by Tim Wendel
The manager’s reasoning behind flipping Wilson and Mickey Lolich in the postseason rotation had been to have Wilson’s bat in the lineup at the smaller Tiger Stadium. But with Wilson now sidelined, the better-hitting pitcher had gone just 0 for 1 in Game Three, while Lolich had hit his improbable home run in Game Two at Busch Stadium.
“Is there any way to stop Brock from stealing,” Smith was later asked.
“Sure,” the Tigers manager replied. “All we have to do is play without bases.”
Right-hander Pat Dobson relieved Wilson, and after he got Orlando Cepeda to pop up he served up a three-run home run to Tim McCarver. In the span of five hitters, the Cardinals had taken a 4–2 lead. “That’s how quickly the Cardinals of that era could strike,” baseball historian William Mead said. “They always had speed with Brock and Flood. The pitching with Gibson and the others was there. The defense was excellent, too. So when the power came around for them, it was a very potent combination and pretty much unbeatable.”
Less than a month after pitching a no-hitter against San Francisco, Ray Washburn went just one inning longer than Wilson. Yet that was good enough to secure the victory on this blustery afternoon in downtown Detroit. “It was cold out there,” Washburn said of the temperatures in the mid-fifties, “but it wasn’t that bad. My control of the curve just wasn’t good. It’s the worst my control has been in some time.”
In the bottom of the fifth inning Dick McAuliffe launched a solo homer off Washburn that pulled the Tigers within a run, at 4–3. When Washburn walked Horton and Norm Cash with one out in the sixth, it looked as though Detroit was on the verge of another signature comeback. But St. Louis manager Red Schoendienst lifted Washburn and called on reliever Joe Hoerner of fungo bat fame. Hoerner snuffed out the rally, along with the Tigers’ hopes of winning Game Three, retiring Jim Northrup and Freehan.
In the top of the next inning, the Cardinals’ Cepeda blasted a three-run shot off Detroit reliever Don McMahon. The home run was Cepeda’s first in sixty World Series at-bats. With some daring-do on the base paths, coupled with a pair of home runs, St. Louis had jumped out to a commanding 7–3 lead. “Even now I can close my eyes and still see innings like that in my head,” Cepeda said. “It was beautiful what we could do sometimes. When it all came together for us.”
On the other side, everything came unhinged for the Tigers’ bullpen, a cruel reminder of the final days of the ’67 season, when another championship had been within their grasp only to slip away. After Wilson allowed three earned runs in four and one-third innings, Dobson quickly gave up another earned run in two-thirds of an inning. McMahon was rocked for three runs in an inning and John Hiller serving up four hits in his two innings of action.
Through it all, Detroit rookie pitcher Jon Warden stayed loose, ready to pitch. But he never got into the ballgame.
After the Cardinals’ 7–3 victory, McLain couldn’t help thinking that the Tigers “were cooked.”
Just like that, whatever momentum Detroit had gained by winning Game Two appeared to be lost.
FINAL SCORE, CARDINALS 7, TIGERS 3
St. Louis leads Series, two games to one
October 6, 1968
Game Four, Tiger Stadium, Detroit, Michigan
The rain came down in buckets, reminding Gates Brown of that Beatles song they played on the radio. The one with the chorus that stretched out the word itself, “Raaaaiiiaaaiiiaaaiiinnnn, I don’t mind.”
Baseball commissioner William D. Eckert likely didn’t have such lyrics running through his head on this gloomy Sunday afternoon in Motown. Before the game, he walked the field and stared up at the heavens, as if asking for divine intervention. Clearly none was forthcoming as the rain continued to fall.
Across the country, everybody was talking baseball, eager to tune in for round two of the “Great Confrontation” between Bob Gibson and Denny McLain. On the presidential campaign trail, Richard Nixon, much more of a football fan, couldn’t resist a baseball allusion or two. In a stop in Hempstead, New York, he noted that Bob Gibson stuck out seventeen batters in Game One, adding, “This administration has struck out for America. It struck out on peace aboard; it struck out on peace at home; it struck out on stopping the rise in crime and it struck out in stopping rising prices.”
