Tigers from 1968 World Series honored - 6/24/08

Former Tigers hurler Mickey Lolich throws out the first pitch at Comerica Park on Tuesday. (Duane Burleson/AP)

06/24/2008 11:30 PM ET
Tigers from 1968 World Series honored
Players on field before Tuesday's opener vs. St. Louis
By Scott McNeish / MLB.com

DETROIT -- The front-page headline of the Detroit Free Press the next morning summed it up.

"WE WIN!"

Not "THEY WIN" or "TIGERS WIN." The "we" meant the struggling city of Detroit, which at that point was a year removed from one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in United States history.

However, against the turmoil, the destruction and the hate, this charred, limping city hemmed itself with threads of passion for the World Series champion 1968 Detroit Tigers. People rejoiced as their team defeated Bob Gibson and the daunting St. Louis Cardinals, becoming the third team in World Series history to overcome a 3-1 deficit.

"I had a slogan," Tigers Hall of Fame outfielder Willie Horton said. "It said, 'God put us here to heal this city.'"

The city thanked them. Even the governor of Michigan thanked them. All for turning the city's attention away from its own troubles. The Tigers gave their home reason to smile.

"WE WIN!"

On Tuesday night, with the Cardinals in town, the city thanked them one more time. The Tigers honored the 40th anniversary of the 1968 team with a 15-minute pregame ceremony at Comerica Park. Eighteen members of the team attended Tuesday's game, including a rare public appearance from Denny McLain.

Time has distanced the players from their championship, but not from their friendships with each other.

"They're wonderful guys to play with, No. 1, and they're great friends," said Dick McAuliffe, Detroit's second baseman from 1960-73. "They're honest and sincere. What I appreciated most is the dedication they gave to baseball. That lasts a lifetime."

So, apparently, does the city's love for the '68 team. A sellout crowd of 44,446, the third-largest crowd in park history, came to catch a glimpse of Horton, McLain, McAuliffe, Hall of Famer Al Kaline, Jim Price, Gates Brown, Wayne Comer, Bill Freehan, John Hiller, Mickey Lolich, Tom Matchick, Daryl Patterson, Mickey Stanley, Dick Tracewski, Jon Warden, Don Wert, Hal Naragon and Bill Behm.

The crowd's impressive ovation indicated they still recall the moments that made the 1968 World Series so unforgettable.

They roared for Kaline, Mr. Tiger, who hit .391 in the Series. They rooted for Lolich, who pitched three complete-game wins in the Series, including Game 7 against Gibson. They applauded Freehan, whose tag of Lou Brock in Game 5 provided a key momentum swing. They cheered for the embattled McLain, who won 31 games in 1968, the game's last 30-game winner.

The city and this particular team share an exceptional bond.

"I've lived in Detroit forever, and wherever I go, they'll remember that World Series," Lolich said.

Kaline had a reason. He said the city grew fond of this team because the players chose to live within it.

"The reason why they like the '68 team is because many of us stayed here and lived here," Kaline said. "In other years, or now, players go back to wherever they're from, probably warm-weather places because they make so much money. On the '68 team, we had a lot of guys that lived in Detroit."

They lived there after vicious riots in 1967 that featured 43 deaths, over 450 injuries, over 7,200 arrests and 2,000 buildings burned down. It lasted five days. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the National Guard and U.S. Army troops to quell the uprisings, to disarm the gangs wreaking terror in the streets.

But the Tigers helped turned things around that next summer.

"We had the police department around Tiger Stadium," Lolich said. "They said in 1967, when we had the disturbances here, when you saw four guys standing on the street corner, they were basically looking for trouble. They said in 1968, the same four guys would be standing on the street corner, but they'd be listening to a transistor radio and listening to the Tigers game."

The Tigers' success provided plenty of optimism. As long as their team kept winning, a blanket of positive energy covered the troubled town, helping to extinguish its flames.

"A championship season in sports has people talking positive about things instead of negative about things," Kaline said. "We reminded people [of the positive] a little bit, gave them something to talk about going to the barbershop, going to the market. 'How did the Tigers do?' 'Did they win again?' We had a very positive effect."

The Governor, George Romney, also thought so.

Romney credited the Tigers with calming the city. In a 1968 letter to Tigers owner John Fetzer, Romney wrote:

"The deepest meaning of this victory extends beyond the sports pages, radio broadcasts and the telecasts that have consumed our attention for several months. This championship occurred when all of us in Detroit and Michigan needed a great lift. At a time of unusual tensions, when many good men lost their perspective toward others, the Tigers set an example of what human relations should really be."

