Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--And America--Forever

by Tim Wendel

  The capacity crowd in St. Louis gave Gibson a standing ovation after he finished warming up. As was his habit, the Cardinals’ ace stared straight ahead, barely acknowledging the overwhelming show of support. “It was down to me and Lolich in Game Seven,” Gibson wrote in his memoir. “I thrived on this sort of situation—to me, it was the whole reason for being an athlete—and there was no sense of panic on the club even after the disasters of Game Five and Six.”

  Over in the Tigers’ bullpen, as Lolich prepared to take the mound, things were far less certain, even bordering upon the chaotic.

  “Nobody was sure how far Mickey would go in the game—two, three innings? Nobody really knew,” Jon Warden said. “So everybody was up, doing a little bit to get loose. It was all hands on deck and nobody was sure when they could be going in.”

  But as teammates stole glimpses at Lolich, they saw that he was throwing loose and easy. More importantly, his ball exhibited great pace and movement. “I felt fine,” Lolich said. “I wasn’t issuing any guarantees on how many innings I could go. Nothing like that. I was just going to pitch until I wasn’t effective. No more, no less. That kind of freed me up in a way.”

  While McLain’s arm had received a shot before his recent victory, Lolich benefited from deep massage. Earlier, back at the team hotel, Dr. Russell Wright rigged up a shock-wave machine for Lolich’s tired left arm. “It was one of those crazy looking machines that look like something out of a Frankenstein movie,” the pitcher explained. “It increased the circulation in my arm and left me relaxed.”

  With that and a few sleeping tablets, Lolich got a nap and woke ready to pitch. It was time for him to face his own Great Confrontation.

  As expected, Bob Gibson came out strong and once again dominated, breaking Sandy Koufax’s single-series World Series record for strikeouts in the second inning. Through six innings, Gibson had sat down twenty of the twenty-one Detroit hitters he had faced. “I firmly believed that if I could hold the Tigers in check awhile, we would get to Lolich by the sixth or seven (inning),” he recalled. “Things were going pretty much as planned, but it was high time to do something about Lolich.”

  Though not quite as impressive, Lolich somehow matched the Cardinals’ ace, zero for zero, on the scoreboard. Through five innings, he had allowed only two singles.

  “Frankly, I don’t know how I got to that point in the game,” Lolich said. “I wasn’t feeling that good really. Every time I got back to the dugout, I told them to make sure to have people warmed up and good and ready. I didn’t know how long I’d last.”

  In the bottom of the sixth inning, Lou Brock singled to left field and everybody in the ballpark knew what was coming next. Brock would try to pick up his eighth steal of the Series. Tigers’ catcher Bill Freehan went out to the mound to talk to Lolich, resulting in perhaps one of the most curious conversations in Fall Classic history.

  “You all right?” Freehan asked his pitcher. “Anything I can do for you?”

  “Yeah,” Lolich replied. “Can you get me a couple of hamburgers between innings?”

  “What’s the matter?” Freehan said.

  “Can’t get myself together,” Lolich explained. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

  Usually Freehan didn’t coach his pitchers, especially in the middle of a contest as intense as Game Seven. He left that up to legendary pitching coach Johnny Sain. But with no burgers on hand, and the whole world watching, Freehan decided to throw in his two cents’ worth. The Tigers catcher suggested that Lolich was trying to throw too hard. He told him to keep his front shoulder in, instead of rearing back too much. “Just try to throw strikes,” Freehan said, “and you’ll still get good velocity from there.”

  Through it all, Brock remained patiently, for the moment, at first base. Often when he would take off for second base he would beat the relay throw from the first baseman. The key to stopping him was to have Brock make the first move, to briefly hold him in his tracks, which didn’t allow him to reach full speed in a hurry.

  With the conference over, Brock edged off first, taking a fifteen-foot lead, ready to break for second. Lolich kept an eye on him, refusing to deliver the ball to the plate. It was a showdown, reminiscent of the old-style Westerns that were so popular on television. Who would draw first? That’s when Lolich suddenly snapped a throw over to Detroit first baseman Norm Cash. And Brock took off for second base. At the time, many in baseball felt he was the fastest man on the base paths. Still, there are times to run and times to stay put.