In comparison, Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey took the afternoon off to attend the game, now ready to cheer for the hometown Tigers. In both clubhouses, the players expected the game to be played at some point, no matter how hard it rained down on Tiger Stadium. “Too many people watching on TV, too much money to be had,” Gates Brown recalled. “No way the big bosses would pass that up.”
After a thirty-seven-minute rain delay, the pivotal Game Four began in the darkness and mist. On its biggest stage, with so many tuning in, baseball was about to give itself another black eye. Once again many in sports would blame Eckert, pointing out it was the second major decision of the season he had whiffed mightily on. Usually the umpires have the final say on weather—if a game will be played or not, or when it would be stopped. But for World Series play, the commissioner decided he would make the final call.
“For 162 games a year we’re permitted to decide rain or shine whether a game is going to be played,” umpire Jim Honochick told pool reporters Milt Richman of United Press International and Murray Chass of the Associated Press. “Then suddenly along comes the World Series games and they take it away from us.”
Before the rain came, Al Kaline had been concerned about facing Bob Gibson at Tiger Stadium. He couldn’t help worrying about how the shadows usually fell down over the field late in the day, and how Gibson’s blazing fastball would be coming right out of that darkness. Of course, with the rain and overcast conditions shadows weren’t the issue on this day. Still, Gibson promised to be a formidable foe. He didn’t mind pitching in the rain. On May 22, he battled the elements for eight innings while narrowly dropping a 2–0 decision to the Dodgers’ Don Drysdale (the third consecutive shutout in Drysdale’s record-setting streak).
In comparison, the Game Four rain delay and slippery conditions created havoc with McLain’s pregame preparations. The Tigers’ right-hander used the extra time to take a hot shower, trying to loosen up his sore right shoulder. Yet by the time the game actually started, it was no good. “I’m not a mudder, and Game Four was as bad as it gets,” McLain said. “When I walked out for the first inning, it was drizzling, and when I threw the first pitch, it was coming down in buckets. Actually, the first pitch went OK. It was the second pitch that (Lou) Brock hit into the center-field stands four hundred and thirty feet away.”
The Cardinals tacked on another run when McLain stumbled trying to cover first base on Roger Maris’s dribbler and then Mickey Stanley couldn’t come up with Mike Shannon’s grounder deep in the hole. At the end of the first inning, the Cardinals held a 2–0 lead, and the skies showed little chance of clearing. For McLain, the fun-loving days of summer seemed long ago.
In the third inning, the Cardinals doubled their total against McLain. Curt Flood singled and came around on Tim McCarver’s triple. McCarver then scored on Mike Shannon’s double. After Julian Javier walked, the rain began to come down even harder and home plate umpire Bill Kinnamon suspended play. While commissioner Eckert would be the final arbitrator if the game was called or not, Humphrey had already cast his vote. After joining Eckert in the commissioner’s box for early innings, the presidential candidate ducked and ran for cover.
By the time Bob Gibson appeared in his second consecutive World Series in 1968, opposing players had learned never to get the Cardinal’s ace hot under the collar. One would have thought fans would have gotten the message, too.
The year before, on the eve of Game Seven against the Red Sox in Boston, Gibson had tried to share breakfast with teammates Tim McCarver and Dal Maxvill and the players’ families at the Sheraton Motor Inn in Quincy, Massachusetts. Everyone else’s order promptly arrived, except for Gibson’s. After forty-five minutes, and several comp
laints, the waitress brought out burnt toast for the Cardinals’ ace.
“This toast is burnt,” Gibson told the waitress. “Please take it away.”
“We’ll take you away,” the waitress replied.
Gibson got by with a ham-and-egg sandwich, purchased by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Bob Broeg at a diner near Fenway Park. Gibson won Game Seven over the Red Sox’s ace Jim Lonborg. “It was evident by that time, and to my good fortune, that Boston didn’t understand me,” Gibson wrote in his autobiography. “Anger was a part of my preparation. The people at the hotel, despite their best efforts to the contrary, were getting me extremely ready for the ballgame.”
A year later, in their own sweet way, Detroit fans did their part to assist Gibson in his game preparation, as well. The night before Game Four, after taping The Bob Hope Show with McLain of all people, Gibson returned to the team hotel in Detroit around midnight. At two in the morning, somebody hammered on his door yelling, “Telegram.” When Gibson opened the door, nobody was there. An hour later, the telephone rang. When he picked it up, the person on the other end of the line asked, “Is Denny McLain there?” and promptly hung up.
