Latest / Retro Sports Radio: Classic Games from History / 2006 • Baseball Clip • Ernie Harwell • Part 5 of 8 - Early Days in Detroit - Radio Interview

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2006 • Baseball Clip • Ernie Harwell • Part 5 of 8 - Early Days in Detroit - Radio Interview · Retro Sports Radio: Classic Games from History

• 0:00
  This is Retro Sports Radio. Visit RetroSeasons.com for more sports history.
• 0:07
  Prior to the 60's season, you got another phone call.
• 0:10
  And this one's from your old friend George Kell.
• 0:13
  And this one takes you to Tiger Town.
• 0:16
  What happened was the Orioles were finishing the season in New York
• 0:21
  and we had a game at Yankee Stadium on Saturday.
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  It was a night game and I got back to the Hotel Roosevelt
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  and it was fairly late and the phone rang. It was George Kell.
• 0:30
  And he said Ernie VanPatrick is out. He's not going to be the announcer anymore here with the Tigers.
• 0:35
  I've worked with him this year, 1959.
• 0:38
  The Tigers asked me to call you and find out if you're interested in leaving Baltimore
• 0:44
  and coming to Detroit to be the announcer.
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  And I said, well George, I love Baltimore. I'm having a good time there.
• 0:50
  Things are going good, but I'd be foolish not to listen to some kind of an offer.
• 0:54
  Tell them that I'm interested and we'll see what happens.
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  So I went to my sponsors, Gunther, and told them that I'd had this conversation.
• 1:02
  And they wanted me to come out and talk to them in Detroit.
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  And they said, well go ahead and just give us the courtesy of coming back
• 1:10
  and telling us about the offer and see if we want to meet it or not.
• 1:13
  I went out and I talked to Mr. Harry Sesson during the World Series of 59.
• 1:18
  And he took me over to meet John Strode.
• 1:20
  The Strode Brewery was buying the rights to the Tigers beginning the next year.
• 1:25
  And I met Mr. Strode at the brewery and they made me an offer.
• 1:29
  It was pretty good and I was attracted to it.
• 1:32
  I went back and talked to Gunther and they said, well that's more than we can manage.
• 1:36
  So good luck and we enjoyed having you here and so forth.
• 1:39
  So I left and went to Detroit and it's probably the best move that I ever made
• 1:44
  because I stayed there a while and I really appreciated the great love and affection
• 1:49
  that the people of Michigan have shown me over the years.
• 1:52
  Again, sponsorships played a big part in a job change.
• 1:55
  Oh it did.
• 1:56
  Van Patrick had been working for a brewery called Goble and they switched to Strode.
• 2:01
  And Strode wasn't too anxious to have Van continue as the announcer
• 2:05
  because he had identification with the brewing rivals.
• 2:08
  So I think that at least partially led to his dismissal.
• 2:12
  Now George Kell had replaced Mel Ott.
• 2:15
  Right, Mel Ott had been killed in an automobile accident in 1958
• 2:19
  and he and his wife were hit by a car down in Louisiana.
• 2:22
  Mrs. Ott survived but Mel died and George replaced Mel.
• 2:26
  So he'd had a year under his belt when I came there.
• 2:29
  The last day of spring training there was a blockbuster trade
• 2:34
  between the Tigers and the Cleveland Indians.
• 2:38
  What precipitated that trade?
• 2:40
  Well that was one of the great trades of all time because generally when you,
• 2:43
  two clubs trade, they usually trade a couple of Humpty Dumptys
• 2:47
  as Clint Courtney once said, guys that don't help either team.
• 2:50
  But this was Harvey Keene of the Tigers going to Cleveland
• 2:54
  in exchange for Rocky Colivido.
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  Harvey Keene was the America League batting champion.
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  Colivido was a home run champion.
• 3:00
  So you had two stars being traded for each other.
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  And I can remember Rick Farrell who was Vice President,
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  General Manager of the Tigers came to the press box
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  the final day of spring training.
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  We were finishing up our broadcast and he came into the press box
• 3:16
  and said we've got a deal and he told us what the deal was.
• 3:20
  And sure enough the Tigers and the Indians opened the season in Cleveland, 1960.
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  And these two guys who had been traded for each other
• 3:29
  played against each other in that first game.