Horton saw it at Tiger Stadium, where he witnessed people in the stands embracing, laughing, smiling and cheering in unison, despite having raged out of control through the city streets one year prior.

If not in the stands, Horton remembers fans outside huddling around transistor radios, listening to the legendary voice of Hall of Fame play-by-play announcer Ernie Harwell.

"It was unbelievable to see the people all come together," Horton said. "I think they really did, not only in the city of Detroit, but in the whole state of Michigan."

They came together to witness an unforgettable group of men give Detroit a much-needed victory.

Scott McNeish is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

'68 team special 40 years later

Unless one was there, it's hard to know how much World Series champions meant to city.
Lynn Henning / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- Trying to explain the 1968 Tigers to anyone who wasn't in Detroit, or in Michigan, or stationed somewhere within the grasp of an enchanted baseball team that glorious, important year, is, well, impossible.

I hesitate to even attempt it for anyone who is younger than 50 years old. They were either not here, or perhaps not old enough to have understood that Detroit lived a fairy tale that fiery summer of '68, all because of the doggonedest sports team from my lifetime; the most beloved of all Detroit's championship teams from the past 50 years.

And yet, here's why it might not be all that futile to describe to younger generations why the '68 Tigers were honored Tuesday night at Comerica Park ahead of Detroit's game against, fittingly, the St. Louis Cardinals.

I have a 20-year-old son whose friends have discovered "The Year of the Tiger." It's the old record album comprised of Ernie Harwell's (and Ray Lane's) live radio play-by-play calls from the '68 season, a tingling, goose bump-raising cavalcade of the most dramatic moments from the most electric season of baseball in Detroit history.

It is the closest anyone today can come to understanding why, and how, and who, and what made the 1968 Tigers the signature team in Detroit baseball history. The guys in my son's crew get it because of the album that one of their fathers had uncovered: This team was extraordinary in ways that were both historic and spiritual.

"We had a team of character -- and of characters," said Dick Tracewski, the Tigers utility infielder in 1968, then a Tigers coach under Sparky Anderson. Tracewski made it back Tuesday night from his Pennsylvania home, and looked like he could spell Edgar Renteria if manager Jim Leyland were so motivated.

"We had power," said Gates Brown, whose ninth-inning exploits stoked the fire, and the roar, at that beautiful baseball furnace known as Tiger Stadium.

Power and pitching

I suppose you had to have been there, or at least within earshot of the radio at a time when only 40 games per season were televised, to have appreciated Tracewski's and Brown's summaries. The Tigers were immensely good and uncannily indelible in how they won baseball games that season, almost from the outset.

They won 103 games during the regular season. They beat the Cardinals in an epic, come-from-behind World Series that went seven -thumping games.

They won because of their great hitters: Al Kaline, Willie Horton, Norm Cash and Jim Northrup pounding the ball into Tiger Stadium's upper deck in right or over the fence in left. Gates Brown, that era's answer to Marcus Thames, came off the bench to get one amazing home run or big single after another.

They won because of their pitching: It is hard to fathom in 2008 that only one pitcher has won 30 games in the past 74 years -- and that it was Denny McLain who did it in 1968 for the Tigers when he won 31 and easily could have won 35.

Mickey Lolich was so remarkably gifted as McLain's left-handed counterpart that he never quite got the recognition he deserved until he won three games against the Cardinals to all but personally deliver Detroit its World Series trophy.

The bullpen was a gauntlet of mostly hard-throwing, shut-'em-down wizards: Jon Warden, Daryl Patterson, John Hiller, Pat Dobson, Fred Lasher, Don McMahon, etc. You scored on them mostly by accident, in great part because the defense was so rugged with Bill Freehan catching, Dick McAuliffe at second base, Don Wert at third, and Ray Oyler compensating for his paltry bat by vacuuming every ball hit to him at shortstop.

Plenty of drama

They won because they were as much Shakespearian actors as baseball players. They seemed to live for the stage. They understood drama in all its images, contours, and modes. They won 42 games in which they were either tied or they trailed in the seventh inning.

They won because of McLain's high, hard one that sent hitters reeling. They won because of Kaline's endless grace and skill at age 33. They won because Cash played first base with the polish and verve of a rock-group keyboardist.

