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Prior to the 60's season, you got another phone call.
And this one's from your old friend George Kell.
And this one takes you to Tiger Town.
What happened was the Orioles were finishing the season in New York
and we had a game at Yankee Stadium on Saturday.
It was a night game and I got back to the Hotel Roosevelt
and it was fairly late and the phone rang. It was George Kell.
And he said Ernie VanPatrick is out. He's not going to be the announcer anymore here with the Tigers.
I've worked with him this year, 1959.
The Tigers asked me to call you and find out if you're interested in leaving Baltimore
and coming to Detroit to be the announcer.
And I said, well George, I love Baltimore. I'm having a good time there.
Things are going good, but I'd be foolish not to listen to some kind of an offer.
Tell them that I'm interested and we'll see what happens.
So I went to my sponsors, Gunther, and told them that I'd had this conversation.
And they wanted me to come out and talk to them in Detroit.
And they said, well go ahead and just give us the courtesy of coming back
and telling us about the offer and see if we want to meet it or not.
I went out and I talked to Mr. Harry Sesson during the World Series of 59.
And he took me over to meet John Strode.
The Strode Brewery was buying the rights to the Tigers beginning the next year.
And I met Mr. Strode at the brewery and they made me an offer.
It was pretty good and I was attracted to it.
I went back and talked to Gunther and they said, well that's more than we can manage.
So good luck and we enjoyed having you here and so forth.
So I left and went to Detroit and it's probably the best move that I ever made
because I stayed there a while and I really appreciated the great love and affection
that the people of Michigan have shown me over the years.
Again, sponsorships played a big part in a job change.
Oh it did.
Van Patrick had been working for a brewery called Goble and they switched to Strode.
And Strode wasn't too anxious to have Van continue as the announcer
because he had identification with the brewing rivals.
So I think that at least partially led to his dismissal.
Now George Kell had replaced Mel Ott.
Right, Mel Ott had been killed in an automobile accident in 1958
and he and his wife were hit by a car down in Louisiana.
Mrs. Ott survived but Mel died and George replaced Mel.
So he'd had a year under his belt when I came there.
The last day of spring training there was a blockbuster trade
between the Tigers and the Cleveland Indians.
What precipitated that trade?
Well that was one of the great trades of all time because generally when you,
two clubs trade, they usually trade a couple of Humpty Dumptys
as Clint Courtney once said, guys that don't help either team.
But this was Harvey Keene of the Tigers going to Cleveland
in exchange for Rocky Colivido.
Harvey Keene was the America League batting champion.
Colivido was a home run champion.
So you had two stars being traded for each other.
And I can remember Rick Farrell who was Vice President,
General Manager of the Tigers came to the press box
the final day of spring training.
We were finishing up our broadcast and he came into the press box
and said we've got a deal and he told us what the deal was.
And sure enough the Tigers and the Indians opened the season in Cleveland, 1960.
And these two guys who had been traded for each other
played against each other in that first game.
Had it ever happened before or has it happened since when the batting champion
and the home run champion were swapped for each other?
Not that I know of. It might have but I can't recall it, Bob.
It's entirely possible but it was a unique situation at that time.
What were your first thoughts when you walked into Tiger Stadium?
My first time in Tiger Stadium actually was with the Orioles.
I had gone there in 1954.
Baltimore opened their modern big league history
with a game at what was in Briggs Stadium in 1954.
And Steve Gromack shut out Baltimore, beat them 3-0.
Boone hit a home run. I remember that.
There were two or three home runs off the Tiger bats.
And that was my first look at Tiger Stadium.
Then the Orioles beat them in the second game and went back to open in Baltimore.
But when I went in as a Tiger announcer, it was something special
because now this was going to be my home.
I was going to be in this little booth as much as I was going to be in my living room during the summer.
And I was going to be part of the Tiger franchise.
So it was a great moment for me when I went back there in 1960 and became the Tiger announcer.
The Keen for Calo Vito trade was not the only trade that got headlines that season for the Tigers and the Cleveland Indians, was it?
No, and they had another very interesting situation, another unique trade.
I don't think this has ever happened before or after.
Two managers were traded for each other.
Jimmy Dykes was the manager at Detroit and Joe Gordon was the manager at Cleveland.
And Bill DeWitt was the president of the Tigers and Frank Lane was the big boss in Cleveland.