After a fitful night, Gibson awoke to find the hallway outside his hotel room decorated with flowers. Within baseball circles, flowers are considered bad luck, especially before a big game.
Gibson took such abuse in stride, however. While McLain was busy soaking his aching shoulder in a hot shower during the rain delay, Gibson ate an ice cream cone and worked on a crossword puzzle in Tiger Stadium’s visiting clubhouse.
After a second rain delay, this one lasting an hour and fourteen minutes, Game Four continued. But Denny McLain was no longer involved as Detroit manager Mayo Smith lifted him for right-hander Joe Sparma. The Tigers’ starter had lasted only two and two-thirds innings, giving up four runs, three of which were earned.
Of all the characters on the Tigers’ pitching staff, Sparma was the one nobody could really figure out. He possessed perhaps the best fastball on the ballclub, coupled with a hard-breaking overhand curveball. A well-rounded athlete, he played quarterback for Woody Hayes at Ohio State, keying the Buckeyes’ 50–20 victory over rival Michigan in 1961. Yet despite all the tools, Sparma was inconsistent at best on the mound. Perhaps it seemed only fitting then that he would be called on to throw in a ballgame that would soon turn into a fiasco.
“Rain, rain, rain,” the Tigers’ fans chanted, eager for the game to be called due to the weather. Their ranks on this blustery afternoon included actor George C. Scott and his wife, actress Colleen Dewhurst. Despite the outcry, commissioner Eckert ordered the infield tarp rolled up and the game continued. As the sporting world watched, baseball once again made a mockery of itself.
Soon after action resumed, Gibson reminded everyone that he was an exceptional athlete, homering off Sparma to lead off the fourth inning. With the contest becoming a rout, the teams struggled in the wet conditions, often at cross-purposes. Detroit started to stall, holding out hope for a postponement. Catcher Bill Freehan repeatedly went to the mound to talk with a long line of relievers—Sparma, Daryl Patterson, Fred Lasher, John Hiller, and Pat Dobson. Meanwhile, the Cardinals tried to hurry things along so the game would become official once five innings were in the book. Hence St. Louis’s Julian Javier trying to steal with Patterson still holding the ball on the mound. At one point the umpires called out both managers and told them to stop such gamesmanship.
“Sure I was trying to stall,” Tigers’ first baseman Norm Cash said, “when I went over to talk to Daryl Patterson in the fourth inning I didn’t have anything to say to him. I wanted to get in an argument with the umpire, which I did.”
Gibson knew as well as anybody what was at stake and, as was his wont, he decided to do something about it. Not only did he homer in the fourth inning, becoming the first pitcher in World Series history to hit two home runs, but he made sure that the game became official—rain or no rain. While the Tigers showed signs of life in the bottom of the fourth, with Jim Northrup homering into the right-field stands, Gibson did his utmost to end things once and for all. After striking the two previous batters he got Mickey Stanley to fly out to end the fifth.
“In rain or shine,” catcher Tim McCarver said afterward in the winning clubhouse, “that Gibson is fine.”
Through it all, commissioner Eckert sat stoically in the rain, alongside Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson. Humphrey never did return. “The Tigers attempted to stall, and the Cardinals attempted to hasten the lopsided game. The World Series had become a farce,” Jerry Green wrote. “The players sloshed around and deliberately attempted to make outs and the rain fell and the nation watched the incredible spectacle in its living rooms.”
Of course, baseball has suffered its share of mediocre commissioners. Ford Frick and Bowie Kuhn come to mind. Yet few reached the level of Eckert’s incompetence. As the rain fell in Detroit, his critics remembered how the commissioner had also failed to cancel all the scheduled games after Robert Kennedy’s assassination. Once again, the national pastime didn’t do right by its fans or its players. In another twist, Eckert could be blamed for at least opening the door to steroid abuse in baseball. Despite being tone-deaf about the demonstrations in Mexico City and complaints from the “Speed City” athletes on the U.S. team, one thing the International Olympic Committee did manage to accomplish was banning the use of steroids on the eve of the Summer Games. While baseball had a similar opportunity to address the use of performance-enhancing drugs in 1968, Eckert opted to pass.