  “I really don’t understand why he did it,” Cash said. “That was too much of a risk with the score tied in a game like this.”

  Cash got the ball out of his glove as fast as he could, throwing on to Mickey Stanley, who had shifted over to cover second base. In a split-second play, Stanley slapped down the tag and Brock was out, caught stealing. For one of the few times in the Series, the Tigers had stopped the Cardinals’ speed game.

  Yet that single putout didn’t mean Lolich was out of the woods. But it helped when the Cardinals’ next batter, Julian Javier, lined out to Stanley. If Brock had safely reached second base on the play before, the infield would have been drawn in and the drive would likely have been a hit, probably scoring Brock. Thanks to the pick-off, the game remained scoreless.

  Afterward, Curt Flood beat out an infield hit and the St. Louis running game was back in business. Even though he was often lost in Brock’s shadow, Flood also certainly had the wheels to steal a base. Like Brock before him, Flood took a long lead, waiting for Lolich to throw home. But once again the Tiger’s left-hander won the waiting game. After another beat or two, he threw over to Cash, a perfect pick-off move, and Flood was caught in no man’s land. In between bases, Flood tried to race on to second, only to be tagged out. Amazingly, Lolich had gotten out of the inning by picking off the Cardinals’ top two threats on the base paths.

  The game remained scoreless with Gibson realizing he now “had to navigate one more time through the fat part of Detroit’s lineup.”

  Mickey Stanley led off for Detroit in the top of the seventh inning and Gibson promptly struck him out. For a moment, it appeared it would be another easy inning for the St. Louis ace as Al Kaline then grounded out to Cardinals’ Mike Shannon for the second out. Still, often the most memorable moments begin with small, almost innocent events. So it was in the seventh.

  Concerned that Norm Cash could hit one out of the ballpark, breaking up the scoreless tie, Gibson kept the ball low in the strike zone, and Cash got enough of the bat on the ball to bounce one over Javier’s head and into right field. Willie Horton followed him by grounding a single through the left side of the Cardinals’ infield.

  “Gates [Brown] had been in my ear about Gibson,” recalled Horton, who was 0-for-7 against Gibson in the Series coming into the game and zero for two in this contest. “He was telling to me to get that ball in play, just put it out there and see what happens. We had to do better against Gibson than just going up there and striking out all the time.”

  Years later, those two pedestrian singles would grate on Mike Shannon, the Cardinals’ third baseman that afternoon. Cash’s hit was a bad hop past Javier, while Shannon believes he could have corralled Horton’s single if he hadn’t been guarding the third-base line so closely. In any event, the Tigers had two men on, two out, with Jim Northrup stepping up to the plate. He was the last guy Gibson wanted to see in this situation. Later, Gibson said that Northrup “had given me more trouble than any other Tiger.”

  With two men on, Gibson couldn’t afford to walk a batter. He needed to get ahead in the count, move the odds in his favor. Unfortunately, for the Cardinals and their hopes for a repeat championship, Northrup was thinking the same thing.

  Gibson threw a fastball, looking for strike one. Northrup was ready for it and laced a solid line drive to center field. When Gibson turned to follow the flight of the ball, his first thought was that Curt Flood, his good friend and roommate, would track this one down
as he had done so many times before. But Flood initially broke in a few steps before reversing direction in an attempt to catch up with Northrup’s hard liner. Later, Flood said that he initially lost sight of the ball in the background of white shirts in the stands behind home plate.

  To this day, Flood’s teammates defend his play on the ball.

  McCarver said the wet field caused the centerfielder to slip. “On a dry field, he gobbles that ball up,” he said.

  Shannon added that Flood “didn’t misjudge” the line drive. “His first step was in,” Shannon said. “That’s what you’re supposed to do. When the ball’s hit over your head, you’ve got to come in a little to push off and go back. He slipped.”

  The condition of the outfield certainly didn’t help Flood at this pivotal moment. Four afternoons before, the hometown football Cardinals had hosted the Dallas Cowboys at Busch. “Most of the football games were played in the outfield area,” grounds superintendent Barney Rogers said. “They didn’t dig up around the pitcher’s mound or home plate too much.”