And they got together and decided that they couldn't switch a lot of players, so they would trade managers.
And Gordon came to Detroit, Jimmy Dykes went to Cleveland.
And I don't think either one of the managers liked that very much.
They thought it denigrated their position being traded.
And Gordon quit after a year with the Tigers.
He announced his retirement on the trip back from Kansas City after the final game.
And Jimmy went ahead because Jimmy always showed up somewhere, you know.
He was a great little pixie who loved cigars and stories and a terrific guy.
And he stayed in baseball for quite a while.
1961, Ernie saw quite a few large events in baseball.
The one that's gotten the most publicity, of course, was the Mantle Maris chase for the home run record.
And then, of course, Roger eventually breaking Babe Ruth's single season record.
We've seen 1961, we've seen the documentaries that have been done about that year in his life.
What did you observe in that chase that summer?
I saw Mantle and Maris battling each other for the whole season.
And the pressure really got to Roger. I really liked Roger Maris.
I thought he was a terrific guy.
He was an underrated player.
He was a fine defensive outfielder, had a great arm, and certainly everybody knows he could hit.
But he was under a great deal of pressure, and I don't think he could handle the relationship with the media.
He couldn't understand why these guys in every town would ask him the same question.
You know, he'd go to Detroit, and they'd ask him, how you doing, how you going to break the record,
are you going to beat Mantle and so forth.
And then he'd go to Chicago, he'd get the same set of questions.
And he just couldn't comprehend why that would be happening.
And he began to be very standoffish with the media.
His teammates loved it. They really did. They thought he was a great guy and a great team guy.
But I noticed that he was nervous, not at ease at all. His hair began to fall out.
And he just had a miserable time.
And he should have been enjoying the year because he was going to be a footnote to history,
or maybe a headline to history.
But he couldn't take the media attention, and I think that was his big problem.
And added to that, even the Yankee fans wanted to see Mickey break the record and not Roger.
Yeah, that's ironic too, because at one time the Yankee fans weren't that fond of Mantle in the early going.
And when he began to challenge Babe Ruth's record, they didn't like that.
But now they turned because Mantle had become a hero.
And Maris was sort of a villain in a sense.
And you're right about that. That's a good observation that I hadn't thought about.
But that was the way the Yankee fans turned on Roger.
And he wasn't as big a hero, certainly, as Mickey Mantle was to them.
Let's fast forward now to 1967, another very monumental year, not just for the Tigers, but for the city of Detroit.
Because as you have described, one night you're at the ballpark and you see smoke rising over the outfield fence.
What goes through your mind when you see that?
Well, that was a terrible feeling when the riots started in Detroit.
The city was divided. It was a very unsafe atmosphere.
Rumors were rampant about what was going to happen.
Nobody felt safe.
There was all sort of anxiety and worry among the people of Detroit.
And the National Guard was finally called out and they quelled the riots.
But a lot of people were killed.
The property was destroyed, and it was a great blot on the city.
And it was a terrible, terrible time.
The Tigers tried to play through it. They didn't play that season.
And almost won the pennant in 67.
With a little bit of break on the last couple of days, they could have been the champions.
But they lost out.
And when they went to spring training the next year, I think the fact that they had come so close weighed on their minds.
And they said, if we can come this close, maybe we can win it in 68.
In 1968, Detroit came back very determined.
They did not fall short this time.
They won their first World Series since 1945.
But what was the big difference in the 68 team versus 67?
Not too much difference in those two teams, Bob.
It was a magical year for the Tigers in 1968.
I think they were determined in spring training that since they'd come so close in 67, they could do it all and win it all in 68.
And they had a combination of power hitting and great pitching, had terrific defense, had a good bench.
The bullpen didn't make a whole lot of difference in those days, but they had a pretty fair bullpen.
But they had Denny McClain and Mickey Lowlich as the two great pitchers.
And it was a team that had a different hero every day, and they stayed in first place practically the whole season.
Three men on, two men out, game tied, one to one in the ninth inning.
McDaniel checking his time with Jake Gibbs.
The tall right-hander, ready to go to work again.
And the windup and the pitch.
He swings a line shot, base hit, right field, the Tigers win it.
Here comes K-line to score, and it's all over.
Downward singles, the Tigers bobbed on.
K-line is score, the fans are steaming on the field.
And the Tigers have won their first minute since 1945.
