Traverse City West football coach Tim Wooer probably won’t like this story.
“I think too much emphasis is placed on the game [between TC West and crosstown rival Traverse City Central],” Wooer said earlier this season. “The kids get caught up in it.”
But given what’s on the line in this season’s matchup between Wooer’s Titans and the Trojans, no one can be blamed for getting caught up in the hype. On Friday, West and Central will collide at Thirlby Field. The winner will earn a playoff birth, the loser’s season will end.
This scenario hardly seemed plausible a month ago, after each team got off to a lackluster start to the season. The Titans limped to a 1-3 record, leaving the staff and players scratching their heads. But four straight blowout wins ensued. Meanwhile, after Coach Tom Passinault’s Trojans lost to Petoskey in week four, their record was also 1-3. But since that defeat, the Trojans have made the end zone their second home, piling up 164 points in four victories, all of which came on the road.
But the rivalry game will feel like both a home and a road game at times, with each student section sure to make their share of noise. The Titans “Bleacher Creatures” will be on hand, while the Trojan band will be fired up to play their fight song after a score. At times in the rivalry game it seems like there’s as much action in the stands as there is on the field at Thirlby.
“I love coming onto the field,” says a Titan linebacker, “it’s like Friday Night Lights with all the people and the noise.”
The schools may share a zip code, but their team chemistry and approach to the rivalry game are drastically different. Central gears up for this game every season, pointing to it for bragging rights in the city. “It can make our whole year,” Passinault has said. The Trojan staff exhibits a feverish hunger to defeat West. Some say at any cost.
“They’re a dirtier team,” says a former Trojan player who now has kids at West. Indeed, Central quarterback Mack Sovereign was ejected from a game earlier this year for a personal foul.
The Titans try very hard to treat the clash with Central as just another game. “We have to win this one to play another game,” coach Wooer insists. “I have to remind [the kids] that if they want to play against Rockford [in the playoffs], they have to win this game, or the season’s over.” As a result, at least on the surface, the rivalry doesn’t feel the same on the West side as it does on the Central campus. Some of that might have to do with history.
“Central thinks they have all the trophies and state championships and so they’re the best football school,” says former Trojan Dave Halachukas Jr., who played for Traverse City coaching legend Jim Ooley in the 1970s. With a blend of power running and stifling defense, Ooley guided the Trojans to three state titles in an 11-year stretch from 1978-1988. But since the split of the school district prior to the 1997 season that resulted in two Class A schools in Traverse City, neither team has approached that level of success. The Trojans haven’t won a playoff game in three tries, while West is 1-7 in seven trips to the post-season.
When the schools split, most of the best football players open enrolled in the new school, while Central retained the best basketball stars. Each school had their way in the respective sports for the first few years. But now any geographic imbalance in talent has leveled out.
“There are good players on both sides of town,” says a Central defensive back, “but we’re the Trojans, and it’s pounded into us that we’re the real Traverse City football team.”
The “new school” on the west side of town holds a 9-4 advantage in the rivalry series, having won each of the first four games. The Trojans, however, have won the last two contests. In 2008, the Trojans won the rivalry game 21-14 to advance to the playoffs, the last time either school has done so. This Friday’s game will be the seventh time that a playoff birth has rested on the outcome of the game for at least one of the schools and the third time it’s been on the line for both teams. Passinault has a 2-1 record in the rivalry, while Wooer is 0-2. Neither head coach has a personal stake in the emotional side of the rivalry – Passinault spent 13 years at Grand Rapids Catholic Central, the same high school he played for. Wooer spent nine seasons as head coach for Kingsley, where he won a state title.
The Titan coach may not want to place too much emphasis on the rivalry, but he can’t keep his players from doing so.
“This is for more than just bragging rights for that game,” says a senior Titan lineman who has lost twice to the Trojans. “This is about owning them for the whole year.”
This review was originally published in ForeWord Reviews magazine. Visit their website for reviews of independently published books.
If as Ted Williams famously said “Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports,” then the fastball is the most devastating weapon. While hitting a fastball may not have been that difficult for “The Splendid Splinter”, it’s downright scary for most of us and practically impossible for even the best hitters in the game. In High Heat seasoned baseball author Tim Wendel turns his attention to hard-throwing hurlers to find the fastest pitcher in baseball history.
This is no armchair investigation. Wendel treks across the US visiting ballparks, an aerodynamic testing lab, and baseball’s Valhalla, Cooperstown’s National Baseball Hall of Fame where he sifts through the artifacts of pitching legends.
Especially intriguing is Wendel’s frank and frightening examination of the beanball which uncovers a taboo subject in a game dominated by macho athletes: fear. Pitchers have long intimidated batters by throwing the ball high and tight often with devastating results. Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson explained the fear simply: “Your heart might be in the batter’s box but your ass isn’t.” The career-altering and -ending injuries outlined here include those of Tony Conigliaro, Dickie Thon and Ray Chapman.
As Wendel searches for the fastest of the fastest he dissects the usual suspects: iconic American farmboys Walter Johnson and Bob Feller; dazzling late bloomer Sandy Koufax; fiery Lefty Grove; the workmanlike Nolan Ryan whose fastball could be recognized by its sound; modern slingers Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson; and Negro Leagues legend Satchel Paige.
The diminutive Billy Wagner threw the ball as hard as anyone ever recorded on a speed gun. Buried in Division III college ball Wagner’s fastball miraculously jumped from the low 90s to 100 mph. “You just can’t figure how a guy that small can throw the ball that hard” marveled one scout. As a consequence Wagner went on to become the top closer in the major leagues, striking out batters at a record pace.
Readers will also enjoy the stories of lesser-known pitchers like Sam McDowell, Steve Dalkowski, Ryne Duren and the tragic J.R. Richard. At the conclusion of High Heat Wendel selects his top ten fastball pitchers: a list that may surprise and which will certainly spawn debate.
High Heat is more than just a cursory ranking of baseball’s fastest arms, it’s a fun and fact-filled flip through baseball’s record book that brings to life the players we previously only knew from our baseball card collections.
Neither the Cleveland Indians nor the Detroit Tigers had any chance to win the pennant when they met in a late September game in 1946. But a much-anticipated meeting between the league’s two top pitchers drew a large crowd to Memorial Stadium.
On the mound for the Indians was flamethrowing Bob Feller, with his 25-14 record. He was opposed by Tiger left-hander Hal Newhouser, whose mark stood at 25-8. It was a clash of the titans.
Cleveland owner Bill Veeck dubbed it “the pitching duel of the century,” no doubt intent on filling seats in his mammoth ballpark on the shore of Lake Erie.
