Wire to Wire

by George Cantor

  Still the Padres felt that if they could just eke out a win in Game 5, and send it back to San Diego, there was still a chance. There was always a chance.

  Series MVP Trammell was the star of Game 4 in Detroit, twice driving in Whitaker with a pair of two-run home runs in the 4–2 win.

  Alan Trammell was first eligible for Hall of Fame voting in 2002, but he barely received 15 percent of the votes cast. The next year his percentage dropped. Although no one expected Trammell to gain induction into the Hall during his first year of eligibility, as Al Kaline, the last Tiger to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, did, his low percentage of votes was puzzling. Paul White, then of Baseball Weekly, crunched myriad numbers and concluded that Alan Trammell had the best offensive abilities of any Hall of Fame–eligible shortstop who spent almost their entire career playing the position since World War II. (He elimina-ted Robin Yount and Ernie Banks, who moved to other positions midway through their careers, and Cal Ripken, who was not yet eligible.)

  There are many reasons for Trammell’s exclusion, perhaps starting with the Tigers’ recent slide into oblivion, which has caused many in the baseball establishment to overlook the accomplishments of the Tigers from the eighties. The most significant factor, however, may have been Trammell’s fragility. In 20 seasons, Trammell only averaged about 475 plate appearances a year due to injury, which denied him any chance at collecting three thousand hits, a sure-fire way to make the Hall of Fame.

  28. Mission Accomplished

  Look around. Take a good, long look. Because it will never be like this again.

  Bottom of the eighth. Gibson settles in and prepares to face the man who had always handled him with ease.

  “I created my scenario,” he says. “No way can you dominate me. This time, Goose, you’re gonna get yours.”

  “When Sparky hollered out at me, ‘He don’t want to walk you,’ I held up both hands to him, betting him 10 bucks that Gossage would come in with something I could hit.”

  Gossage’s first pitch is a slider, down and in. Gibson holds back. Ball one.

  The next pitch is a fastball.

  It takes only seconds for Gibson’s rocket to slam into the right-field upper deck. And then Tiger Stadium went up for grabs.

  The sound was like the eruption of some long-pent volcano of emotion. It started low as people realized where the ball was headed and then burst forth in a screaming thunder.

  Middle-aged men and women in the stands were jumping up and down. Teenagers were screaming. Strangers were hugging each other, laughing, crying.

  “It was insanity,” says Parrish, who watched it from his vantage point in the on-deck circle. “I looked in our dugout and it was even wilder than what was happening in the stands.”

  It was over now. No one could doubt it anymore.

  Gibson rounded the bases, was mobbed at the plate by Castillo and Whitaker, and then turned toward the dugout. His pants were torn and dirt was caked across his uniform. He looked like an escapee from a mountain man death march.

  Detroit Free Press photographer Mary Schroeder was stationed beside the dugout and began to shoot as Gibson made his turn. Her photograph of him, fists clenched, arms raised, bellowing in triumph, still hangs on thousands of walls in Michigan. It was the visual punctuation to the entire season.

  “That was sheer relief you’re seeing in that picture,” Gibson says. “It was off our backs. Everyone knew we had it.

  “I look at that picture now and I think what a wonderful moment that was. Nobody was thinking of their problems. You could check out of reality.”

  In four more years, he would have an even more unreal moment. His ninth inning blast, as he hobbled off the bench to face Dennis Eckersley, turned the 1988 World Series completely around for the Dodgers. It was voted one of the greatest home runs in baseball history. But it is the 1984 home run that he sees now, as he shuts his eyes for a moment.

  “It seems,” he says, “like it all happened just yesterday.”

  Hernandez was ready to close it out one last time. Pinch-hitter Bruce Bochy singled with one out in the ninth, but Wiggins popped to Parrish. Then it was Gwynn’s turn.

  “I know how good a hitter he is,” says Willie. “The book was you had to mix it up on him. But I wasn’t pitching in this situation. I just wanted to overpower him, throw as hard as I could. Fastballs up. That’s all. Just fastballs.”

  Gwynn swung late and lifted a lazy fly to Herndon in left. And it was finally over.

  What had started at 35–5 in April and May ended with 7–1 in the postseason.

  The crowd spilled onto the field, as the center-field scoreboard flashed the words “World Champions.” Some amateur horticulturists began ripping pieces of sod from the field, tossing them into the stands and stuffing more into their pockets. The celebration inside the ballpark was within the accepted bounds of jubilance.

  Then it all went to hell.

  Even before Gibson’s home run, thousands of people started making their way to the ballpark. Most were young and some of them were itching for trouble.

  By the time the big crowd left the stadium, the streets outside were mobbed. There was no room to walk anywhere on Trumbull or Michigan, either on the sidewalks or in the middle of the street.

  It was a frightening scene. Husbands and wives, parents and children could not hold on to each other and were wrenched apart by the wildly onrushing crowd. You had to push your way through and get a half block away before you could turn around to see where you were and start looking for your companions.

  The Detroit Police Department had promised to keep a lid on things. But whatever manpower it had sent out to control the situation was nowhere close to enough.