They won because Horton could belt the ball on a long, high, rocket arc into the heavens. They won because Mickey Stanley grabbed everything hit into the air from extreme right-center to extreme left-center. They won because a guy like Patterson could come in against the Orioles with the bases loaded and none out and strike out the side.

They won, too, because this was Detroit. This was 1968, a year so unlike any other year in our lifetimes that Time Magazine has commemorated an entire edition to it four decades later.

A year after Detroit was the shamed and beleaguered scene for the worst riots in United States history, a baseball team bestowed upon Detroit in 1968 its best and most joyous sports championship.

"We gave 'em something else to talk about," Brown said Tuesday night as a glow as indescribable as the '68 season itself seemed to rest upon the Tigers who gathered at Comerica Park.

The Year of the Tiger, it was indeed. And if you were there for the theater that wondrous summer in Detroit, you know why so many of Harwell's ninth-inning calls that year are audio straight from heaven.

You can reach Lynn Henning at lynn.henning@detnews.com

TIGERS VS. CARDINALS

Tigers celebrate 1968 World Series champs

BY JON PAUL MOROSI • FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER • June 24, 2008

The shadows had just started to crawl across the infield when the old friends jogged out. One headed to the mound, and the other to home plate, as the crowd applauded with the warmth that comes with four decades of affection.

Bill Freehan tipped his cap. Mickey Lolich wound up. And the pitch whizzed straight to the backstop, evidence that the southpaw has plenty left after all these years.

The crowd at Comerica Park cheered some more, on a night when the Tigers took a break from this frenzied season to recognize the beloved 1968 World Series champions.

Forty years since Lolich leaped into Freehan’s arms after the final out at Busch Stadium, many of the familiar faces were back.

Lolich and Freehan.

Al Kaline and Willie Horton.

Dick McAuliffe and Mickey Stanley.

Denny McLain, too.

Kaline, the Hall of Famer, is as much a fixture at Comerica Park now as he was in rightfield at Tiger Stadium. He works as an adviser to the team and attends games throughout spring training and the regular season.

Tonight was different than all the rest.

“It’s great,” Kaline said. “We’re lucky that I do see a few of them, because they still live in town, but there’s guys I haven’t seen for a long time. It’s great to get together, reminisce about what we did in ’68 and even before that.”

It had been awhile since Kaline spent time with McAuliffe or Stanley, and he figured it had been 30 years since he last saw reliever Daryl Patterson. He loved catching up with his old friend, Don Wert.

Tales were told. Some of them were probably true. Gates Brown, the popular pinch hitter, joked that he gets better and better each year. He said he was a .250 hitter at the time of his retirement but is up to .300 now.

“Of course,” Kaline said with a laugh, “a lot of stories can’t be repeated to you.”

Players were stationed at four locations throughout the ballpark to sign free autographs before the game began. Lines stretched for hundreds of feet, as the seekers waited patiently on the ramps and concourses.

Replicas of the ’68 road jersey – with DETROIT in block letters across the front – had been given to fans at the gate, and grown men approached their heroes with a request to have them autographed.

“Thank you for being here,” one said.

“Thanks for the memories,” said another.

Jerry Lewis, who directs the Tigers’ fantasy camps, watched Kaline, Lolich, Jim Price and former coach Hal Naragon sign at a table along the leftfield line.

Lewis talked about how 251 people had paid $3,450 each to spend a week with some of the ’68 Tigers during a reunion fantasy camp earlier this year.

“Nothing sells like the ’68 team,” Lewis said with a smile. “That team is magic. Guys will call up and say, ‘I was only eight years old, but that was my team.’”

One boy wearing an Albert Pujols jersey approached an autograph table and was immediately met with the force of Jon Warden’s wit.

“Hey Pujols!” the former reliever called out. “I thought you were hurt.”

McLain, the 31-game winner, has been to prison and criticized former teammates in a book released last year. But he was invited with all the rest. He sat at a table next to Brown on the stadium’s upper concourse, a 20-ounce bottle of Diet Pepsi at his side.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland walked into the dugout with a noticeable bounce in his step prior to a pregame ceremony to recognize the team. He remained near the front railing as each player was announced and applauded enthusiastically for each as he ascended the steps.

Earlier in the afternoon, he welcomed several of the same players into his office to tell old stories. Leyland had known many of those men for years. He was a catcher in the Detroit farm system at that time and spent the summer of ’68 with Montgomery of the Southern League.

As they left the clubhouse, Leyland left them with a simple message.

“Come back whenever you’d like,” Leyland said. “You’re welcome anytime.”