As the lid-lifter of a Sunday doubleheader between the second-place Tigers (far back in the rearview mirror of the pennant-winning Red Sox) and the struggling sixth-place Indians, the contest drew far more attention than it might have normally deserved. The Tigers sent their radio announcer Harry Heilmann, the four-time batting champ, to cover the game, bucking their normal practice of piping in the feed from Cleveland’s radio signal. With 38,103 fans in attendance, the afternoon had a World Series atmosphere.
Adding to the drama, Feller was closing in on the all-time “modern” single-season strikeout record of 347, set by Rube Waddell in 1904. “Rapid Robert” entered with 320 notches on his strikeout belt. With three scheduled starts to go in the season, the 27-year old pitcher figured to have a good chance at the mark.
Hurling himself into the spirit of the pitching battle, Cleveland manager Lou Boudreau inserted his first-line regulars back in the Tribe lineup, after having played youngsters in the first two games of the weekend series against the Tigers. That included writing his own name into the shortstop position.
Spurred by a boisterous Cleveland crowd, Feller manhandled the Tigers most of the day. But Detroit scratched across a pair of runs in the fourth, and another in their half of the sixth. None of the scoring plays came on hard-hit balls, as Detroit blooped and dribbled a few base hits past the infield.
Meanwhile, Newhouser, the two-time defending MVP Award winner, was overpowering the Cleveland lineup. It was an afternoon of streaks for “Prince Hal.” He set down the first seven batters he faced before allowing a single. He proceeded to retire the next 13 Indians without incident, before, with two outs in the seventh inning, a batted ball bounced up the middle that Newhouser deflected to short. The throw was late to first and an infield hit was awarded. That was the last hit and last baserunner of the game for the home team. Newhouser set down the last seven batters, three of the last four on strikes. The southpaw had spun a two-hit shutout on just 97 pitches (71 for strikes) and had faced just 29 batters, for a 3-0 gem. He had beaten Feller to win number 26.
The game was covered like a heavyweight title bout in “The Bible of Baseball,” The Sporting News, the following week. Readers were treated to a pitch-by-pitch replay, and a photo of Newhouser surrounded in the Tiger clubhouse after the game by manager Steve O’Neill, and teammates George Castor, Hank Greenberg, George Kell, and Paul Richards, under a headline that read “Bouquets for His Job Against Bob.”
Though the Cleveland faithful had witnessed their strong-armed ace defeated in the great pitching duel, they respected the efforts of the Detroit lefty. When Newhouser stepped to the plate in the eighth inning, he received a standing ovation.
It was the first loss for Feller against Newhouser, having captured three victories in competition with the Tiger hurler in their four previous meetings. Newhouser had even bested Feller at his own game – whiffs. Newhouser had tallied nine strikeouts to Feller’s seven. The pride of Van Meter, Iowa, had logged an incredible 144 pitches in losing a hard-luck game. In his typical competitive fashion, Feller lamented his luck, but offered no alibis.
“The Tigers got eight hits off me,” Feller told the Associated Press. “But four of them were bloopers which fell just over the infield.
“What the heck, they had nothing to lose. We couldn’t get a loud foul off Newhouser.”
Each team agreed to have their two aces meet each other in the season finale, the following Sunday in Detroit. Entering that game, Feller had 343 strikeouts, and needed, depending on the source, either one or four more to break Waddell’s 42-year old record. Ironically, in the fifth inning, he fanned Newhouser to get #344, and he added four more K’s in his 4-1 victory to finish at 348. It was a new single-season record and Feller had vanquished Newhouser in round two of the “pitching duel of the century.”
Feller was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962, his first year of eligibility, while Newhouser waited until 1992 to be enshrined by the Veterans Committee.
The year 1886 proved to be a productive one for the state of Georgia.
In the “Peach State” on May 8, one of the most popular beverages in history was first concocted, and on December 18, a legendary ballplayer was born. As a result, Coca-Cola became a household name and one of the most profitable companies in the world, and Tyrus Raymond Cobb became a batting champion and eventually one of the first members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The paths of these two American giants were linked, not only in their birth, but also in the first decades of the 20th century. Cobb, who was born in Narrows, Georgia, made his major league debut for the Detroit Tigers on August 30, 1905. By that time, Coca-Cola was one of the most popular fountain drinks in the South. In September 1907, with Cobb’s Tigers on their way to their first American League flag, Coca-Cola began running an advertising campaign featuring the 20-year old ballplayer, who was on his way to the first of his record 12 batting titles. The ad showed the Georgian at the plate and claimed that Coca-Cola “will put you back into the game – relieve the thirst and cool you off.”
It was the first of many campaigns in which Cobb endorsed the soft drink. In part it read, “Ty Cobb says: I drink Coca-Cola regularly throughout all seasons of the year. On days when we are playing a double-header I always find that a drink of Coca-Cola between the games refreshes me to such an extent that I can start the second game feeling as if I had not been exercising at all, in spite of my exertions in the first.” Other ads in the Coca-Cola campaign featured future Hall of Fame members Nap Lajoie and Rube Waddell, among others.
Cobb not only lent his image and name to Coca-Cola, he also invested his money. A shrewd businessman, Cobb bought his first stock in the Atlanta-based soft drink company in 1918 at the suggestion of friend Robert Woodruff, the son of the president of Coca-Cola and later himself the leader of the company for more than six decades. Cobb took out a loan against his future baseball earnings to buy his first 1,000 shares and continued to invest in Coca-Cola throughout his lifetime. Quickly, Cobb and Woodruff developed a close relationship, harbored by their common Georgian heritage – Woodruff a native of Atlanta. Like Cobb, Woodruff was a sportsman and an intense competitor, and he would often invite Cobb to go quail hunting on his 30,000 acre hunting plantation in Ichauway, Georgia.
Cobb’s Coca-Cola investments paid off handsomely, helping to make him one of the first athletes to become independently wealthy. In sharp contrast to other athletes who squandered their money and retired broke, Cobb built an enormous fortune over the course of his playing career and beyond. Confident in Coca-Cola, Cobb encouraged his friends and family to invest in the “Pause that Refreshes,” as well. Future Hall of Fame second baseman Charlie Gehringer, who debuted as a rookie with Detroit under Cobb’s leadership in 1924, recalled that Cobb would give the younger players financial advice. “He told us about Coca-Cola and egged us on to buy the stock, but we weren’t making enough money to buy shares,” Gehringer recalled years later.
