in his memoir, Behind the Mask. In high school, when his family moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, Freehan still returned to the Detroit area in the summers, living with his grandparents, so he could play against several of his future Tigers’ teammates and such prospects as Alex Johnson and future basketball star Dave DeBusschere. Willie Horton, who graduated from Northwestern High School in Detroit, believes that’s where the ’68 ballclub really began, where it learned about determination and resiliency—qualities that were about to be tested again.
On August 28, 1968, second baseman Dick McAuliffe returned to the Tigers’ lineup, having served his five-day suspension. Still, the losing streak the team suffered while he was out had taken its toll, and a sense of foreboding had settled in Detroit. The California Angels were coming to town, followed by the hard-charging Baltimore Orioles. It had been the Angels the year before who had eliminated the Tigers on the final day of the season, in that wild dog pile with four teams in contention down the stretch. Now with the ’68 pennant race on the line, they relished the chance to play spoilers once more.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if we did it again?” asked Angels manager Bill Rigney before the start of the two-game set.
In the first game, ace Denny McLain was on the mound for the Tigers, looking to break his two-game losing streak—his longest of the season. Facing off against him was Tom Burgmeier, pitching for the Angels.
From the start, the contest was a heated one, with McAuliffe’s first at-bat returning from suspension nearly echoing the one that sent him there. It appeared Rigney had taken a page from the White Sox’s playbook—Burgmeier came in high and tight, moving the Tigers’ lead-off hitter off the plate. For a moment, McAuliffe glared out at Burgmeier, ready to charge the mound. “It took a lot for me to stop there,” McAuliffe said decades later. “But I knew I couldn’t risk another suspension. Not with the way we were struggling.”
With McAuliffe still in the game, igniting the attack, the Tigers scored three times in the second inning with Freehan cracking a two-run homer. In the eighth inning, Freehan was hit by a pitch for the twenty-second time that season. He stared out at California reliever Bobby Locke as he made his way to first. Later he came around to score on Jim Northrup’s home run.
With the victory, McLain became the first American League pitcher to win twenty-six games since Bob Feller and Hal Newhouser in 1946. Afterward he was asked how he could pitch and somehow win with such a sore shoulder. “Because we were only four games ahead of Baltimore,” he replied.
Back in Baltimore, Frank Howard made the Tigers’ victory especially sweet as his home run propelled the Washington Senators past the Orioles, 3–2. Detroit’s lead was back up to five games.
The next afternoon, Mickey Lolich made his third start since being released from the bullpen. He allowed three Angel hits in the first two frames but then settled down, retiring twenty consecutive batters. Willie Horton supplied the firepower, walloping his thirty-first homer of the year. The blast landed in the center-field stands, the same area where he once delivered a homer at the tender age of sixteen in the Detroit Public School League championships. The Tigers won 2–0, and back in Baltimore the lowly Senators somehow did it again, this time tripping up the Orioles 5–4 in eleven innings.
Always eager to play the prophet, Rigney told the media if Detroit took just one from Baltimore in the upcoming series “it will just about be over.”
The big home stand against Baltimore opened on Friday, August 30, and 53,575 packed Tiger Stadium, the largest crowd since 1961. A highway sign on the Lodge Expressway leading to the ballpark read, GO GET ‘EM TIGERS!!! Detroit right-hander Earl Wilson didn’t disappoint, pitching a four-hitter and driving in four runs with a single and home run.
The Orioles won the next day, 5–1, behind Dave McNally’s pitching gem and Paul Blair’s three-run home run. Afterward Weaver said, “If we beat them tomorrow, the pressure’s back on them.”
Rain delayed the start of the rubber game of the three-game series for forty-five minutes, complicating pregame preparation for McLain, who still nursed a sore shoulder. Unable to get loose, he fell behind 2–0 when the first two Orioles he faced singled and homered.
With that Smith hustled out to the mound and asked McLain if he wanted out. Was the shoulder too painful to continue?
“It’s the first goddamn inning,” McLain replied. “There’s 42,000 people here—it’ll get better.”
Smith looked to Freehan, who had joined the discussion on the mound.
“How ’s he throwing, Billy?” Smith asked.
“How would I know?” the catcher said. “I haven’t caught anything yet.”
That broke the tension and McLain remained in the game.
Northrup tied it with a two-run shot in the bottom of the first inning. But then yet another rain delay exasperated McLain. As the rain fell, he took a hot shower in the home clubhouse, trying to loosen up his aching shoulder. When the clouds lifted, McLain was back on the mound and the Tigers soon pegged him to a 4–2 lead. But the Orioles answered and after a walk, a single, and an RBI by Frank Robinson, trimmed the margin to a single run.
With men on first and second base, with none out, up stepped the Orioles’ Boog Powell, the last guy McLain wanted to face in that situation. “I could never get that son of a bitch out,” McLain recalled. “I hated hitters who hung out over the plate, and Powell was one of those. I’d already tried everything with him. I used to yell to him, ‘Fastball’s coming—I might as well tell you so we can speed up the game.’ And I’d throw him a fastball. Other times, I’d lie and see if that would help, but it never did.”
This time McLain wanted to come inside, but instead the pitch caught too much of the plate. Powell smashed the offering right back at the pitcher. In self-defense, McLain stabbed at it and somehow caught the screaming line drive for the first out.
With that he turned and fired to shortstop Tom Matchick at second base for the second out, and Matchick threw on to first baseman Norm Cash to double off Robinson for the third out. Bing-Bang-Boom. Triple play.
“As was discovered
long ago, Denny McLain had this flair for showmanship, this knack of doing things a little differently,” Jerry Green wrote. “ What other ballplayer had met his future wife when his bat flew into the grandstands at a kids’ game and struck her? Who else in the big leagues played the organ?”
And who else but Denny McLain could escape trouble by starting a triple play?
“The ball was heading right at my head,” he said. “If I hadn’t caught it, it would’ve killed me.”
No matter that the ball was actually headed for his midsection. Why let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? From there, McLain cruised, striking out nine and raising his record to 27–5. Afterward, the winning pitcher announced with confidence, “I think the pennant race is getting near over.”
Can a guy stuff too much good fortune into a single season? Can somebody’s good luck be so bright and beguiling before one starts to wonder when the proverbial piper will need to be paid? While McLain’s teammates were beginning to wonder, meanwhile the winningest pitcher since Dizzy Dean thirty-four years before continued racing full-bore toward the horizon.