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

by Tim Wendel

Gates Brown said he and teammates learned to steer clear of the various get-rich schemes McLain masterminded over the years. “Denny was one of those guys who could look you in the face and lie and lie some more,” Brown said. “But he was such an outgoing, funny guy that you didn’t mind the money flying out of your pocket … Plus, the SOB knew how to win ballgames.”

  Through it all in 1968, the Tigers put runs on the scoreboard for McLain, and he usually responded with scoreless innings. Thus far in the Series things had been different, but in Game Six it was back to old times. In the second inning, Detroit scored two runs off Cardinals’ starter Ray Washburn, who looked nothing like the pitcher who won Game Three or pitched the second of two no-hitters at Candlestick Park back in September. Despite averaging just two walks per nine innings during the ’68 regular season Washburn walked Norm Cash in the second inning and Willie Horton got the Tigers off and running, stroking a double to the left-centerfield wall scoring him. Bill Freehan soon followed by breaking out of a five-game hitless string, his single bringing in Horton. After two innings Detroit held a 2–0 lead, with plenty more to come.

  When Bob Gibson pitched, catcher Tim McCarver said the Cardinals had a tendency “to fall into a stupor.” For his part, McCarver reminded himself not to “just become a fan. . . . [The] only thing that saved me was that he worked so fast and was so difficult to catch, he never gave me a chance to fall into an enraptured state.”

  In Game Six, of course, Gibson wasn’t on the mound for St. Louis. Round Three of the Great Confrontation wasn’t to be. Since the Tigers were on the ropes, they were starting McLain on short rest as their best hope of staying alive. Yet Gibson’s presence hovered over proceedings like the Cheshire Cat. For the Cardinals knew that even if they lost, their ace, the man who had so thoroughly dominated the Tigers in Game One and Game Four, would once again be on the mound for them in Game Seven. McCarver told the press that the Tigers were a better ballclub than New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox—the teams the Cardinals had vanquished in 1964 and 1967. So why was St. Louis on the verge of its third championship in five years? “There are two good reasons,” McCarver said, nodding at Brock and Gibson.

  Years later, McCarver decided the safety net and assurance that Gibson provided perhaps didn’t help the ballclub as much as everybody thought at the time. In his autobiography, Gibson wrote, “McCarver recently commented that, after thinking about the 1968 Series for twenty-five years, he has come to believe that the Cardinals may have been overconfident in the knowledge that no matter what happened in Games Five and Six, I would be on the mound for Game Seven. It’s a dangerous thing to let another team gain momentum.”

  That’s exactly what the Cardinals did in Game Six in St. Louis. But when does a manager play his ace? Per conventional thinking, Gibson was scheduled for Games One, Four, and Seven, if necessary. Nevertheless, hadn’t Red Schoendienst been tempted to go to the hammer earlier, with the Cardinals back in St. Louis with a three games to two lead, needing just one more win to close the Series out? Certainly the manager’s decision would have been criticized if Gibson lost an earlier-than-scheduled start that left the team facing a Game Seven without him. Looking back at it, some wondered if Gibson was better off with the usual rest. Perhaps the “rain game” had taken more out of him than it appeared to most, especially the Tigers’ hitters. But as Smith’s decision to pitch McLain on two-days’ rest proved, the option was there. Schoendienst may very well have been just as confident that Washburn could close out the Series after his strong performance in Game Three, but still, one wonders—like McCarver—whether the assurance Gibson provided also resulted in a lack of urgency.

  Conversely, there are examples of skippers who have gone all in at such times in the World Series. In 2003, Florida Marlins’ Jack McKeon repeatedly said during the postseason that he was managing to win at all costs, and he lived up to his word. With the Marlins ahead three games to two over the favored New York Yankees, McKeon made the call to send his staff ace to the mound for Game Six, going with Josh Beckett on short rest. McKeon maintained a Game Seven offered too many intangibles. “You have an error, somebody gets hurt,” he said. “We had the momentum at the time, why not go for it?”

  In going all-in, McKeon certainly raised the stakes. Beckett, the twenty-three-year-old right-hander, had pitched seven and one-third innings in his previous World Series outing. He had gone only 9–8, with 3.04 ERA, during the regular season. Some warned that McKeon was jeopardizing the young star’s future.