One of baseball’s highest paid players, Cobb continued to put money into the company, later purchasing three Coca-Cola bottling plants, in Santa Maria, California, Twin Falls, Idaho and Bend, Oregon. Eventually he would own more than 20,000 shares of Coca-Cola stock, making him one of the major stockholders in the company and earning him a place on the board of directors. As the company grew, Cobb’s fortune swelled. At the time of his death in 1961, Cobb’s estimated worth was between $10 and $12 million, “a large volume of it generated by Coca-Cola stock,” according to Coca-Cola spokesman Phil Mooney. Due, in large part, to these investments, Cobb was able to establish the Cobb Educational Foundation of Atlanta, which paid college tuition for thousands of young people, and to build the Cobb Memorial Hospital of Royston, Georgia, just a few miles from his home town.
Cobb’s personality was a valuable commodity for Coca-Cola, even after his playing days ended. In 1947, the company released a set of cardboard posters, “All-Time Winners,” one of which featured Cobb, which introduced him to a new generation of baseball fans and soda drinkers. Other sports legends included in that series were boxer Gene Tunney, golfer Bobby Jones and football great Red Grange. In 1986, a special limited edition commemorative bottle with a photo of Cobb on the side was issued to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Cobb’s birth and the birth of Coca-Cola. The Hall of Fame has one of those bottles in its collections.
When Walter Johnson pitched his first professional game, he lost 21-0. Almost all of the runs were scored on third strikes that his catcher failed to secure because of their speed. Johnson threw hard.
The tall, long-armed 19-year old right-hander soon found a new catcher, and in less than a year he was in the big leagues and on his way to immortality.When he faced the potent offense of the Detroit Tigers in his major league debut in 1907, Johnson, a fresh-faced farm boy just called up from the Idaho State League, was heckled mercilessly by the raucous Tigers.
“Hey, look at the rube!” they hollered, as they mooed like cows and made other barnyard references. The Tigers won that game, 3-2, in large part because of the many bunts they dropped down against the unsuspecting rookie. Following the game, Johnson was on the field with a teammate fielding bunts, vowing never to be defeated by that method again.
In a 21-year career, “Big Train” won his share of games, as he captured 417 victories, all in the uniform of the Washington Senators. Pitching for mediocre teams for much of the first half of his career, Johnson was amazingly successful. In 1913, he went 36-7, while the rest of his team was 54-57. He was a one-man losing-streak stopper. He won as many as 20 games twelve times, including ten times in a row from 1910-1919. With his lightning-quick fastball that one opposing batter described as “the most terrifying flying object in the world,” Johnson notched strikeouts at a record pace. He led the American League in K’s 13 times in his career.
Facing Johnson was a challenge for even the best major league hitters, who rarely – if ever – had seen a pitcher throw that hard. What amazed observers the most was his ability to throw hard throughout the entire game. Previously, other hurlers – Amos Rusie, Rube Waddell and Cy Young, for example – had featured blazing fastballs, but Johnson seemed to throw even harder, and more frequently.
Ty Cobb once said that his most difficult days in the big leagues were when the clouds darkened the field and Walter Johnson was on the mound. Johnson’s tremendous fastball was hard enough to hit when you could see it coming, but from the shadows, it was nearly impossible. Nevertheless, Cobb employed a secret trick to ensure success against Johnson. He stood practically on top of the plate, knowing that Johnson feared his fastball would kill a man if he hit him in the head, Cobb figured correctly that Johnson would toss pitches outside. Cobb feasted on those pitches, but he was one of the very few who faired well against the Senator hurler.
The right-hander, who hurled a record 110 shutouts, had a ritual that became familiar to Cobb and others who faced him frequently throughout the years. Standing tall on the hill, Johnson would tug at the bill of his cap, dip his pitching hand into the dirt of the mound, allow the darkened earth to sift slowly through his fingers, peer into the center of his catcher’s mitt, rock back slightly as he lifted his arms over his head, and propel himself toward the plate. His long arm, often at a sidearm angle, would whip toward the batter, almost seeming to reach the plate itself. The batter would then have a few precious seconds to locate the ball, recognize the type of pitch, and direct his bat toward the flaming sphere. Often, the battle was over before the hitter could get his bat through the strike zone. On 3,509 occasions, Johnson fanned the enemy batter.
Johnson himself, writing for Baseball Magazine in the midst of his career, gave his own scouting report on himself.
“I [am] fortunate in the few things that are mine: speed, good control and a very fair curve. These things are all I need and with their use I am content to leave well enough alone.”
That simple formula worked just fine for Walter Johnson, who finally won a World Series title with the Senators in 1924, and who earned election to the Hall of Fame in 1936 as one of the first five selected for that honor.
When Babe Ruth went down on strikes in an exhibition game in Chattanooga in 1931, it was at the hand of a pitcher described as having “a swell change of pace,” as well as a “mean lipstick.”
That pitcher was teenage left-hander Jackie Mitchell, one of the most talented female hurlers ever to take the mound, and a pioneer for women in the sport, despite being run out of professional baseball just as her career was starting.
A talented athlete from an early age, Virnett Mitchell answered to “Jackie,” and at the age of seven or eight, received pitching pointers from future Hall of Fame right-hander Dazzy Vance. Encouraged by her father, Mitchell participated in many sports, excelling at tennis, basketball, boxing, and running, as well as shooting. Being left-handed made her a commodity on the pitcher’s mound, where reportedly she once struck out nine men consecutively as a teenager in a sandlot game.
It was the “Barnum of Baseball,” Chattanooga Lookouts owner Joe Engel, who made Mitchell a professional ballplayer. Engel, a former big league player who scouted for the Washington Senators after his playing days, was known for his innovative, entertaining, and often zany promotional stunts. He once traded his shortstop for a 25-pound turkey, and then invited sportswriters to his house to eat the turkey for dinner.
Engel inked Mitchell to a minor-league contract in 1931, after spotting her in a baseball camp in Georgia. With the 17-year old Mitchell under contract, Engel promoted his Lookouts as the only club with a female pitcher. An exhibition game was scheduled between the Lookouts and the New York Yankees for April Fool’s Day. However, rain forced the game to be played on April 2, and Mitchell would make her debut against professional competition one day later than planned.
In the first inning, after starter Clyde Barfoot surrendered hits to the Yankees’ first two batters, Mitchell was called upon to face the heart of “Murderers’ Row,” Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
The Chattanooga News provided a scouting report on Mitchell: “She uses an odd, side-armed delivery, and puts both speed and curve on the ball. Her greatest asset, however, is control. She can place the ball where she pleases, and her knack at guessing the weakness of a batter is uncanny.”
That uncanny knack came in handy when Mitchell faced Ruth, who watched her first sinker dart low for ball one. Mitchell followed with a sinker on the outside corner, which the Babe swung through and missed. Grinning, the “Sultan of Swat” swung at the next offering and missed for strike two. The next pitch was another sinker on the corner of the plate, which Ruth watched sail by for called strike three. At that point, according to The Baseball Chronology, the Babe “kicked the dirt” and “gave his bat a wild heave” as he stormed unhappily to the dugout.