• 3:31
  Had it ever happened before or has it happened since when the batting champion
• 3:35
  and the home run champion were swapped for each other?
• 3:37
  Not that I know of. It might have but I can't recall it, Bob.
• 3:40
  It's entirely possible but it was a unique situation at that time.
• 3:45
  What were your first thoughts when you walked into Tiger Stadium?
• 3:48
  My first time in Tiger Stadium actually was with the Orioles.
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  I had gone there in 1954.
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  Baltimore opened their modern big league history
• 3:58
  with a game at what was in Briggs Stadium in 1954.
• 4:02
  And Steve Gromack shut out Baltimore, beat them 3-0.
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  Boone hit a home run. I remember that.
• 4:07
  There were two or three home runs off the Tiger bats.
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  And that was my first look at Tiger Stadium.
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  Then the Orioles beat them in the second game and went back to open in Baltimore.
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  But when I went in as a Tiger announcer, it was something special
• 4:21
  because now this was going to be my home.
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  I was going to be in this little booth as much as I was going to be in my living room during the summer.
• 4:28
  And I was going to be part of the Tiger franchise.
• 4:31
  So it was a great moment for me when I went back there in 1960 and became the Tiger announcer.
• 4:37
  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?
• 4:46
  No, and they had another very interesting situation, another unique trade.
• 4:51
  I don't think this has ever happened before or after.
• 4:55
  Two managers were traded for each other.
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  Jimmy Dykes was the manager at Detroit and Joe Gordon was the manager at Cleveland.
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  And Bill DeWitt was the president of the Tigers and Frank Lane was the big boss in Cleveland.
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  And they got together and decided that they couldn't switch a lot of players, so they would trade managers.
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  And Gordon came to Detroit, Jimmy Dykes went to Cleveland.
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  And I don't think either one of the managers liked that very much.
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  They thought it denigrated their position being traded.
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  And Gordon quit after a year with the Tigers.
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  He announced his retirement on the trip back from Kansas City after the final game.
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  And Jimmy went ahead because Jimmy always showed up somewhere, you know.
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  He was a great little pixie who loved cigars and stories and a terrific guy.
• 5:42
  And he stayed in baseball for quite a while.
• 5:46
  1961, Ernie saw quite a few large events in baseball.
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  The one that's gotten the most publicity, of course, was the Mantle Maris chase for the home run record.
• 5:56
  And then, of course, Roger eventually breaking Babe Ruth's single season record.
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  We've seen 1961, we've seen the documentaries that have been done about that year in his life.
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  What did you observe in that chase that summer?
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  I saw Mantle and Maris battling each other for the whole season.
• 6:14
  And the pressure really got to Roger. I really liked Roger Maris.
• 6:18
  I thought he was a terrific guy.
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  He was an underrated player.
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  He was a fine defensive outfielder, had a great arm, and certainly everybody knows he could hit.
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  But he was under a great deal of pressure, and I don't think he could handle the relationship with the media.
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  He couldn't understand why these guys in every town would ask him the same question.
• 6:40
  You know, he'd go to Detroit, and they'd ask him, how you doing, how you going to break the record,
• 6:45
  are you going to beat Mantle and so forth.
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  And then he'd go to Chicago, he'd get the same set of questions.
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  And he just couldn't comprehend why that would be happening.
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  And he began to be very standoffish with the media.
• 6:57
  His teammates loved it. They really did. They thought he was a great guy and a great team guy.
• 7:02
  But I noticed that he was nervous, not at ease at all. His hair began to fall out.
• 7:08
  And he just had a miserable time.
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  And he should have been enjoying the year because he was going to be a footnote to history,
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  or maybe a headline to history.
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  But he couldn't take the media attention, and I think that was his big problem.
• 7:21
  And added to that, even the Yankee fans wanted to see Mickey break the record and not Roger.
• 7:27
  Yeah, that's ironic too, because at one time the Yankee fans weren't that fond of Mantle in the early going.
• 7:33
  And when he began to challenge Babe Ruth's record, they didn't like that.
• 7:37
  But now they turned because Mantle had become a hero.
• 7:40
  And Maris was sort of a villain in a sense.
• 7:43
  And you're right about that. That's a good observation that I hadn't thought about.
• 7:47
  But that was the way the Yankee fans turned on Roger.