The Cardinals’ Lou Brock rarely let any opportunity slip by. So, in the eighth inning, after his double staked St. Louis to a 10–1 lead, he took off for third base, sliding in safely. The stolen base was Brock’s seventh of the’68 Series, which tied his record from the previous year, and his fourteenth in postseason play, which tied Eddie Collins’s all-time record. “I didn’t know about the record until someone on the bench told me,” he later told the Sporting News. “Then I figured I owed it to myself to try it. You don’t get to play in too many World Series in your career.”
As the rain came down, Tigers’ rookie Jon Warden watched the action like any relief pitcher would: wondering if the score would become so lopsided that he might get in the game.
Back in April, when the season began, Warden had been the Tigers’ hottest pitcher. Not only had he won the team’s first victory of the campaign, but his 3–1 record early on had been the best in the American League. Yet as the season progressed, Warden became the forgotten man in the Detroit bullpen. The Tigers’ staff often threw complete games, tossing a dozen in a row at one point during the regular season. Despite Warden’s early success and his impressive fastball, others were soon being called on and eating up any available innings.
On August 25 Warden had thrown three shutout innings at Yankee Stadium and then pitched only one more time in the regular season. Yet as the World Series’ Game Four unfolded, Warden thought he might get another chance. Joe Sparma gave up two runs in one-third of an inning. John Hiller couldn’t record an out as the Cardinals battered him for three earned runs.
“I almost got in,” Warden said. “I was up several times, kind of chomping at the bit. I mean it was a perfect situation. Bring in the kid and let him mop up and we look ahead to another day.
“I hate to say it but sometimes Mayo Smith wasn’t the sharpest manager around. But in a way he was exactly the right kind of guy to manage that team. What I mean by that is he’d let things play out sometimes. Now I don’t know if that’s what he wanted or if he’d just kind of tuned out at times, just went to sleep. But he wasn’t micro-managing everything so you always had a right-hander pitching to a right-handed batter, playing every angle like that. He’d kind of forget. He’d let the players take it over.
“But on that day, Game Four, that kind of managing sure didn’t work in my favor. He let Hiller stay out there and get pounded when I would have loved a chance to have that experience. I mean let me have a chanc
e to get pounded, too. Unlike Denny, I could throw in the rain.”
After the game, Humphrey appeared in the Tigers’ clubhouse. No matter that the hometown team had suffered the most lopsided defeat since the New York Yankees defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates 12–0 in 1960, the candidate was ready to press the flesh.
“ Willie, you’ve had a great year,” he told Horton, shaking the slugger’s hand.
“Who’s that cat?” Mickey Stanley asked as Humphrey headed for the door.
FINAL: CARDINALS 10, TIGERS 1
St. Louis leads the series, 3–1
October 7, 1968
Game Five, Tiger Stadium, Detroit, Michigan
Before the 1968 season, only two teams had rallied from a 3–1 deficit in games to win the World Series (the 1925 Pittsburgh Pirates and the 1958 New York Yankees). After being humiliated in the rain, dominated twice by Bob Gibson and driven to distraction by Lou Brock’s base-running, the Detroit Tigers didn’t appear to have much of a chance. If anything, they just wanted to put together one last good game for their fans at home, something more reminiscent of the regular-season heroics, regardless of how the Series played out.
“A lot of people watching us must think we’re a lousy club,” Al Kaline told the Detroit News. “And we aren’t.”
Indeed, lousy clubs often overreach and try to do too much when their backs are against the wall. Good teams, however, ones that believe in themselves, emphasize the everyday routine, the little things that got them to the championship in the first place. That’s why heading into Game Five Willie Horton and Mickey Stanley continued to discuss outfield defensive strategy. No matter that manager Mayo Smith planned to lift Horton if the Tigers ever got the lead in the late innings again. No matter that Stanley remained the starting shortstop rather than the Gold Glove center fielder. The two of them, bringing Kaline, Bill Freehan, and Jim Northrup into the conversation, maintained that Brock could be thrown out. Even though the St. Louis speedster had already tied his World Series record of seven stolen bases set the year before—and in addition had added a triple and home run—he wasn’t perfect. It only seemed that way.