Let's listen to the badmothers here at Tigers Stadium.
1968 also sees a young pitcher go 31-6.
What propelled Denny McClain to that kind of year?
Denny McClain got that kind of year because he was a great pitcher for that one season.
He was a great pitcher a couple of seasons, but especially in 1968.
He had great confidence in himself.
He had a tremendously effective fastball.
He had great control.
The players loved to play behind him because he did work quickly.
And he also seemed to have a good bit of luck,
which you have to have when you're going to have a record like that.
He just amazed the baseball nation with his accomplishment.
And he breezed through that season, won 31 ball games,
the only guy to do it since Dizzy Dean had done it back in the early 1930s.
And it's a remarkable feat that's never happened since then.
Well, this is the big day for the maestro, Denny McClain.
Saturday afternoon at Tigers Stadium, September the 14th, 1968.
And Denny will be going for win number 30.
Pitching rival of the Oakland Athletics, Chuck Dobson.
And we've got a tremendous crowd here.
And everybody looking forward to Denny's test, trying to get win number 30 of this season.
The count on Horton is now two balls and two strikes.
And Campanaris comes in from short.
Chuck with his pitcher, Diego Seguin.
Here's the set by Seguin, the pitch.
Wenger on the top of the map.
That'll be the ballgame.
It's over the head of Gosner.
McClain wins his 30th pitch.
The score, Winning Horton has a single.
And the ballgame is over.
And the Tigers win it 5-4.
Denny McClain is one of the first out of the run-out, racing out and Horton is mobbed as the Tigers come from behind.
And McClain has his 30th victory of the 1968 season.
When we go to the World Series, the Tigers make a move, moving a center fielder to shortstop, a rather unusual move, especially at the time it was done.
That was one of the great strategic moves in World Series history.
Mayo Smith was the manager of the Tigers.
Mickey Stanley was the center fielder.
Mayo wanted to get Al Kailin, who had been injured part of the year, back into the lineup to play in the outfield.
So he moved Stanley in to replace Ray Euler at shortstop.
Euler, a great, great defensive player, but he hit about 130 or 135 and was one of the poorest hitters in baseball history.
But Stanley was a great athlete and he adjusted perfectly.
He had a ground ball hit to him early in the first game of the World Series.
He relaxed and played a great shortstop.
But I can remember going to St. Louis with the Tigers when they opened the World Series in St. Louis.
And the night before, I went around and I talked to, I'd say, 15 or 20 so-called experts about that move that was impending.
And they all agreed that it was a bad move.
Nobody told me that it was a good move.
And I didn't think it was either, but it turned out to be a great move and it worked.
Detroit gets down 3-1 to the St. Louis Cardinals.
Game 5 sees the series in Detroit and you had a hand in the opening of that World Series game with the national anthem.
Well, I sure did and I almost got fired because of that, Bob.
What had happened as the resident songwriter there at the ballpark,
I was appointed by General Manager President Jim Campbell to pick the anthem singers.
And the Saturday game, I picked Margaret Whiting, who was a great ballad singer.
She was the daughter of a great songwriter, niece of another great songwriter, both the Whiting boys from Michigan.
And she did a very standard rendition of the national anthem.
And the second man I selected was Marvin Gaye from Motown.
And it was a little ironic that Mr. Campbell came to me and said,
now we're a little concerned that Marvin might make it a little bit too bluesy and too much Motown.
We'd like to have a straight rendition. Would you mind asking them to do it that way?
So I did and Marvin said, sure, I'll do it. So he sang it straight.
And my third selection was a young man who had been born in Puerto Rico, grew up in the Bronx, New York, and was beginning to get the fairly famous.
He'd had a big hit on the charts.
Come on, light my fire. And he was playing at Las Vegas.
And a friend of mine who'd been in Hollywood in the record business said,
Jose Feliciano had done a great job of the national anthem at the Greek theater in California.
And he would be a great selection. So I went on the advice of this gentleman and we got in touch with Feliciano.
He said he'd be happy to come. He was playing in Vegas.
He took the red eye to Detroit, got in in the morning.
Olly McLaughlin, a record producer that was a good friend of mine.
And I went out to meet him at the airport. We took him to the hotel.
He freshened up, went to the ballpark and went out to the clubhouses.
The guys loved him there. They came out to the little laddie room.