  In the end, though, Beckett shut out the Yankees, 2–0, and became the youngest Series MVP since Livan Hernandez in 1997. More impressively, Beckett became the youngest pitcher since Bret Saberhagen in 1985 to win the deciding game. For his part, the young pitcher didn’t see what the big deal was. “I think you condition yourself well enough to throw on [short] rest,” Beckett said.

  McKeon added, “Who are all the experts who say you can’t pitch on three days’ rest? You’re not an expert until you’re in my shoes. We had confidence in the game.”

  Thirty-five years earlier, the Cardinals certainly had confidence in their staff ace. Yet they held him in reserve, awaiting a possible Game Seven. For the Tigers, meanwhile, it meant for at least one more game they had a chance.

  Before Game Six, Denny McLain told Jim Northrup that he needed eight runs to assure the elimination-game victory. That would have been a joke between most teammates, but if anybody could make good on such requests it was Northrup. In ’68, the left-handed hitting outfielder remained an integral member of the Tigers’ Michigan gang. He, Bill Freehan, Mickey Stanley, and Willie Horton had been playing with and against each other since high school.

  “We didn’t have a lot of mystery guys on that ’68 team,” Horton said. “Most of us had known each other for ages. During that time frame, 75 percent of the guys had come up through spring training in Tiger Town, being in the minor leagues together. Guys in the dorms used to have pillow fights or sneaked out after curfew. That was just like college to us.”

  “Cheeseburger, fries, vanilla shake,” Lolich added. “That’s what Gates Brown always ordered. I know that because when we were together in the minor leagues, in the South, he wasn’t allowed to go into the restaurants. We’d always stop after a road game, when we were on the bus, and I’d order for him.”

  Years later, many of the Tigers players still gathered for lunch in the Detroit area and Lolich would often order for Brown. “Cheeseburger, fries, vanilla shake,” the pitcher said. “I can repeat that order in my sleep.”

  While Northrup’s lunch order wasn’t as predictable, his teammates soon learned that they could count on him for the timely long ball. With such teammates as Horton, Mickey Stanley, and Al Kaline, Northrup was sometimes overlooked on that ’68 ballclub. Yet he led that squad in hits (153) and RBI (90). Amazingly, he picked up sixteen of those runs batted in with just four at-bats.

  Back in late June, Northrup hit two grand slams in consecutive at-bats as Detroit defeated the Cleveland Indians, 14–3. Five days later, he blasted another bases-loaded homer, which paced McLain to his fourteenth victory of the season. The grand slam was Northrup’s fourth in three weeks.

  An avid fisherman, Northrup couldn’t help thinking about the ones that had gotten away, though. In the first inning of the Cleveland game, he had taken a called third strike with the bases loaded. In the Chicago game, he swung at a ball in the dirt, again with the bases full. “So I had the opportunity to hit five grand slams in a week,” Northrup said, “and I didn’t do too well on a couple of ’em.”

  A notorious streak hitter, Northrup hadn’t done much at the plate heading into Game Six of the World Series. Smith’s radical shift of Stanley to shortstop not only put Kaline in the everyday lineup, it also allowed him to keep Horton and Northrup in the starting outfield. Through five games of the Fall Classic, however, it seemed to be much ado about nothing. While Kaline had done his part at bat and in the field, Northrup had struggled. He entered Game Six
having gone only three of nineteen, with a two RBI. Striking out in his first at-bat in the second inning, it looked unlikely he was going to turn things around.

  With Detroit holding an early 2–0 lead, the Tigers’ Dick McAuliffe drew a walk off Washburn to open the top of the third. Stanley followed with a single and Kaline brought McAuliffe around with another single. That marked a disappointing early end to Washburn’s day as he was replaced by Larry Jaster. The left-hander had posted a 9–13 record in 1968, with a respectable 3.51 ERA. Still, Jaster was a journeyman—somebody to bolster the back end of a bullpen. He would retire in 1972 with a 35–33 career record. Certainly it was early in the game, but with St. Louis down only 3–0 at the time, Cardinals’ manager Red Schoendienst had other choices. They included Steve Carlton, rookie Wayne Granger (4–2 in ’68) and Dick Hughes, who had won sixteen games the year before and made two starts in the 1967 World Series. They would all pitch in Game Six, but not before the contest got out of hand.

