The 1968-Detroit-Tigers were baseball's last pure champion ...Coming into the season, the 1968-Detroit-Tigers had high hopes… yeah they were bitterly disappointed by the loss of the '67 pennant by ONE LOUSY game to the Red Sox, and … yeah … things in Detroit didn't look so good … talk of another riot, armed gangs… flight to the 'burbs... things like that. …but something happened to our ballclub in the off season. Pretty much every guy dedicated himself to making up that one game and then some…Al Kaline … or a better year by Denny McLain. There were rumors all over the place about how and why he was injured in the last week of the season… still a big mystery… The 1968-Detroit-Tigers knew they were a better team than they showed in '67 and were ready to prove it. Earl Wilson: "You can tell this team is a little hungrier. Last year, there was some doubt about winning. We believe in ourselves this time." Bill Freehan: "We're all going to be a little more determined this year."…and in The Sporting News, Watson Spoelstra noted that Mickey Stanley might be "Detroit's secret weapon." Hmmmm….. The rest of the baseball world wasn't buying it though… The Twins were favored by most of the writers and fans… Holy Cow- their lineup had guys like Killebrew, Oliva, Rod Carew and Bobby Allison, but the pitching was a little shaky. The White Sox had the best pitching in the game, but with very little offense, so they were a little iffy and the defending champion Red Sox also had their supporters but not as many as the other top teams... and their manager, Dick Williams had privately said I don't worry about the Tigers. They always manage to find a way not to win." The 1968- Detroit-Tigers' pitching rotation was pretty solid, though… Manager Mayo Smith, nicknamed "America's Guest" had Mickey Lolich, Denny McLain, Earl Wilson and Joe Sparma. The big worry was the bullpen. The Tigers started the season at home behind Earl Wilson who'd won 22 games the year before. Now the Duke was a great pitcher, but he was the anti-Aguirre... known FOR his bat. Earl smacked 7 home runs in '67 and was even used as a pinch hitter once in a while! Well this opening day wasn't great for the Duke... a 7-3 loss- even though he smacked another homer, but things turned around ... and in a hurry! Starting the next day, when
Gates Brown
- the "Gator" - led off the 9th with a game winning shot, the boys reeled off 9 WINS IN A ROW! Included in that streak were 3 extra inning wins- one where they were TWICE down to their final pitch behind by a run... Kaline walks, Willie Horton The 1968-Detroit-Tigers finished April with a 12-5 record which was their best in many years… Denny McLain finally grabbed his first win on April 21, the 10th game of the year, but complained about the Detroit fans when he called them "front runners" and "the world's worst." .... as usual Denny doesn't know when to keep quiet... A mini slump followed as the Bengals dropped 3 in a row and 4 of 5 to the Angels and Orioles… on May 7, a rookie infielder, Tommy Matchick turned things around against Baltimore. In a scoreless tie with two down in the 9th, Tommy smacked a double to break their 8 game winning streak and to give a big win to Mickey Lolich... Tigers won 4 in a row after that with the Dolphin (McLain) stretching his record to 5-0. …and they kept pounding the ball scoring 12 runs against the Senators two games in a row, but of course, lost the series finale 6-3… why can't you bank those extra runs? Still, the record was an impressive 18-10, good enough for first place Al Kaline broke all time Tiger home run record by smacking number 307 against Washington, breaking
And how different are things now? On May 20 in a 4-3 10 inning Tiger win, the Dolphin pitched 10 full for the victory while the loser, Jim Merritt pitched 9 2/3… Al Worthington came in and two Twin infield errors cost him the game… tough loss for the Twins, but we don't care... Tigers are up to 23-12.... Al Kaline suffered a broken arm on May 25 when Lew Krausse of Oakland nailed him with a pitch... defensive star Mickey Stanley will go back to center and Northrup to right. .. And they kept playing well. 3 of 4 from the Yankees at home over the Memorial Day weekend brought the team to a very nice 30-17 record, still in first place…. Bumper stickers with the hip 1968 catch phrase started to appear around town "Sock it to 'em Tigers," and the slightly less hip "Go get 'em Tigers." McLain's record displayed 8 wins, while losing only once. … and another come-from-behind win on June 7 against Cleveland when Mickey Stanley tripled in two runs with two out in the ninth as the Tigers took 2 of 3 in that series, but they let down a huge bat day crowd in the finale… McLain lost for only the 2nd time as Luis Tiant shut out Detroit 2-0... still good enough at 35-20 for a 3 game lead over the surprising Tribe. They kept surging.. A 4 game home sweep of the Twins - McLain won #10- helped to build the lead… Don Wert smacked a long one to beat the Chisox in the 14th inning on June 14... Cleveland was fading and had fallen 8 games back with Baltimore… but they got some revenge on the 21st when Tony Horton took Pat Dobson deep in the 13th inning to win 4-3, right after the Tigers had taken the lead... OUCH! Tribe took 3 out of 4 at Lake Erie before McLain stopped them on Monday in the finale of a 5 game series... that made Young Dennis 13-2... This was an eventful game because JIM NORTHRUP made his bones here- 2 GRAND SLAMS IN ONE GAME - howya gonna beat that record? AND he struck out with the bases loaded in the first inning! On a bad note, this was also the night when the Coyote (Don Wert) took one to the dome and left on a stretcher...spent two nights in the hospital... the Coyote was never the same hitter after that..... Northrup connected for ANOTHER GRANNIE on June 29 against the Pale Hose, giving McLain his 14th (but the Sox drubbed the Tigers 12-0 the next day… those things happen even to a great team, I guess) ..but Al Kaline returned the following day to help beat the Angels and stretch the lead to 7½ over the Tribe... Sox Manager Eddie Stankey said If Detroit doesn't win the pennant by 10 games, something's wrong." …the 1968-Detroit-Tigers were on fire in early July at one point winning 7 of 8 and stretching their lead over Baltimore and Cleveland… no real need for late-inning-heroics as they just crushed the ball…McLain won number 16 over Oakland on July 7 and the Bengals roared into the All-Star Break in command of the American League at 55-28!