“After I threw the second strike, I settled down a little. I figured then that it wasn’t going to be so hard for me to get the ball over the plate,” Mitchell said years later in an interview.
Next up was Gehrig, who promptly missed three straight dipping sinkers, swinging early each time. On seven pitches, Mitchell had struck out Ruth and Gehrig, two of the game’s greatest sluggers. The Chattanooga crowd responded with a rousing standing ovation. Mitchell faced the next Yankees’ batter, second baseman Tony Lazzeri, who tried to bunt the first pitch but failed. Lazzeri eventually walked and Mitchell was removed from the game. Engel had maximized her gate appeal by using her to face the heart of baseball’s greatest lineup. The 17-year old had squared off against three future Hall of Famers, striking out two of them. The next day, one newspaper would speculate that “maybe her curves were too much for them.”
Unfortunately for Mitchell, her game against the Yankees turned out to be her last as a professional in organized baseball. Within days, commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis voided her contract and declared that baseball was too strenuous for women. But her fame was not voided. She was “The Girl Who Struck Out Babe Ruth,” a fact that Engel capitalized on. Mitchell landed a contract with the Engelettes, an all-female team in Chattanooga. In subsequent years, Mitchell played in the outlaw Piedmont League, toured with female golfer/athlete Babe Didrikson, and pitched for the famous “House of David” barnstorming teams of the 1930s. In 1937, at the age of 23, Mitchell retired from baseball and exited the spotlight. When the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League debuted less than a decade later, Mitchell resisted offers to get back into the game. Forty-five years later, in 1982, the 68-year-old Jackie threw out the ceremonial first pitch for the Chattanooga Lookouts on opening day. She died in 1987.
Various sources disagree as to whether Mitchell’s strikeout performance against Ruth and Gehrig was legitimate or part of an orchestrated ruse. Lazzeri was on record as saying: “I had no intention of striking out, I planned to hit the ball.” According to the Hall of Fame’s Amanda Pinney, a Mitchell expert who has researched the incident, Jackie maintained to her dying day that the strikeouts were real. “They [Ruth and Gehrig] had no intention of striking out,” Pinney said. “The game was an exhibition, but the only instructions the players got were to not hit the ball back up the middle against Jackie.”
Ruth and Gehrig never had to worry about hitting the ball up the middle. They never even made contact.
Tucked away in the corner of the home dugout of Tiger Stadium, the Detroit City police officer spent nine innings with a towel wrapped around his head. Had he not, his ears would have rung from the chirping that came from behind him. It wasn’t a bird, but The Bird that chirped incessantly, relentlessly, and LOUDLY throughout the ballgame.
Mark Fidrych had the day off. But his famous beak didn’t.
It was July of 1976, the Summer of The Bird. When Fidrych, the 21-year old rookie, was on the mound – actually IN the game – he was the center of attention. He couldn’t help but be. The spotlight found him, and it was for the simplest of reasons. He was himself. Refreshingly so.
Back in April, before he captivated the city and ultimately the entire baseball world, Fidrych made his big league debut without expectation, without fanfare. He was just another hard-throwing right-hander, a gangly kid from New England who said things like “Pahk yuh cah in the yahd.“ He was a late addition to the roster out of spring training, a new face on an aging team that had collapsed the previous season on the way to 102 losses, including an embarrassing 19 in a row.
It was nearly a month before he made his first start, facing the Indians at Tiger Stadium on a Saturday afternoon in front of less than 15,000 fans. Less than two hours later, Fidrych was finished, having tossed nine nearly perfect innings. He set down the first 14 batters he faced before issuing a walk, and took a no-hitter into the 7th inning, before surrendering a pair of scratch singles. A groundout, a strikeout, and a flyball later, he was out of the inning, nursing a 2-1 lead. Four groundouts and a pair of strikeouts followed in the 8th and 9th, and that was it. The rookie had his first victory, a complete game two-hitter. It was the first of his league-leading 24 complete games. An unheard of total for a rookie hurler.
He quickly became “The Bird” in large part because of his slender build (his knees almost popped out of his uniform pants, stork-like) and curly blonde locks. Less than two months later Fidrych had a 9-1 record, and adoring female fans were bribing his barber for strands of his famous mane. He was big-time. There was the cover of Time Magazine and Sports Illustrated. There was an appearance on the Donny & Marie Show and Flip Wilson. At least two biographies were published mid-season. There was the City of Detroit passing a resolution recommending that the Tigers give Fidrych a pay raise. Five years before Fernanado Valenzuela spawned Fernandomania in Los Angeles, there was Birdmania in Motown.
And there were fannies in the seats. Lots of fannies.
There’s no evidence that Tigers General Manager Jim Campbell made an effort to pitch Fidrych at Tiger Stadium as much as possible, but during one 13-start stretch at the peak of The Summer of The Bird, the right-hander made 10 starts at the Corner of Michigan and Trumbull and just three on the road. Draw your own conclusions.
Opposing teams salivated at the opportunity to have The Bird on the mound in their ballparks. In Cleveland, where they normally drew about 10,000 fans, 37,000 showed up for The Bird in July. More than 30,000 flocked to see Fidrych and the Tigers in Minnesota. Even in The Bronx, home of the Yankees, Fidrych was a draw. Oakland, which finished 11th in the 12-team league in attendance, drew more fans to see The Bird than they did for a three-game series the previous week.
Why did fans around the country clamor for The Bird? It was his refreshing antics, something rarely seen on a diamond before or since. When The Bird was between the lines, it was a Show. He didn’t take the mound, he pranced on it. He didn’t have a pitching motion, he had a rhythmic, almost hypnotic ritual. Dipping his shoulders toward the ground, bending, leaning, bobbing and weaving as he addressed the plate. And he spoke. He talked – was it to the baseball? Was he telling it where to go? What was this Harpo of the hill up to? Did he have a special relationship with the magical sphere? It seemed he did. He waved his hands in the air, gesturing the ball toward the plate, coaxing it to do his bidding. And it did. He fired 94-mile-an-hour fastballs at the knees like lasers. He carved the corners of the plate. Opposing batters shook their heads, trudged back to their bench, and wondered what had just happened. The Bird fired a four-hitter, two five-hitters. He pitched an 11-inning shutout. 11 innings!