  It is hard to say when a celebration becomes a riot. But in this case there was no problem. A squad car had been parked on Michigan, and the mob began to rock the empty vehicle. Then it was turned over. Then someone lit a match. The car went up in flames, and so did whatever had been redeemed of Detroit’s reputation.

  A young man from the suburbs named Bubba Helms had told friends that he was going to get on television at the celebration that night. He brought a Tigers pennant downtown with him, and when he saw the police car burning he made his way over to it.

  “I kept jumping up and down in front of every camera I could find for 15 minutes or more,” he said. His picture was taken, grinning broadly, in front of the blazing car. It made the front page of many newspapers the next day and was as famous in its own way as the photograph of Gibson that had been taken less than an hour before. Bubba had made good on his pledge.

  For months afterward, the 17-year-old complained indignantly that people thought that it was him who had set the fire. No, Bubba had just been standing there. The fire was someone else’s bright idea.

  Six other police cars and a motor scooter were damaged. One man was found shot to death while sitting in his car. Eighty people were injured. There were three rapes. Store windows were smashed. A tour bus filled with senior citizens from Indiana was surrounded and its luggage compartment looted.

  Police Chief William Hart thought his department had done “a fabulous job.” “We weren’t at war. We weren’t trying to defeat anyone. We didn’t want to crunch the crowd. We wanted to let the people celebrate.”

  The people celebrated to the point of incarceration.

  From the press box windows in the third deck of the ballpark, the nation’s media looked down and gasped at what they saw. There had been rioting in other cities after championships were won, some of it even more destructive than this. But this riot was going on right below them, in plain sight, and Detroit, after all, was Riot Central, USA. The writers had a field day, and much of it was justifiable.

  As one San Diego sportswriter told his readers: “At least, we will be coming back to a better place.”

>   No one could argue with him there. A few bums had shamed an entire city in one of its finest moments. As far as the Tigers were concerned, it would be a long wait until their next one.

  Gibson’s eighth-inning homer off of Gossage effectively sealed the deal, providing an exclamation point to one of the most memorable seasons in major league history. Here he’s shown celebrating another homer earlier in the game.

  29. Decline and Fall

  It didn’t collapse all at once. But when it started, one of baseball’s greatest franchises slowly, inexorably slid into ruin, its legacy wrapped up in yesterday’s newspaper.

  “I thought for sure we’d win it again the next year,” says Sparky. “I said it right out loud at the victory celebration. That is still one of my biggest disappointments.”

  But something was missing in 1985. The indefinable chemistry had gone awry and the Tigers couldn’t get it back.

  Wilcox’s shoulder problems had put an end to his career. But Lajoie had traded with the Mets for Walt Terrell, a strong right-hander who would give them 15 wins and a lot of innings. It cost them Howard Johnson, who went on to become a force in New York with the 1986 champions. But it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  The rest of the core remained intact, but on the fringes there was a steady erosion. The bullpen disintegrated. Hernandez developed a tendency to give up the fatal home run, while Lopez and Berenguer tailed off to uselessness. Ruppert Jones decided to accept an offer from the Angels as a starter instead of coming back as a part-time player.

  The brief, glorious summer of Rusty Kuntz was over and he was gone by the following spring.

  Evans led the league with 40 homers and Parrish and Gibson had highly productive years. But the Tigers were never a factor and finished third, 15 games behind Toronto.

  Then free agency began taking bites out of the team’s heart. Parrish could not get the contract he wanted and left for Philadelphia. He was only the first.

  Tom Monaghan, it turned out, was a man of many enthusiasms. The Tigers were just one of them. There were cathedrals to build in Central America. A corporate headquarters to develop in homage to one of his heroes, architect Frank Lloyd Wright. He embarked on a quixotic scheme to turn Drummond Island, in one of the least accessible corners of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, into an exclusive golf resort.

  All of this cost big money, and team president Jim Campbell found his share of the overall budget diminished. That meant there was less available for free agents and keeping the current Detroit stars; less available for a scouting staff and the franchise’s crown jewel, its minor league system.

  He called John Fetzer one night to discuss what was going on. “I think,” he said at the end of the conversation, “we may have made a bad mistake.”

  The Tigers did hang together long enough to win 98 games and a division title with a breathtaking late rush in 1987. But they were upset in five games by Minnesota in the playoffs.

  Attendance was still running steadily above 2 million, but in 1988 something odd happened. Although the final attendance figure was still more than it had been in the championship year of 1968, the team ended up drawing more customers on the road than at Tiger Stadium.

  That was almost unheard of. Since 1960 it had only occurred three times. But this trend was never reversed. Other cities were regularly exceeding Detroit’s home attendance and one of the strongest, most dependable franchises in the majors was turning into a weak sister.

  In the eyes of the team ownership there was only one explanation: it was because of their outmoded ballpark. History and charm just didn’t get it done anymore.

  Toronto was building a dome, Minnesota and Seattle already had them, and new ballparks were going up all over. The team obviously could no longer compete if it stayed in Tiger Stadium.