It's a long season and things tend to go up and down, even for pennant winners- the wins started to come again as as McLain notched #20 on July 27, talk really started to heat up about the possibility of his becoming the first 30 game winner since Dizzy Dean, 34 years ago... a few guys had been on that pace and hadn't quite made it, so all that talk still wasn't taken very seriously... at any rate the Tigers closed out July at 63-39 with a 7 game lead over both Cleveland and Baltimore! ... and things kept on going... maybe the most dramatic moments of 1968 came during a Sunday doubleheader (remember those?) in early August. The Tigers were playing Boston which was a decent team, but trailing by double digits. Baltimore was still hanging around 6 games back, so there was a lot of pressure... but the 1968-Detroit-Tigers had been playing well... they'd won 5 of 6. In the first game, the Duke got torched in the first inning for 4 runs, but our boys kept clawing back... had tied it up in the 8th and fought into 14th inning when Gates Brown ripped his 3rd pinch hit home run to win 5-4! In game two 5-2 going into... AGAIN!.. the bottom of the 9th, the Tigers rallied... combination of walks and singles brought ...THE GATOR... to the plate again coming through with the game winning single for the sweep... and Gates' catch phrase? "I'm as square as an ice cube and twice as cool!" ... people were ecstatic.... climbing the screen in back of home plate... berserk! Tigers lead stood at 7 games and the record stood at 75-42. ....and the newspaper strike finally ended. The Tigers figured that it cost them at least 100,000 at the gate and that 2 million was still a long shot. ... on August 16 at Boston, McLain won his 25th against only 3 losses- a shutout in hitter happy Fenway behind a Kaline homer- 30 wins looked almost probable at that point as the Tigers maintained a 7 game lead over the Orioles... and the tough Bill Freehan kept getting drilled- with 5 weeks to go, he'd been hit 20 times which already tied his club record set last year. But trouble was on the way. After taking 2 of the first 3 from the White Sox in Detroit, a brushback pitch by Tommy John sent Dick McAuliffe out to the mound... Mad Dog bowled John over, ramming his shoulder with his knee causing John to suffer a torn ligament. For his part, Mac was fined the (then) grand amount of $250, but was suspended for five days! with 2 big doubleheaders coming up in the Bronx. The Tigers had ample reason to hold a grudge against Tommy... he'd hit 4 of our guys in one game earlier in the year. Things did NOT go well in New York... 4 straight losses (an improbable tie on Friday night broke it up a little), lowlighted by ex Tiger-slugger Rocky Colavito's pitching stint (and victory) in Sunday's first game... heck even McLain took a loss, his second straight, dropping his slate to 25-5 - will he win 30??- and cutting the lead down to a mere 5 games over the hard-charging Orioles. ...but after the Escape From New York, things began to pick up again... a split with Chicago and the sparkplug McAuliffe came back and a streak of 8 wins in 10 games followed and the lead started to inch back up to 7 and 8 games again. ... improbable things.. Earl Wilson's 5th home run paced a 9-1 rout of Baltimore, and a TRIPLE PLAY started by - guess who?- Denny McLain lifted the Tigers over the Orioles as he won his 27th. A month to go, probably 6 or 7 starts to win 3 more... CAN HE DO IT??? The stretch run really kicked in around the first week of September... a 9 game winning streak featured McLain's 29th win on September 10 and his 30TH WIN ON SEPTEMBER 14... took place on a Saturday afternoon at Tiger Stadium in front of a national TV audience... another typically dramatic 1968-Detroit-Tiger victory as the boys came back in the - what else?- bottom of the ninth, scoring Mickey Stanley on Willie Horton's single to left... Dizzy Dean, the last one to win 30 was present: "He's something, Denny is. He's humble."... WHAT??? ....by the time Tuesday rolled around, the Tigers were 97-54 with a 10½ game lead - unbelievably 36 of those wins had come in the 7th inning or later!- and ready to clinch the LAST TRUE PENNANT.