It didn’t seem to matter who was at bat, in fact he didn’t notice, and rarely even knew who they were. He was playing catch. He was hurtling the baseball toward the catcher’s mitt, firing it to a target that he was intensely focused on. The manner in which he pitched – the talking (which was never TO the ball, but rather a dialogue for himself, to help him stay focused on his mechanics), the gesturing, the handshaking of his teammates after they made a fine play behind him, the tossing balls out of play which had resulted in a hit, because they needed to “learn to be an out” – it was never contrived. It wasn’t for the cameras, it wasn’t to get his name on billboards. It was mop-haired Markie Fidrych, the funny looking bundle of energy from Massachussetts who knew only one way to play baseball. And the people loved it.
He started the All-Star Game. He defeated the New York Yankees on national television on Monday Night Baseball, earning praise from the curmudgeon Howard Cosell. In August, Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles went to the plate and talked to his bat, trying to psych out The Bird. Fidrych laughed, smiled that famous, infectious smile, put his arms out in a “I can’t believe it” manner, and proceeded to strike Nettles out with another knee-high heater.
He won 19 games, led the league in ERA and complete games, and won the AL Rookie of the Year Award easily. He finished second in the Cy Young Award voting and 11th in MVP voting despite playing for a team that was hopelessly out of contention. None of the attention fazed him. He wore ragged blue jeans, drove a rusty pickup, and drank cheap beer.
The following spring he was still Mark, still that character, care-free and youthful. He was playing around in the outfield during spring training, shagging flies with his teammates. A ball sailed toward him and The Bird leaped in the air in a futile attempt to snare it. But he wasn’t a bird, and he didn’t have wings – he couldn’t fly. When he landed, he wrenched his knee. He continued to pitch, and with that bum knee, he altered his motion, tearing the muscle. But he didn’t know that then, no one did. He started the ‘77 season with two losses, then strung together six Bird-like victories: crisp, two-hour games with plenty of knee-high fastballs, cheering fans, and antics on the mound. But by July his wing was dead.
He was never an effective big league pitcher again. He was always “attempting a comeback” or “poised to return.“ He was still “The Bird” when he pitched, but it wasn’t as glamorous when he couldn’t win like he had in the Summer of 1976. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, after he had been released by the Tigers and failed in a comeback with his hometown Red Sox, that doctors (with new technology) recognized the severity of the damage to his famous right arm. The rotator cuff was nearly torn clean through. But by that time he was a truck driver, a farmer, a former ballplayer.
And that’s the way Mark Fidrych spent his years after baseball, and that’s the way he died on Monday. It’s tempting to see his end as tragic. But Mark Fidrych stopped being tragic decades ago, when the failed promise of his fantastic start was exceeded by that amazing rookie season. He played baseball the way he lived life – with a genuine heart and carefree abandon. He lived his post-baseball life the exact same way. His death is sad, but The Bird will always be remembered for his breath of fresh air back in the Summer of 1976.
Mickey Lolich described himself as “the beer-drinker’s idol.” With his portly physique and likable disposition, the pitcher was popular with Tiger fans during his 13 seasons in their uniform. His talented left arm didn’t hurt his cause either.
Of Yugoslav descent, Lolich was born in Portland, Oregon, September 12, 1940, the same day that Schoolboy Rowe defeated the Yankees to keep the Tigers a half-game ahead of the Indians in the American League pennant race. Lolich’s father was a parks director, which kept him outside, and his kids near the parks and play equipment. Consequently, Mickey (born Michael Stephen Lolich) developed into an outdoorsman and an athlete. Lolich said that as a kid he threw rocks at “birds, squirrels, and anything else that moved.”
As a result, he built a strong arm. But Lolich was initially right-handed. As a toddler, he was favoring his right arm, until one day he tipped over a motorcycle onto himself. The bike landed on his left side, damaging his left arm and shoulder. That summer he wore a cast on the arm and performed exercises to strengthen the torn muscles. When the cast came off, Lolich was a southpaw.
As a youth in Oregon, Lolich played lots of baseball, though there wasn’t a major league team to follow. “The only games we would get were national broadcasts of the Yankees,” Mickey said, “so I grew up idolizing Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford in the 1950s.” Later, Lolich and Ford would pitch against each other in the big leagues.
Young Mickey served as visiting batboy for the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League, where he met several baseball legends, including Lefty O’Doul. Lolich also met an umpire named Emmett Ashford, who later became the first African American umpire in the major leagues.
As a teenager, Lolich pitched brilliantly for local Babe Ruth and American Legion teams, setting Oregon records for strikeouts that still stand. Lolich’s 1955 Babe Ruth team played in the Babe Ruth League World Series in Austin, Texas, in 1955 and his American Legion team was in the American Legion World Series in Billings, Montana, in 1957. One pitcher who Lolich battled in amateur tournaments was Al Downing, also a left-hander, who was signed by the Yankees at the same time Mickey was being scouted. “My uncle told me Al had signed with the Yanks,” Mickey said, “and I knew I’d be battling him to get to the majors, so I signed with the other team that was really interested in me, the Detroit Tigers.”
Lolich posted a 19–5 record at Lincoln High School in Portland and signed on the dotted line June 30, 1958, for $30,000 with Tigers scout Bernie deViveiros.
In his first season in the minor leagues, playing under Johnny Pesky with Knoxville in the Sally League, Mickey weighed 160 pounds, and as he said, “was nothing but skin and bones.” Displaying an independent attitude that was his trademark, one year Lolich reported late to spring training because he took the civil service exam in Portland. With his eye on a job as a letter carrier should his arm ever fail him, Mickey was making sure he had a backup plan in place. During a stop in Triple A Denver he was struck by a line drive below his right eye. Lolich was gun-shy afterward, and his pitching suffered badly.
Lolich’s refusal to take a demotion inadvertently led to him learning a pitching style that in turn led to his later
success in the big leagues. After three seasons of bouncing on both sides of the Double A divide, Tigers General Manager Jim Campbell asked Lolich to report to the A-ball Knoxville Smokies again in 1962. Lolich, who didn’t like Smokies manager Frank Carswell, balked and instead flew home to Portland, telling the Tigers he was done. Shortly after, he toed the rubber for a semi-pro team, fanning 16 batters in relief and catching the attention of the Portland Beavers. Campbell arranged a deal to loan Lolich to Portland for the season. Pitching at home, the 21-year-old Lolich won 10 games and received pivotal advice from pitching coach Jerry Staley. A former big-league hurler, Staley advised Lolich to stop trying to fire the ball hard all the time, and to focus on throwing strikes.
Lolich pitched brilliantly in spring training in 1963 but failed to make the Tigers’ roster. After a brief spell with Triple A Syracuse, Lolich was called up to Detroit in May, initially working out of the bullpen. Ironically, it may not have been his considerable fastball that enabled him to beat out other more highly touted lefties for the open spot on the roster. “That young Lolich is all business out there,” Detroit vice president Rick Ferrell observed. “I like his breaking stuff.” Staley’s advice had paid off. Lolich was evolving from a thrower into a pitcher.