And he made up a few songs about Al K. Lyon and Denny McLean and everybody else and sang them.
And then he went out into the center field area with his leader dog and his dark glasses all by himself.
And in front of the microphone with his guitar, he rendered the national anthem.
And it was sort of a little bluesy anthem.
And at that time I think people thought it was a real departure from the regular anthems of Lucy Monroe and Kate Smith and people like that.
And they were a little disturbed about it. But he sang it from the heart.
And I thought he did a great job.
All of a sudden the headlines hit the paper about Feliciano and how he had crucified the national anthem.
American Legion clubs rose up in anger.
They said that they wanted a resolution passed that whoever sang the anthem had to do it straight ahead, completely on the notes and so forth.
And that Feliciano was a communist and a traitor to the flag and everything like that.
Well, I defended him because I had to. I picked the guy and it was my responsibility.
And the Tigers were pretty good about that.
I got a little note from Jim Campbell and John Fetcher saying, watch out about your next election if you ever get the chance to do one.
But there were a lot of letters sent in and they had a picture of Jose on the front page of the New York Times singing the national anthem.
And it got to be quite a cause celeb.
But we became great friends.
Later on I introduced Feliciano to the young lady that he eventually married and now is living in Connecticut with.
They've raised a great family and he is still singing and playing that great guitar.
The.
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A Robert Merrill version.
It wasn't, but it was tame compared to some of the modern day renditions that we see.
Well, that's a great observation.
I think now if you hear the renditions you get almost daily, you'd think that Feliciano's rendition was very tame compared to them.
OK, back to the field now.
Mickey Lowlitch, the story of the World Series in 1968.
Mickey was always overshadowed by Denny McClain.
Denny had the 31 game victory season.
Lowlitch had been a real good strong arm left hander.
He had worked as a starter.
He didn't put in the bullpen from time to time.
He got out there and did everything you could ask of him.
And he was a magnificent pitcher.
He was a good strikeout pitcher and he had a good strong left arm.
He would do 350, 360 innings a season and do it beautifully.
But in the regular season, he was overshadowed by Denny.
But came the World Series, the Tigers lost the first game in St. Louis to Bob Gibson and then Lowlitch pitched the second game and they won that one big.
They went to Detroit and it looked like the Tigers just weren't going anywhere.
They played very bad baseball and they were down to the Cardinals.
And they came back and forced the seventh game of the World Series with Lowlitch against Bob Gibson.
Two great pitchers and I think the odds were certainly in favor of Gibson because he'd already won two games.
And he was a magnificent pitcher, no question about that.
He set the strikeout record in the first game when he beat the Tigers handily and he was ready to pitch this final game.
And there was never any better one game pitcher than Bob Gibson.
But Lowlitch was equal to the occasion and they battled for seven innings.
It was nothing to nothing.
And the Tigers were two out, got singles from Cash and Horton.
And then Northup stepped up and hit a three base hit over the head of Flood.
He set a field, a two run scored and the Tigers went on to win the World's Championship.
Lowlitch became one of the few pitchers ever to win three games in a World Series.
And he was a World Series hero and he certainly deserved it.
How about Kurt Flood's play of that hit?
Well, there was a lot of question about that, whether it was a legitimate triple or not. I thought so.
It just seemed to me as I saw it then and looked at it later on in the replays that he took one misstep probably.
And then almost tripped and the ball got over his head.
But it might have been over his head even if he hadn't come in on it at first, you never know.
And you've got to give the credit to Jim Northup.
And as they say, look at the box score and you know what really happened.
As divided as the city had been in 67, what did the 68 World Series do for bringing the community back together?
Well, it was a great factor in the healing of the city because people could root for a black guy or a white guy or a purple guy or a green guy or whatever if he was a Tiger.
And they all forgot about the other stuff.
And I think another factor in the whole scheme of things was that the newspapers had gone on strike around Thanksgiving of 1967.
So there was no print coverage of the Tiger 68 season at all until maybe mid-August.
So they got through almost the whole season without any newspapers.
And that put the emphasis on radio and on TV.
So people could be in a car next to a guy and he'd be listening to the radio and they'd say, well, how are the Tigers doing?
Or you could walk through the neighborhood, hear the ball game, you could see TV and all the taverns and all the restaurants.
And it was the topic of conversation all through the summer, what the Tigers were doing.