• 7:50
  And he wasn't as big a hero, certainly, as Mickey Mantle was to them.
• 7:54
  Let's fast forward now to 1967, another very monumental year, not just for the Tigers, but for the city of Detroit.
• 8:03
  Because as you have described, one night you're at the ballpark and you see smoke rising over the outfield fence.
• 8:10
  What goes through your mind when you see that?
• 8:12
  Well, that was a terrible feeling when the riots started in Detroit.
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  The city was divided. It was a very unsafe atmosphere.
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  Rumors were rampant about what was going to happen.
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  Nobody felt safe.
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  There was all sort of anxiety and worry among the people of Detroit.
• 8:31
  And the National Guard was finally called out and they quelled the riots.
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  But a lot of people were killed.
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  The property was destroyed, and it was a great blot on the city.
• 8:42
  And it was a terrible, terrible time.
• 8:46
  The Tigers tried to play through it. They didn't play that season.
• 8:49
  And almost won the pennant in 67.
• 8:52
  With a little bit of break on the last couple of days, they could have been the champions.
• 8:57
  But they lost out.
• 8:59
  And when they went to spring training the next year, I think the fact that they had come so close weighed on their minds.
• 9:06
  And they said, if we can come this close, maybe we can win it in 68.
• 9:11
  In 1968, Detroit came back very determined.
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  They did not fall short this time.
• 9:19
  They won their first World Series since 1945.
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  But what was the big difference in the 68 team versus 67?
• 9:26
  Not too much difference in those two teams, Bob.
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  It was a magical year for the Tigers in 1968.
• 9:32
  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.
• 9:41
  And they had a combination of power hitting and great pitching, had terrific defense, had a good bench.
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  The bullpen didn't make a whole lot of difference in those days, but they had a pretty fair bullpen.
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  But they had Denny McClain and Mickey Lowlich as the two great pitchers.
• 9:59
  And it was a team that had a different hero every day, and they stayed in first place practically the whole season.
• 10:06
  Three men on, two men out, game tied, one to one in the ninth inning.
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  McDaniel checking his time with Jake Gibbs.
• 10:16
  The tall right-hander, ready to go to work again.
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  And the windup and the pitch.
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  He swings a line shot, base hit, right field, the Tigers win it.
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  Here comes K-line to score, and it's all over.
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  Downward singles, the Tigers bobbed on.
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  K-line is score, the fans are steaming on the field.
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  And the Tigers have won their first minute since 1945.
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  Let's listen to the badmothers here at Tigers Stadium.
• 10:45
  1968 also sees a young pitcher go 31-6.
• 10:56
  What propelled Denny McClain to that kind of year?
• 10:59
  Denny McClain got that kind of year because he was a great pitcher for that one season.
• 11:03
  He was a great pitcher a couple of seasons, but especially in 1968.
• 11:08
  He had great confidence in himself.
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  He had a tremendously effective fastball.
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  He had great control.
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  The players loved to play behind him because he did work quickly.
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  And he also seemed to have a good bit of luck,
• 11:22
  which you have to have when you're going to have a record like that.
• 11:25
  He just amazed the baseball nation with his accomplishment.
• 11:30
  And he breezed through that season, won 31 ball games,
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  the only guy to do it since Dizzy Dean had done it back in the early 1930s.
• 11:39
  And it's a remarkable feat that's never happened since then.
• 11:43
  Well, this is the big day for the maestro, Denny McClain.
• 11:46
  Saturday afternoon at Tigers Stadium, September the 14th, 1968.
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  And Denny will be going for win number 30.
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  Pitching rival of the Oakland Athletics, Chuck Dobson.
• 11:59
  And we've got a tremendous crowd here.
• 12:01
  And everybody looking forward to Denny's test, trying to get win number 30 of this season.
• 12:08
  The count on Horton is now two balls and two strikes.
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  And Campanaris comes in from short.
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  Chuck with his pitcher, Diego Seguin.
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  Here's the set by Seguin, the pitch.
• 12:21
  Wenger on the top of the map.
• 12:23
  That'll be the ballgame.
• 12:24
  It's over the head of Gosner.
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  McClain wins his 30th pitch.
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  The score, Winning Horton has a single.
• 12:30
  And the ballgame is over.