Lolich’s big-league debut came May 12, 1963, in a 9–3 Detroit loss to the Cleveland Indians. He struck out the first two batters he faced, Max Alvis and Sam McDowell. Later inserted into the rotation by manager Bob Scheffing, Mickey earned his first win May 28 in Los Angeles against the Angels, going the distance. Complete games became a Lolich trademark. Later in 1963, he pitched a one-hitter for eight innings against the Baltimore Orioles only to surrender a two-run homer in the ninth, losing to veteran Robin Roberts. “I guess you can’t beat an old pro,” Mickey said philosophically.
In his first full season in the Detroit rotation in 1964, helped by a tip from new Tigers skipper Charlie Dressen, Lolich won 18 games with a 3.26 ERA and 192 strikeouts in 44 games, 33 of them starts. As a scout with the Dodgers the previous season, Dressen had noticed that Lolich was tipping his pitches and helped the left-hander fix the flaw. In his windup, Lolich had been raising his arms higher when he threw his fastball and lower for breaking pitches. Mickey adopted a new windup and continued to show that he was more than just a fastball pitcher.
“Lolich’s fastball is so good that he can get away with a mistake once in a while,” Dressen said. “But the big difference is that he comes in with the curve when he’s behind the hitter.”
On April 24, 1964, Lolich fired a 5–0 shutout against the Twins in Minnesota, which was not only his first shutout in the big leagues, but his first as a professional at any level. On September 9, he fulfilled a dream when he shut out the Yankees and his idol Whitey Ford, 4–0, at Tiger Stadium. American League batters began to take notice of the 23-year-old. “Lolich throws so easy,” Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle observed. “He keeps the ball down,” said Leon Wagner of the Cleveland Indians, “that’s why he’s so good.” Over a stretch in September, Mickey pitched 30.2 consecutive scoreless innings.
During the season, Lolich met Joyce Feenor, an airline stewardess from Hollywood, Florida, and the two were married on November 21. Mickey credited Joyce with his breakout season. “I called her each night before I pitched, and I called her after every game.”
The following year, Lolich’s 15 wins were surpassed by only three other AL lefties—Jim Kaat, McDowell, and Ford. His 226 whiffs ranked second in the league—the fist of four times he would be runner-up in that category (he led the league once). “I know I have some good years ahead in Detroit,” Lolich said after the 1965 campaign. “I don’t want to be an average pitcher. I want to be among the best.” On May 29, Lolich twirled a 10-inning complete game two-hitter to defeat the Indians 1–0 at Tiger Stadium.
In 1966, Lolich struggled to get into a groove, battling inconsistency all season as he posted a 14–14 mark and saw his ERA inflate to 4.77. However, he did become the first Tigers pitcher since Hal Newhouser to win opening day starts in back-to-back seasons.
By the end of the 1967 season, which saw Detroit battle for the pennant until the final day of the campaign, Lolich was establishing himself as one of the finer hurlers in the league. He finished the season with 28.2 scoreless innings. “That’s the best left-hander I’ve seen all year,” Boston slugger George Scott said after Mickey fanned 13 Red Sox batters late in the season at Tiger Stadium. Even curmudgeon Eddie Stanky, the White Sox manager who once tagged Lolich as a “second-line pitcher,” compared the southpaw to Hall of Famer Lefty Grove.
A member of the Michigan Air National Guard, Lolich missed 15 days due to military service in 1967, seeing action during the riots in Detroit that served to fuel racial tensions in the city. After suffering a 10-game losing skid in the middle of the season—his 5.09 ERA during this stretch was one cause, but his teammates scored just 16 runs—Lolich roared through his last 11 starts, going 9–1 in the process. He threw 87.2 innings in those 11 starts, allowing only 50 hits and 18 walks while striking out 81 and posting a 1.33 ERA. Lolich credited pitching coach Johnny Sain, who became a good friend of his, with helping him become a complete major league pitcher. Sain’s laid-back approach and his reluctance to run his pitchers appealed to Mickey.
Gradually filling out his frame, Lolich accumulated a noticeable belly, which some observers called flabby, but which he insisted, half-serious, was “all muscle.” Tigers manager Mayo Smith called him “my sway-backed left-hander.”
“I do have a big tummy, I’ll admit,” Lolich once said. “There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s my posture. When I’m going good, nobody says anything about it. If I lose a few games they start saying I’m out of shape.”
In 1968, the Tigers had the best team in the American League, coming from behind to win several games on the way to the pennant. Teammate Denny McLain won 31 games that year, overshadowing another fine season by Mickey (17–9, 3.19 ERA, 197 Ks), who actually had been pulled from the rotation in early August for poor performance. He had six appearances out of the pen before returning to the rotation. But after going 0–2 to close the season, Lolich took center stage in the World Series.
The Tigers squared off against the St. Louis Cardinals, the defending world champions. After McLain lost Game 1 to Cardinal ace Bob Gibson, Lolich righted the ship by winning Game2, 8–1 on a six-hitter. In that game, Lolich hit a home run off Nelson Briles in his first at-bat—amazing considering he was a career .110 hitter. “I wish I could pitch against hitters like me all the time,” Lolich once quipped about his lack of offensive prowess.
In Game 5, with Detroit trailing three games to one in the Series, Lolich outdueled Briles again, winning 5–3 in his second complete game. Cardinals speedster Lou Brock admitted that Lolich was tough, saying it was hard to pick up the delivery until the ball was almost on top of the plate.
Detroit won the next game in a rout to set up a seventh game match between Gibson and Lolich, both of whom had two wins in the fall classic. Detroit erupted for three runs in the seventh inning and Mickey went the distance to win, 4–1, on just two days’ rest. In the game, Lolich picked off two runners—Brock and Curt Flood—in the bottom of the sixth inning as he stymied the favored Redbirds. The southpaw had become the 12th pitcher to win three games in a World Series, and the last to win three complete-game Series contests in one year.
“I didn’t know how long I could go,” Lolich recalled. “After the fifth inning, Mayo looked at me every inning and I would tell him I was okay. Then, when [they] got me some runs in the seventh, I told Mayo I would finish it.”
As MVP of the World Series, Lolich earned a new sports car. “I hope it has a stick shift,” said Lolich, a car and motorcycle lover known for his fondness for going fast. In fact, during most of his career in Detroit, Lolich traveled the 33 miles from his suburban home to Tiger Stadium on his motorbike on the days he pitched. Another perk for the Series hero: Vice President Hubert Humphrey invited Mickey and Joyce Lolich to watch the liftoff of Apollo 8, the first mission to the moon. Lolich was already a space buff; he arranged annual tours of the space center at Cape Kennedy for Tigers players and their wives during spring training.