  Cash greeted Jaster by driving in the Tigers’ second run of the inning. Then Horton worked a walk to load the bases. That brought up Northrup. Even though Jaster hadn’t gotten a batter out to this point, the Cardinals decided to leave him in the game to play the percentages. Jaster was a left-handed pitcher and Northrup a left-handed batter. In such situations, the pitcher is considered to have the advantage. Of course, what that doesn’t take into account is a batter’s propensity for hitting grand slams.

  “He was the emotional backbone of our team that year,” McLain said decades later of Northrup. “He’d get mad at you if he even saw you exchanging pleasantries with guys from the other team. Jimmy was a big reason why we were just a grind-it-out team.”

  The Tigers’ slugger drove Jaster’s low fastball deep to right field, where it touched down well back in the grandstand. Just like that Northrup had given McLain the eight runs the pitcher had requested. “Home run was going through my mind while waiting in the on-deck circle,” Northrup admitted.

  With the clout, the Tigers had scored six times in the inning with none out. Ron Willis relieved Jaster, but he only managed to throw gas on the fire, walking Freehan and hitting Don Wert, who was playing third base that day. McLain moved both runners up ninety feet with a sacrifice bunt. Next was McAuliffe, making his second appearance at the plate that inning. With only one out, Detroit had already batted around.

  The Tigers’ lead-off hitter was intentionally walked, once again loading the bases. Stanley’s grounder forced Freehan at the plate for the second out of the inning. At last, St. Louis could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yet it quickly proved to be a runaway train as Kaline’s single, his second hit of the inning, brought in two more runs.

  With that Dick Hughes came on as the Cardinals’ third pitcher of the inning. Cash and Horton both greeted him with hits, scoring two more. Finally, Northrup, of all people, made the final out when Lou Brock ran down his long fly at the wall.

  In total, fifteen Tigers came to the plate in the third inning—an exhibition that left Schoendienst wondering if it would ever end. The ten runs they produced matched the single-inning scoring record set by the Philadelphia Athletics in Game Four of the 1929 World Series against the Chicago Cubs.

  “[McLain] proved to be a much better pitcher with a lead to work with,” Gibson remembered, “especially one the size that the Tigers built for him.”

  With the Tigers on cruise control, Mickey Lolich began to lobby Smith in the Detroit dugout. If McLain could start, and more importantly win, on short rest, then Lolich felt he could do the same. Once again, Lolich was determined to keep up with his teammate and frequent nemesis. On paper, McLain and Lolich remain a baseball combination for the ages—an awesome one-two pitching punch. But off the field, in the Tigers’ clubhouse, their relationship was based more on envy and competitive jealousy than any friendship or team loyalty.

  “I didn’t hate [Denny], no,” Lolich told George Cantor years later. “It didn’t bother me that he had become the number-one pitcher. I never admitted to myself that I was number two. But I didn’t like how he made his own rules and got away with it. I came up with the Detroit organization, and you were taught that there was a certain way that you conducted yourself. It was fairly well regimented. I didn’t mind that, and neither did the other guys—just as long as the rules applied to everyone.

  “Denny never wanted to go along with the program. He always seemed to be challenging management, flaunting it, seeing what he could get away with.

  “I think Mayo took out a lot of his frustration on me in 1968. He didn’t dare touch Denny, not with the kind of season he was having. So I became the whipping boy.”

  McLain doesn’t buy that characterization.

  “Lolich was so miserable in the middle of the ’68 season because I was going so well and he was pitching so badly,” the Tigers’ ace later wrote. “There’s nothing worse than somebody wallowing in his own misery, and Mickey was a miserable guy.”

  Early on, McLain recognized that the rules, especially in sports, are rarely applied equally. In Boston, Celtics’ coach Red Auerbach drove a journeyman player like Larry Siegfried harder than his captain Bill Russell. Heading to Mexico City, the U.S. Olympic team made allowances to assure that star miler Jim Ryun was on the roster. Arguably, corners had even been cut for Lolich back in 1962, when the Tigers allowed him to play the year in his hometown of Portland. Still, when does one player’s celebrity become too much for a team to bear? One could argue that the Tigers were fast approaching that point. When the 1968 World Series concluded, Lolich positioned himself to become a nightclub performer, too, while McLain had already booked fifty gigs across the country, including a two-week engagement at the Riviera in Las Vegas. Matters would finally boil over between the two pitchers at the next year’s All-Star Game in Washington. McLain invited Lolich to fly with him in his private plane, but neglected to tell him it would be a one-way ticket. He left his teammate there in D.C. to find his own way back to Detroit.

