Photo: Tiger great Mickey Lolich throwing out the first pitch at the Detroit Tigers home opener Friday, March 30, 2018. Photo: John Barnes – In Play! magazine
Tiger Idol Mickey Lolich Has Stood The Test Of Time
By Alan Halberststadt
I was genuinely startled when I saw Detroit Tiger royalty Mickey Lolich being wheeled out to the mound to throw the ceremonial first pitch on the opening day of the 2018 Major League baseball season at Comerica Park on Friday.
Mickey got to his feet briefly with the help of a cane and his 76-year-old former catcher Jim Price to toss the ball. But he soon retreated to his wheel chair. Episodes like that are unsettling when you get older and question your own mortality.
Lolich went down in baseball lore by registering three complete game victories and securing the Most Valuable Player award in the 1968 World Series. The crowning glory was a clinching 4-1 seventh game triumph over St. Louis Cardinals hall of famer Bob Gibson in St. Louis.
I was in attendance at the fifth game of that series at Tiger Stadium on October 6, 1968, won 5-3 by Lolich and the Tigers courtesy of a go ahead seventh inning single by another Tiger legend Al Kaline.
The Tigers are making a big deal of the 1968 series, since it happened 50 years ago. I was 21 and Mickey was 28, an absolute iron man with a rubber arm in an era when pitchers were not paid anywhere near the sinful amounts bestowed on the coddled arms of today.
Modern pitchers have four days rest between starts and are almost canonized for lasting seven innings. Nine inning complete games are a rarity as managers and bullpen coaches stew when one of the pampered ones goes over 100 pitches.
“I was just getting loose at that point,” Lolich told a small media gathering, noting that he threw 195 complete games in his 15 year career, most of it with Detroit.
Lolich, a left-hander who hurled the final World Series game on only two days rest, said counting pitches was not even in vogue when he played. He estimated he would throw 135-145 pitches over nine innings.
During the regular season he would get the ball every fourth day. “I used to tell my catchers, Bill Freehan and Jim Price, that I would never tell the manager I was tired and wanted to come out of the game. I told him to check with the catcher, and Bill would often say I was better when I was tired because my pitches would sink.”
Asked why the culture has changed in the modern day, Lolich was succinct. “Money,” he said, explaining that the huge, guaranteed, six or seven-year contracts of today prompts teams to over-protect star pitchers against ligament damage, or career-shortening wear and tear.
Ironically, for all his mound brilliance in the series half a century ago, people tend to forget the home run Lolich hit in the second game, a 8-1 Detroit victory. “I credit (Cardinal pitcher) Nelson Briles for hitting my bat,” he quipped.
People also tend to forget that designated hitters for pitchers had not yet been introduced in the American League. That happened in 1973, the year Lolich retired.
Some historians swear that the Tigers winning the World Series in ’68 actually saved the City of Detroit, coming as I did on the heels of “Black Day In July” race riots the previous summer. Lolich, who still lives just north of Detroit, doesn’t dispute it.
“The players used to cut through a room staffed by police to get to their dressing rooms. The policemen would point to three guys lurking on the street corner looking for trouble in 1967. In 1968, when the Tigers clinched the American League pennant on September 16th, the same cops would point to the three loiterers who were not looking to loot anymore but were listening to the Tigers on their transistor radios.
By rights, the Tigers should have won the pennant in 1967 if not for a quirk in the weather and schedule, which forced them to play back-to-back doubleheaders against the Los Angeles Angels to finish the season.
“It’s like kissing you sister,” Lolich said. “The odds are you are going to split the four games.” And that’s what happened. Had they won three of the four, they would have been in the World Series instead of the Boston Red Sox.
The Cards beat the Red Sox in 1967, and coasted to another National League pennant in 1968.
“When we got to the World Series the people of St. Louis were convinced that the Tigers were no match for their team. I met Bob Gibson at an autograph signing function years later and he told me that as far as St. Louis was concerned, the 1968 World Series never happened.”
Lolich didn’t want to give too many of those kind of tales away. He cut the interview session short and pointed to Bob Gage, a former Tiger beat writer who was sitting at the back of the room.
“If you want to know anything more read my book,” said Mickey. “I’ve got things to do and people to see.”
I approached Gage in the press box after Mickey was gone and he advised me that the name of the book is Joy In Tigertown, The 1968 World Series, Mickey Lolich with Tom Gage. It’s available on June 1, and can be pre-ordered now through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Detriot baseball fans will get an opportunity to soak up more nostalgia when the Cardinals and Tigers play three interlocking games in Comerica Park on September 7, 8 and 9.
I am happy to report that Mickey Lolich should be getting around a lot better by then. Gage told me that his co-author is currently disabled because of close-together surgeries on his back and knee, which have stalled his rehab schedule.
Maybe by then someone might have mounted a campaign to get Lolich in the Hall of Fame, similar to what happened to former Tigers Alan Trammell and Jack Morris this year in a new sub-category format. There is a case to be made for Lolich based on his career statistics.
In addition to his post-season heroics, and 195 complete games, compared to 175 for Morris, he made the all-star team three times, was named King Tiger in 1974 and is the team leader in all-time games started (459), all-time shutouts (39) and all-time strikeouts (2,679). He was the Tigers opening day pitcher seven times.
And here’s a topper that provides optimism for the success of his current rehabilitation. Mickey is actually right handed. Note his homer off Briles was from the right side of the plate. He learned to throw left-handed after suffering a broken collarbone and damage to his right arm as a child.