His performance in the 1968 Series seemed to buoy Lolich. In 1969 he won 19 games and earned his first All-Star selection. His 271 strikeouts were the third-highest total in Detroit history, trailing only Denny McLain’s 280 in 1968 and Hal Newhouser’s 275 in 1946. Twice in ’69, Lolich fanned 16 batters in a game, his career high.
Two years later Lolich shattered that team mark for Ks as he racked up 25 victories and finished second in Cy Young Award voting to Vida Blue. In 1971, his 308 strikeouts paced the league, he started 45 games and completed 29, and he logged an incredible 376 innings pitched. “I don’t like to hold back,” Lolich said of his stamina. “I have a God-given good arm.”
Lolich credited part of his success in 1971 to the addition of the cut fastball, a pitch that Sain had been trying to teach him for years. Warming up one day in spring training, Lolich noticed his fastball dipping and moving in unusual ways and realized he had finally gotten what Sain had been preaching. Armed with his new pitch (which some batters mistakenly assumed was a slider because it moved down and away so much), from 1971 through 1974, Lolich reached the 300-inning mark every season. The lefty used an unusual method to keep his arm fresh in order to rack up all those innings.
“I never used ice. I would stand in the shower after a game and soak my pitching arm under hot water for 30 minutes,” Mickey explained. “The water was scalding hot. After 30 minutes [my arm] would be red, but it would feel fine and I’d be throwing on the sidelines in two days. I never had a sore arm.”
Lolich was nearly as effective in 1972, winning 22 games as he helped lead the Tigers back to the postseason. In his final start of the regular season, the lefty dominated the Red Sox at Tiger Stadium, fanning 15 batters to vault Detroit ahead of Boston by a half-game. As usual, Mickey was a workhorse, pitching 41 games, completing 23, and hurling more than 300 innings. He finished third in Cy Young voting behind Gaylord Perry and Wilbur Wood. In the playoffs against the A’s, Mickey pitched brilliantly, posting a 1.42 ERA in two starts, but he lost one game and got a no-decision in the other as the Tigers took Oakland to the limit before losing the decisive Game 5.
Through most of his career, Lolich was a two-pitch pitcher. He threw his fastball in the low to mid-90s and relied on a curveball to set it up. In 1971, he added the cut fastball which he could throw in a few different ways to have it dip or move in or out. Regardless of what pitches he used, Mickey’s philosophy was simple: stay ahead of the hitters and let them get themselves out.
“I tried to throw two of my first three pitches to a batter for strikes,” Lolich said. “I was like, ‘Here, hit it.’”
But his fastball was hard to hit, and Lolich went on to fan more batters (2,679) than any other lefty in American League history, a record that still stood in 2007, more than three decades after he tossed his last pitch in the league.
“I can’t throw as hard as [Sam] McDowell and a lot of guys,” Lolich said early in 1966. “Dave Wickersham showed me something two years ago. He doesn’t throw hard at all. [He’s] got control and he makes the hitter go after his pitch. That’s what I have to do.”
Lolich captured 16 victories in both 1973 and 1974, and on May 25, 1975, he defeated the White Sox, 4–1, in a rain-shortened seven-inning game at Comiskey Park for his 200th career victory. But the season was one of frustration for the veteran left-hander.
Mickey suffered one of the worst stretches of offensive support in baseball history in the second-half of 1975. While the Tigers were on their way to their most dismal season in more than two decades, Lolich pitched effectively but had little help. Over the course of 14 starts from July 11 through September 13, Mickey received a total of 14 runs from his offense! Not surprisingly, Lolich’s record was 1–13 during the stretch, which included a 19-game losing streak by the Tigers. When Mickey toed the rubber on July 11, he was 10–5 with a 3.31 ERA. When he lost the last of the 13 games during the 14-game stretch, his ERA was just 3.88, but his record had sagged to 11–18. He won his next start September 20—his teammates scored five runs for him—but it was his final game in a Detroit uniform.
After the season, Lolich was dealt to the New York Mets for Rusty Staub in a trade that was unpopular with Tigers fans. Mickey never took to the Big Apple and never moved his family there. During his one season as a Met, he battled with the trainer and pitching coach, who wanted him to run and treat his arm with ice. Lolich balked at the advice. He managed a decent 3.22 ERA for the Mets, posting an 8–13 record in 1976. His biggest highlight in a Mets uniform came July 18, 1976, when he fired a two-hit shutout over the Braves at Shea Stadium in which he fanned four and did not walk a batter.
At the end of the 1976 season, fed up with New York, Lolich retired in order to get out of the last year of his two-year contract. After sitting out a year, Mickey signed with the San Diego Padres, who pursued him and gave him a two-year deal. While playing with the Mets, Lolich had enjoyed visiting San Diego and felt it would be a wonderful place to finish his career. With a young Padres club he performed well in 1978 out of the bullpen, going 2–1 with a 1.56 ERA in 20 games. The following season, Lolich introduced a new weapon to his pitching arsenal: the knuckleball. After an inconsistent 1979 season, Lolich retired and returned to his home in Michigan.
For several years, Lolich ran a doughnut shop in the Detroit suburbs of Rochester and Lake Orion before selling the business and retiring to his homes in Oregon and Michigan with his wife, Joyce. In retirement, Lolich remained active in charitable work and served as a coach at the Tiger Fantasy Camp in Lakeland, Florida, nearly every year. His hobbies included biking, shooting, archery, and ham radios, and briefly during his playing career he took pilot lessons, played the banjo, and sang on stage in Las Vegas.
In 2003, Lolich was one of 26 players selected to the final ballot by the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee. He received 13 votes, placing him far below the 75 percent required for election. Again in 2005 and 2007, Lolich was one of the few players to appear on the Hall’s Veterans ballot, but he fell far shy of enshrinement.
Lolich won 217 games in his 16-year career, fanning 2,832 batters in 3,638.1 innings. He was named to the All-Star team three times, and earned the 1968 World Series Most Valuable Player Award for his historic performance and three victories over the Cardinals. He completed nearly 40 percent of his starts, and hurled 41 shutouts.
This biography was written for Sock It To ‘Em Tigers–The Incredible Story of the 1968 Detroit Tigers, published by Maple Street Press in 2008.
Thanks to a mistake by the Washington catcher, Tiger slugger Hank Greenberg was able to deposit this baseball into the left field stands of Briggs Stadium. Not only was the home run of importance in that game, which Detroit won, 6-4, it was the 300th such blast of Greenberg’s esteemed career.On September 17, 1946, with the count two balls and two strikes on Greenberg, Senators’ receiver Jake Early fumbled, and eventually dropped, a foul tip off the bat of the tall Tiger first baseman. Given new life, the powerful right-handed Greenberg turned on the next offering from Marino Pieretti, hitting a home run into the left field seats and delighting the Detroit crowd.