  To the Cardinals’ surprise, Northrup’s liner soared past the Cardinals’ center fielder and bounced against the wall for a triple. Cash and Horton came around to score. Two runs that at that point seemed to Gibson “like two thousand.” Reeling from the blow, Gibson gave up a double to Bill Freehan. When the inning ended, the defending champions trailed Lolich and the Tigers, 3–0.

  Back in the Cardinals’ dugout, Flood apologized to Gibson.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was my fault.”

  “Like hell,” Gibson told him. “It was nobody’s fault.”

  Years later, Gibson added, “What is often forgotten about that play is the fact that Northrup hit the damn ball four hundred feet.”

  For his part, Northrup absolutely agreed. “I hit the crap out of it,” he said years later. “Everybody wants to talk about Flood and how he should have played it. But I know I hit that fastball of Gibson’s a ton.”

  Whether the play would be remembered as a miscue or a solid shot depended on whom you were rooting for. The fact was the Cardinals now trailed by three runs with only three innings left. And despite pitching on short rest, Lolich didn’t show any signs of letting St. Louis off the hook.

  The great Cardinals’ teams of the 1960s were built upon pitching, defense, and speed. What they lacked was an abundance of power. Now trailing 3–0 to Detroit, the St. Louis offense desperately sought any break it could get. With one out in the bottom of the seventh, Northrup did his best to accommodate them when he booted a ball, putting Shannon on first base. The Cardinals were unable to take advantage, however, as Tim McCarver flied out and then Roger Maris popped out to shortstop.

  After Gibson made quick work of the Tigers in the top of the eighth, he expected that his day would be over. Manager Red Schoendienst would look to his bench to generate some kind of attack. Indeed, Phil Gagliano pinch-hit for shortstop Dal Maxvill (who to that point in the Series had gone 0–22 and whose overall World Series batting record is a record low for a position player) to start the inning. In the on-deck circle, Gibson watched Gagliano ground out. At this point, the Cardinals’ ace expected to be called back to the dugout, with Dick Schofield or Bobby Tolan taking his turn at the plate. Yet in a surprise move, perhaps an indication of how well Lolich was pitching on this day, but also surely a nod to how effective Gibson had been in the Cardinals’ epic championship run, Schoendienst gestured for the pitcher to bat. Gibson went down swinging, taking a big cut on a Lolich fastball.

  “I remain grateful to Schoendienst for sticking with me,” Gibson wrote. “The obvious thing would have been to pinch-hit for me in the eighth inning, and Red’s decision to leave me in the game had more to do with consideration than strategy, which is a rare thing in baseball.”

  Lou Brock followed with a walk but was left stranded when Julian Javier grounded out. With one inning left in Game Seven, the visiting Tigers led, 3–0.

  Although Lolich didn’t really need the support, the Tigers gave him another run in the top of the ninth inning. Willie Horton, Jim Northrup, and Don Wert each singled off Gibson to make it 4–0. One last time Detroit manager Mayo Smith went with his late-inning alignment, what St. Louis writers now sarcastically called his Maginot Line. Horton exited the game, Stanley moved to center field, and Ray Oyler once again manned shortstop. Even though the bullpen was loose and ready, Lolich took the mound for the bottom of the ninth, determined to end it.

  “I didn’t know how long I could go,” Lolich said. “After the fifth inning, Mayo looked at me every inning and I would tell him I was OK. Then, when [they] got me some runs in the seventh, I told Mayo I would finish it.”

  When Oyler snared Curt Flood’s liner for the first out (making Smith look like a genius) and Orlando Cepeda popped out in foul territory, it appeared the Cardinals would go gently into the night. But suddenly Shannon woke the hometown crowd and sent the Tigers’ bullpen scrambling again when he homered into the left-field stands. The dinger assured that Shannon homered in the three World Series he played in (1964, 1967, and 1968). “The team’s frustration from the past few days was manifested in one swing,” wrote Doug Feldmann in El Birdos. “Since the first inning of Game Five, St. Louis had been shut out by the Tigers in twenty-four of the last twenty-six innings.”