  “There wasn’t a lot of love lost between Denny and Mickey,” rookie Jon Warden said. “Anybody on the ballclub could see that. Keeping up with Denny really drove Mickey. As for Denny? He could have cared less what Mickey Lolich or what anybody thought of him. That’s just the way the two of them were.”

  During the regular season, in the run-up to McLain’s thirty victories, Life magazine sent a writer to travel with the Tigers. When McLain lost the 2–1 heartbreaker to New York, Life quoted an unnamed teammate saying, “It’s good he lost. He was starting to act like he already won 30.”

  McLain was incensed when he found out “the overwhelmingly jealous Mickey Lolich” had been the source of those quotes.

  “I was the last guy he wanted to see win thirty games,” McLain recalled, “and Lolich’s toughest time was in ’68.”

  On this afternoon in St. Louis, however, McLain’s redemptive performance set the stage for Game Seven. He rolled along, en route to striking out seven and walking none, and as it became more and more obvious that the Series was headed to a one-game showdown, Lolich couldn’t help thinking that at long last he was going to have his chance in the spotlight, on baseball’s biggest stage. Perhaps the only thing that could have bothered him was that he had Denny McLain to thank for it.

  With two out in the ninth inning, McLain gave up his first and only run of this game. In didn’t matter as Detroit won 13–1, forcing a Game Seven in the World Series.

  “ We battled back—this has been the trademark of our team,” Al Kaline said afterward. “The big thing is we won the way we’d been winning before. Games you can’t lose. Now we’ve won these games and the Cards have a game they can’t lose.”

  A few locker stalls over from Kaline, McLain insisted his performance had nothing to do with saving face or redemption. As always he had an eye on what was on the horizon. “I didn’t have to prove a goddamn thing today,” he told Jerry Green. “I want to thank the players. I wish I could take each of them into salary nego
tiations with me. Like Northrup. He’s hit five grand slams this year, and four of them were while I was pitching.”

  When asked about being booed by the St. Louis crowd, fans known for their courtesy and civility, McLain smiled and proved that redemption was perhaps on his mind, after all, “I’ve been booed before and I’ve been booed by better fans than these. I’ve been booed by the best fans in the world in Detroit.”

  In his post-game press conference, Tigers’ manager Mayo Smith said, “We were down three to one and we’re happy to be going against Mr. Gibson.”

  Then he officially announced what everyone expected: Mickey Lolich would start Game Seven for Detroit. The left-hander, like McLain, would be pitching on short rest. Little brother was going have his chance to be the hero. All he had to do was figure out a way to do what McLain and the rest of the Tigers couldn’t—find a way to beat Bob Gibson.

  FINAL SCORE: TIGERS 13, CARDINALS 1

  Series is tied at three games apiece.

  October 10, 1968

  Game Seven, Busch Stadium, St. Louis, Missouri

  Before Game Seven, several of the Tigers players hung a SOCK IT TO ’EM sign in the visiting clubhouse. The saying was a popular refrain from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, one of the most popular shows on television, along with Gomer Pyle, Bonanza, and Mayberry R.F.D. Part rallying cry, part inside joke, SOCK IT TO ’EM summed up the Tigers’ dilemma in going against Bob Gibson again—this time in a winner-take-all.

  As scribes eyed the sign, McLain told them that he would join Pat Dobson, John Hiller, Joe Sparma, and Jon Warden in the Detroit bullpen, where he would be “trying to put together a comedy act.”

  Manager Mayo Smith explained that he was “not a good psychologist, so he wasn’t sure if his pregame conferences with Norm Cash, Bill Freehan, Dick McAuliffe, and Willie Horton did much good.” As for Gibson, Mayo added that the Cardinals’ ace “is not Superman. He’s beatable.” But his heart didn’t appear to be in such an assessment as he soon added, “But even if we don’t win, we’ve had a hell of a year.”