It was the 38th homer for the Tiger slugger, in a season in which he would clout a league-high 44.
During his career, the Jewish Greenberg, a hero to others of his faith, and one of first major leaguers to enlist in the military for World War II, led the American League in home runs four times, but he was far more than just a slugger. In 1940 he hit a career-high .340, one of nine times that he hit over the .300 mark. He also paced the league in runs scored, doubles, hits, walks, extra-base hits, and total bases at various times in his career, which included five All-Star selections.
“Hammerin’ Hank” was at his best with men on base. In 1937, he drove in an amazing 183 runs, when he accumulated more than 100 runs batted in at the All-Star break!
“I never played with a better ballplayer than [Hank],” Hall of Fame second baseman Charlie Gehringer recalled. “Hitting for power and for average, driving in the big runs to win games, and gathering the ball at first base with ease, he could do them all.”
But his home run clouts would often over-shadow his all-around performances. In 1938, Greenberg chased the shadow of Babe Ruth, as he swatted 58 homers, just narrowly missing Ruth’s single-season mark. Twice that season, Greenberg hit balls into screens that didn’t exist when Ruth clubbed his record 60 home runs in 1927.
In 1945, just weeks after he returned from overseas after missing nearly five years while he served in the Army, Greenberg hit a dramatic game-winning and pennant-clinching homer for the Tigers. He hit 331 home runs in his 13-year major league career, which began in 1930, and continued from 1933-1941, and 1945-1947.
Though he earned accolades for his home run blasts, and this ball from the Hall of Fame collection celebrates a home run milestone, Hank Greenberg was an excellent all-around player, who earned a pair of Most Valuable Player Awards, in 1935 and 1940.
After his playing career, Greenberg was a very successful businessman and well-respected general manager, guiding the Cleveland Indians to a pennant in that role. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1956.
Walter Johnson, 1924 Game Seven
In one of the most exciting games in World Series history, Johnson emerged from the bullpen in the ninth inning of a 3-3 tie, after throwing a complete game just two days earlier. He pitched four innings, fanning five and pitching out of trouble in the ninth, 10th and 11th frames. Johnson’s Senators won 4-3 in the bottom of the 12th after Giants’ catcher Hank Gowdy dropped a foul fly, giving Muddy Ruel new life to double and set up Earl McNeely’s RBI-single. The “Big Train” had hurled the last four innings to get the win, shutting down New York on just three hits. It was to be Washington’s only World Series title.
Pete Alexander, 1926 Game Seven
In a scene later immortalized in the movie The Winning Team (starring Ronald Reagan), Alexander entered the game in the last of the seventh inning, striking out Yankee second baseman Tony Lazzeri with the bases full to preserve the Cardinals’ 3-2 lead. Despite having hurled a complete game victory the previous day, the veteran right-hander proceeded to shut out the Yankees in the eighth and ninth innings, allowing only one walk (to Babe Ruth who was thrown out stealing to end the series) and saving the first World Series title in franchise history.
Dizzy Dean, 1934 Game Seven
The Cardinals blasted Detroit 11-0, scoring seven runs in the third inning, in a game that saw commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis remove Cardinals’ left fielder Joe Medwick from the game for his own protection after Detroit fans pelted him with debris. Tiger faithful had taken umbrage with Medwick’s hard slide into third base in the sixth. The ruckus failed to bother Dean, who did more than handcuff the Tigers on six hits and no walks, as he also produced two doubles, scored the game’s first run and drove in a run. It was the crowning achievement of Dean’s amazing 1934 season, when he won 30 games and the Most Valuable Player Award.
Enos Slaughter, 1946 Game Seven
With the Red Sox and Cardinals deadlocked 3-3 in the bottom of the eighth inning, Slaughter led off with a single and was still resting there two outs later. When Harry Walker lined a hit into the left-center field gap, Slaughter put it into high gear, scoring the go-ahead run just before shortstop Johnny Pesky’s throw arrived at home. The Boston shortstop had hesitated just slightly upon receiving the ball from the outfield, which allowed the hustling Slaughter to make his “Mad Dash” with what was ultimately the series-winning tally.
Yogi Berra, 1956 Game Seven
The Yankee catcher had one of the best days of his many post-season appearances, hitting two home runs, scoring three runs and driving in four, as the Yankees prevailed 9-0 and avenged their loss to the Dodgers in the World Series the year before. The mitt Berra wore during that Series is in the Hall of Fame collection.
Bill Mazeroski, 1960 Game Seven
Trailing 7-4 in the eighth inning, the Pirates scored five times to snatch a 9-7 lead. After the Yankees tallied two in the top of the ninth to tie the game on Yogi Berra’s homer, the stage was set for Mazeroski. Facing Ralph Terry to lead off the bottom of the ninth, Mazeroski hit the second pitch over the ivy-covered left field wall at Forbes Field, winning the game and the series for Pittsburgh, 10-9. Mazeroski’s helmet, which he waved in his hand as he rounded the bases, is in the Hall of Fame collection.
Sandy Koufax, 1965 Game Seven
Koufax pitched the Dodgers to a 2-0 victory, retiring 20 of the last 23 Minnesota batters he faced. The Dodger left-hander went the distance, allowing just three hits and fanning ten batters for his second victory of the Fall Classic. Koufax’ ERA for the series was 0.38 with 29 strikeouts in two complete games.
Bob Gibson, 1967 Game Seven
Gibson figured heavily in his second Game Seven win (also having triumphed against the Yankees in 1964). The gritty hurler allowed just three hits and struck out ten batters as St. Louis defeated the Red Sox, 7-2. World Series Most Valuable Player Gibson did more than use his legendary right-arm, he also hit a solo home run to help his cause.
Willie Stargell, 1979 Game Seven
The Pirates were an improbable champion, rallying from a three games to one deficit to spoil the Orioles’ bid. As he had been all season, Stargell was clutch for the Pirates, blasting a home run, two doubles and a single as the Pirates won Game Seven, 4-1. His two-run homer in the sixth inning erased Baltimore’s 1-0 lead. “Pops” hit .400 with four homers in the series to earn Most Valuable Player honors.
George Brett, 1985 Game Seven
Brett became the third future Hall of Famer to collect four hits in a Game Seven, joining Max Carey (1925) and Willie Stargell (1979). In vanquishing the Cardinals, Brett was 4-for-5 with two runs scored and a stolen base as the Royals won Game Seven, 11-0.