  With that kind of history working against them, any rally for the ages simply wasn’t to be. When Lolich got the next batter, McCarver, to pop out to Freehan, Game Seven was over. The contest had taken two hours, seven minutes to play, and when the ball dropped into Freehan’s mitt, the Detroit Tigers were the 1968 World Series champions.

  Lolich came off the mound and jumped into Freehan’s arms. (He later said he did so to assure that Freehan didn’t jump into his arms. “I couldn’t have taken that,” the pitcher said.) With his three complete game victories, Lolich was named the series MVP, and he received a new Dodge Charger for his efforts. “I hope it has a stick shift,” he said. (It did.)

  In the winning clubhouse, the Tigers were asked about Lolich’s remarkable turnaround. In midseason, he had been banished to the bullpen, with a 7–7 record. He battled back to go 17–9 and became only the twelfth pitcher in major league history to win three games in the World Series. Cash claimed that the weeks working in relief helped Lolich. As a result, he threw only 220 innings in ’68, compared to Gibson’s nearly 305 innings and McLain’s 336 for the same campaign.

  “I guess I’m an unlikely hero,” Lolich told the press. “Potbelly, big ears . . . just a steady guy who shows up every day and gets the job done as best he knows how.”

  Then in a dig at McLain and a nod to the crowds that were already forming at Detroit Metro Airport to welcome back their heroes, he added, “There’s always somebody else making a big deal out of things, getting the ink, making the moves. But you know what? I knew all along I could do it. And I’m so thrilled that all those people are down there waiting for us. It’s the biggest day of my life....

  “Mickey Lolich has never been a hero with the Tigers. Mickey Lolich has always been a number on a roster. Finally, somebody knows who I am.”

  While most of the Tigers agreed with their manager that Horton throwing out Brock at the plate in Game Five was the point when the Series turned, Cash felt the most decisive moment really occurred before a pitch was ever thrown. He maintained Smith moving Mickey Stanley to shortstop and putting Al Kaline in the everyday lineup was the key to everything. “Without (Stanley) playing shortstop,” Cash said, “Al wouldn’t have been in the Series.”

  And what a Fall Classic the sixteen-year veteran enjoyed. Kaline hit .379, with two home runs and eight runs batted in, and stood out defensively. In the victorious clubhouse, he cradled his own bottle of champagne to his chest. “I’d seen my other World Series in the country club, watching TV,” Kaline said. “I considered people lucky to be in the Series. I knew all along I’d get into the Series someday, maybe as a pinch hitter. I never expected to have this good a Series. I was
one of the lucky ones.”

  Even in victory, though, many of the Tigers reflected on the team and the pitcher they had just beaten.

  “Gibson is the greatest pitcher I’ve ever faced,” Kaline said at the time. It was an assessment he would repeat frequently in the years to come. “To beat him and win the World Series all in one game is really great. We just wanted to get into the seventh game real bad—for our pride after the way we played the first two games in Detroit.”

  In the home clubhouse, discussion centered on Flood’s misplay of Northrup’s line drive in the seventh inning, the triple to the wall that broke the game open. While Gibson told reporters that he thought his friend would catch the ball, he emphasized that he didn’t think Flood should have caught the ball. “If Curt Flood can’t catch that ball, nobody can,” Gibson added. “I’m certainly not going to stand here and blame the best center fielder in the business. Why couldn’t we score any runs off that left-hander? That’s the reason we lost.”

  Waves of reporters stopped by Flood’s locker, many of them asking the same questions.

  When asked if he had lost the ball in the crowd, where so many were wearing white shirts, Flood simply replied, “Yes.”

  When asked if the field was sub-par, causing him to slip, the record-holder of 226 consecutive errorless games in the National League replied, “ Yes.”

  When asked if he thought he could have made the play on a dry field, Flood said, “I think so. Look I don’t want to make alibis. I should have made the play . . . but I didn’t and that’s all there is to it.”

  He added, “A ball hit right at me is the toughest play for me in this park. If the ball was up higher—over the edge of grandstand, I might have seen it in time.”