• 12:32
  And the Tigers win it 5-4.
• 12:34
  Denny McClain is one of the first out of the run-out, racing out and Horton is mobbed as the Tigers come from behind.
• 12:41
  And McClain has his 30th victory of the 1968 season.
• 12:48
  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.
• 12:58
  That was one of the great strategic moves in World Series history.
• 13:02
  Mayo Smith was the manager of the Tigers.
• 13:05
  Mickey Stanley was the center fielder.
• 13:07
  Mayo wanted to get Al Kailin, who had been injured part of the year, back into the lineup to play in the outfield.
• 13:13
  So he moved Stanley in to replace Ray Euler at shortstop.
• 13:18
  Euler, a great, great defensive player, but he hit about 130 or 135 and was one of the poorest hitters in baseball history.
• 13:27
  But Stanley was a great athlete and he adjusted perfectly.
• 13:32
  He had a ground ball hit to him early in the first game of the World Series.
• 13:35
  He relaxed and played a great shortstop.
• 13:38
  But I can remember going to St. Louis with the Tigers when they opened the World Series in St. Louis.
• 13:44
  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.
• 13:52
  And they all agreed that it was a bad move.
• 13:55
  Nobody told me that it was a good move.
• 13:57
  And I didn't think it was either, but it turned out to be a great move and it worked.
• 14:01
  Detroit gets down 3-1 to the St. Louis Cardinals.
• 14:05
  Game 5 sees the series in Detroit and you had a hand in the opening of that World Series game with the national anthem.
• 14:15
  Well, I sure did and I almost got fired because of that, Bob.
• 14:20
  What had happened as the resident songwriter there at the ballpark,
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  I was appointed by General Manager President Jim Campbell to pick the anthem singers.
• 14:30
  And the Saturday game, I picked Margaret Whiting, who was a great ballad singer.
• 14:35
  She was the daughter of a great songwriter, niece of another great songwriter, both the Whiting boys from Michigan.
• 14:43
  And she did a very standard rendition of the national anthem.
• 14:47
  And the second man I selected was Marvin Gaye from Motown.
• 14:52
  And it was a little ironic that Mr. Campbell came to me and said,
• 14:55
  now we're a little concerned that Marvin might make it a little bit too bluesy and too much Motown.
• 15:01
  We'd like to have a straight rendition. Would you mind asking them to do it that way?
• 15:05
  So I did and Marvin said, sure, I'll do it. So he sang it straight.
• 15:09
  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.
• 15:18
  He'd had a big hit on the charts.
• 15:21
  Come on, light my fire. And he was playing at Las Vegas.
• 15:25
  And a friend of mine who'd been in Hollywood in the record business said,
• 15:28
  Jose Feliciano had done a great job of the national anthem at the Greek theater in California.
• 15:34
  And he would be a great selection. So I went on the advice of this gentleman and we got in touch with Feliciano.
• 15:40
  He said he'd be happy to come. He was playing in Vegas.
• 15:43
  He took the red eye to Detroit, got in in the morning.
• 15:47
  Olly McLaughlin, a record producer that was a good friend of mine.
• 15:51
  And I went out to meet him at the airport. We took him to the hotel.
• 15:54
  He freshened up, went to the ballpark and went out to the clubhouses.
• 15:58
  The guys loved him there. They came out to the little laddie room.
• 16:01
  And he made up a few songs about Al K. Lyon and Denny McLean and everybody else and sang them.
• 16:07
  And then he went out into the center field area with his leader dog and his dark glasses all by himself.
• 16:15
  And in front of the microphone with his guitar, he rendered the national anthem.
• 16:20
  And it was sort of a little bluesy anthem.
• 16:23
  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.
• 16:32
  And they were a little disturbed about it. But he sang it from the heart.
• 16:37
  And I thought he did a great job.
• 16:39
  All of a sudden the headlines hit the paper about Feliciano and how he had crucified the national anthem.
• 16:47
  American Legion clubs rose up in anger.
• 16:50
  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.
• 16:58
  And that Feliciano was a communist and a traitor to the flag and everything like that.
• 17:03
  Well, I defended him because I had to. I picked the guy and it was my responsibility.
• 17:08
  And the Tigers were pretty good about that.
• 17:10
  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.
• 17:18
  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.