  Monaghan brought in Bo Schembechler, a friend, business associate, and one of the most popular figures in Michigan, to run the baseball team. But Bo’s dynamic personality couldn’t replace the cash that was needed to rebuild the farm system.

  In some quarters his approach was perceived as rather abrasive, treating the public as if they were a bunch of recruits hoping for a football scholarship to Ann Arbor.

  “You can’t chain us to a rusting girder,” he said, demanding public support for a new stadium. Then he acquiesced in the firing of the single most popular figure in the entire organization, announcer Ernie Harwell.

  Public opinion turned against him massively. His entreaties for a new ballpark were ignored and some of their most loyal fans decided the Tigers were no longer the team they had loved for so long.

  Gibson left after 1987 and turned into an instant World Series hero in Los Angeles. Morris did the same, going to the Twins in 1991 and pitching them to a seventh-game, 10-inning, 1–0 classic victory.

  By 1989 the Tigers had almost reversed their mark of five years before, losing 103 games. Sparky left the team with no explanation as the losses piled up to go home to California, then returned under equally secretive circumstances.

  He still managed to pull it together, somehow, to get the Tigers into the race as late as August in 1991 before they folded. It would be their last meaningful season of the century.

  Attendance was now in a steady decline and the team was hemorrhaging money. By the next year, Monaghan had had enough.

  While most of the front office was in Cooperstown to attend the induction of an old Detroit hero, Hal Newhouser, into the Hall of Fame, Monaghan ended his dream and sold the team to fellow Michigan pizza mogul, and onetime minor league ballplayer, Mike Ilitch.

  He then called his old pals, Campbell and Schembechler, and fired them over the phone. It was a condition of the sale. Schembechler wound up suing his former employer, and Campbell disconsolately left the organization that had been his entire life for more than four decades.

  Ilitch held a press conference at Tiger Stadium, and while standing on the pitcher’s mound he vowed to restore the team he had worshiped as a child to its former grandeur. But nothing seemed to work.

  The players’ strike that wiped out the end of the 1994 season was the final blow. Sparky refused to manage replacement players in spring training of 1995 and when the season ended his contract was not renewed. He had led the team longer than any manager in Tigers history.

  But even his wit and wisdom were not enough to overcome the lack of talent. The farm system that had sent up Trammell, Whitaker, Morris, Parrish, Petry, and Gibson in a glowing package had gone barren.

  Players came and went, heralded as future stars upon their arrival and then fading into oblivion. Some of them suffered career-altering injuries, others just weren’t very good. The year after Sparky departed, the team lost a record 109 games. Attendance dropped to 1.1 million, among the lowest in the majors.

  Ilitch brought in John McHale Jr. to run the baseball operation, with the specific job of getting a new stadium built. While the Tigers flopped on the field, he did, at least, succeed in doing that. It would open in time for the 2000 season.

  On September 27, 1999, all the great names of the past were brought back to Tiger Stadium for a final curtain call. There were the stars of ’68 and the stars of ’84. Elden Auker was there from the 1935 champions and Eddie Mayo represented the 1945 team.

  The ballpark was packed for one final time. Men and women who had seen these athletes in their glory on this field stood and cheered wildly for them as they returned.

  There were Kaline and Horton, Gates Brown and Mickey Lolich, Bill Freehan and Jim Northrup and Mickey Stanley from the ’68 team.

  Gibson trotted out to right and Parrish to his station behind the plate. There were Bergman and Lemon; Petry and Wilcox and Morris.

  Trammell and Whitaker ran out together, emerging from the center-field bullpen and sprinting across the grass to second base, where they saluted each oth
er and went to the positions they had played for so long.

  And those who had grown up in this ballpark stood there with tears rolling down their cheeks as they remembered and cheered.

  “It all seemed like it happened just yesterday,” Gibby said.

  But if you listened closely you could still hear the past calling.

  “How’m I doin’, Edna? Mr. Medwick, this is a dangerous situation and you’ll have to come out of this game. Wert singles to right, here comes Kaline with the winning run and let’s listen to the bedlam at Tiger Stadium. He don’t wanna walk you. Go, Bird, go. That was the greatest at-bat I’ve ever seen in my life. Scorecards a dime; lineups a dime. Bless You, Boys.”

  And then the lights went out for good.

  Sparky shared the Series win with general manager Jim Campbell (on phone), but it would be their one and only celebration together; the franchise steadily disintegrated after that season and both men had left the organization by the mid-nineties. Photo courtesy of Bettmann/Corbis.

  The grand historical legacy of the Detroit franchise is stirring (although sometimes overstated). Its record of nine pennants and four championships is surpassed only by the Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Athletics in the American League.

  But from the end of World War II to the present, the team has won only two pennants. Of the sixteen teams that were in existence from that time to this, only two have a less impressive record—the legendary Chicago Cubs, with no pennants, and the White Sox, with one.

  Even three expansion teams—the Mets, Kansas City, and Toronto—have won as often or more often than the Tigers have over the last six decades.

  The mystique of the Tigers was based on the fact that for most seasons, until the collapse of the early nineties, they were competitive and managed to avoid long stays in the second division. But the ultimate success usually eluded them.