Fearful that fans would storm the field, and anticipating how much sweeter it would be to clinch with a victory, the 1968-Detroit-Tigers came up in the bottom of the 9th convinced that they'd have to win yet another game in their last at-bat... NO PROBLEM! With two out and nobody on, OF COURSE, Al Kaline walked followed by a Freehan single...Gates Brown walked... and Don Wert, the steady hot corner man, who'd struggled so badly with the stick since the Cleveland beaning, singled in Kaline - "SIX" as he was known to his adoring teammates- for the clincher. Listen to Ernie Harwell's call: ..and the windup and the pitch...line drive, base hit, right field.... Don Wert singles... the Tigers mob Don...Kaline has scored, the fans are streaming on the field and it's alll over... The Tigers have wontheir first pennant since nineteen hundred and forty five... let's listen to the bedlam (BOOOOOOOM) here at Tiger Stadium" And The City Went Wild- celebrations all over the place... all around the stadium... all the bars... people banging pots and pans in the streets outside their homes... Lolich and McLain tending bar at the Lindell AC, handing out free drinks... ... as the 1968-Detroit-Tigers got ready to host the World Series against the "invincible" St. Louis Cardinals, they played out an uneventful string, splitting the final 10 games, resting players while trying to keep some kind of momentum... never very easy to do- ask the 2006 Tigers. But one eventful thing happened... after the big celebration, luckily the next day's game was rained out... probably no one was in any condition to play, but a thursday afternoon game against the Yankees brought McLain to the mound once again. Yankee legend Mickey Mantle appearing in his last game at Tiger Stadium and was given a respectful standing ovation led by Al Kaline in the Tiger dugout... Mantle was stuck on home run #534, tied with Jimmie Foxx- 3rd in history, but with his slow bat many wondered if he could crank just one more to pass Old Double X. ... who else but McLain would pull this off: With the count 1 strike, Denny made a waist high motion to indicate to Mantle where the next pitch would come in... Mantle wasn't totally convinced of the meaning and he fouled off the cookie... he then coyly motioned to McLain to put the next one in the same place and Denny, of course, with perfect control did it. Mantle smashed it into the right field upper deck. And few other eventful things... The 1968-Detroit-Tigers attendance broke the 2 million mark (2,031,847)... at that time 2 million was a landmark amount and only a few teams had cracked it. That gate record would stand in Detroit until 1984... and also Mickey Stanley, probably the best athlete on the team started playing some games at shortstop- rumor was that if the Mick could handle it, he might play there in the Series, giving Kaline his right field position back and replacing the weak hitting Ray Oyler. Everyone contributed in 1968- the fans came through big time... Mayo Smith was a genius, for the one year at least... Stormin' Norman Cash cranked out 25 home runs to match his uniform number... McAuliffe and Don Wert also supplied power with 16 and 12 dingers... Ray Oyler batted only .135, but played in 111 games which was a great tribute to his glove at shortstop. Mickey Lolich finished at 17-9 despite a tough run where he was banished to the bullpen... he finished strong and had high hopes for his stint in the World Series. Get ready for the series... that's all they had to do in those days... no wild-card... no LCS... no hanging around waiting for other series to end in order to start the next one... no getting "stale" ... no manufactured suspense, borrowed from the other sports to keep mediocre teams involved and tickets selling until the end of the season. The Last Pure American League Champs were ready to face the Last Pure National League Champs for the Last Pure World Championship. Thirty Years Later: We will have full coverage of the World Series... later. But for now here's a summary of it!
Return from 1968 Detroit Tigers to Detroit Tigers History
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knew the uncharacteristic tantrum, which caused him to break a finger on a bat rack, more than cost the pennant. Could a healthy 
smacks a knuckleball out and they beat the Tribe....and the boys let everyone know that these games were NOT over until the FAT LADY said so… all year it was like this… come from behind wins and last minute victories, but more about that later! The good news was that after 10 games, the 1968-Detroit-Tigers were 9-1 and all alone in first place!
… but there was a newspaper strike in Detroit at the time, both papers, so some of this good stuff went a little unnoticed, but not much…
Hank Greenberg's record… Al's still stands… but the weekend really belonged to Washington's Frank Howard "The Capital Punisher." … Hondo cranked 3 dingers in the first two games to break some record somewhere about consecutive games-- whatever, that guy was HUGE and man could he crank that pill! ... But the Tigers took 3 of 4 and lengthened their AL lead. The Sunday Cap Day doubleheader against the Nats drew over 45,000- double '67's crowd for that event.
Department of embarrassments- In June, backup catcher Jim Price- yes THAT Jim Price- became the first Tiger to wear a Nehru jacket on a road trip. Oh my, but that was 1968 for you!