• 17:26
  And it got to be quite a cause celeb.
• 17:29
  But we became great friends.
• 17:31
  Later on I introduced Feliciano to the young lady that he eventually married and now is living in Connecticut with.
• 17:38
  They've raised a great family and he is still singing and playing that great guitar.
• 18:08
  The.
• 18:11
  Was.
• 18:14
  Right.
• 18:17
  You.
• 18:22
  Oh.
• 18:25
  We.
• 18:28
  Yeah.
• 18:40
  Yeah.
• 18:43
  Yeah.
• 18:49
  Yeah.
• 18:51
  Yeah.
• 18:54
  Yeah.
• 18:59
  Yeah.
• 19:04
  Yeah.
• 19:07
  Yeah.
• 19:09
  Yeah.
• 19:11
  Oh.
• 19:13
  Oh.
• 19:15
  Oh.
• 19:17
  Oh.
• 19:19
  Yeah.
• 19:30
  A Robert Merrill version.
• 19:31
  It wasn't, but it was tame compared to some of the modern day renditions that we see.
• 19:37
  Well, that's a great observation.
• 19:39
  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.
• 19:50
  OK, back to the field now.
• 19:52
  Mickey Lowlitch, the story of the World Series in 1968.
• 19:56
  Mickey was always overshadowed by Denny McClain.
• 19:59
  Denny had the 31 game victory season.
• 20:02
  Lowlitch had been a real good strong arm left hander.
• 20:06
  He had worked as a starter.
• 20:08
  He didn't put in the bullpen from time to time.
• 20:11
  He got out there and did everything you could ask of him.
• 20:14
  And he was a magnificent pitcher.
• 20:16
  He was a good strikeout pitcher and he had a good strong left arm.
• 20:19
  He would do 350, 360 innings a season and do it beautifully.
• 20:25
  But in the regular season, he was overshadowed by Denny.
• 20:28
  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.
• 20:37
  They went to Detroit and it looked like the Tigers just weren't going anywhere.
• 20:41
  They played very bad baseball and they were down to the Cardinals.
• 20:45
  And they came back and forced the seventh game of the World Series with Lowlitch against Bob Gibson.
• 20:51
  Two great pitchers and I think the odds were certainly in favor of Gibson because he'd already won two games.
• 20:57
  And he was a magnificent pitcher, no question about that.
• 21:01
  He set the strikeout record in the first game when he beat the Tigers handily and he was ready to pitch this final game.
• 21:08
  And there was never any better one game pitcher than Bob Gibson.
• 21:12
  But Lowlitch was equal to the occasion and they battled for seven innings.
• 21:17
  It was nothing to nothing.
• 21:19
  And the Tigers were two out, got singles from Cash and Horton.
• 21:23
  And then Northup stepped up and hit a three base hit over the head of Flood.
• 21:27
  He set a field, a two run scored and the Tigers went on to win the World's Championship.
• 21:31
  Lowlitch became one of the few pitchers ever to win three games in a World Series.
• 21:36
  And he was a World Series hero and he certainly deserved it.
• 21:40
  How about Kurt Flood's play of that hit?
• 21:42
  Well, there was a lot of question about that, whether it was a legitimate triple or not. I thought so.
• 21:48
  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.
• 21:55
  And then almost tripped and the ball got over his head.
• 21:59
  But it might have been over his head even if he hadn't come in on it at first, you never know.
• 22:04
  And you've got to give the credit to Jim Northup.
• 22:06
  And as they say, look at the box score and you know what really happened.
• 22:11
  As divided as the city had been in 67, what did the 68 World Series do for bringing the community back together?
• 22:19
  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.
• 22:29
  And they all forgot about the other stuff.
• 22:31
  And I think another factor in the whole scheme of things was that the newspapers had gone on strike around Thanksgiving of 1967.
• 22:40
  So there was no print coverage of the Tiger 68 season at all until maybe mid-August.
• 22:47
  So they got through almost the whole season without any newspapers.
• 22:51
  And that put the emphasis on radio and on TV.
• 22:55
  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?
• 23:01
  Or you could walk through the neighborhood, hear the ball game, you could see TV and all the taverns and all the restaurants.
• 23:07
  And it was the topic of conversation all through the summer, what the Tigers were doing.