Every player on the roster as well as manager Sparky Anderson and his coaching staff, Detroit s legions of fans, the ownership, and even a fair amount of the baseball media knew that the Tigers had the potential to do something special in 1984. The 83 team had made a late run at the pennant, finishing in second place but convinced that they were the best team in baseball during the second half of the season. Now the team s core veterans were entering their prime playing years, and a couple of off-season moves appeared to give the Tigers the look of a serious contender.

So it wasn t surprising that more than a few onlookers predicted great things for this bunch when spring training finally arrived. But nobody not even the Tigers themselves could have imagined just how great things would be. The team won their first 9 games to start the season, then followed their only loss with another 10-game winning streak. At 19 1, they were virtually unbeatable after their first 20 games. The players had faith in their invincibility and encountered little resistance when convincing other teams that they stood no chance.

By the time the season s first 40 games had passed, Detroit held an unprecedented 35 5 record, having shattered the old mark for the best start in baseball history and setting the record for most consecutive road wins in the process. They led their division from day one until the end of the regular season, won the most games (104) in franchise history, and went on to win Detroit s fourth and, so far, their last world championship.

One of the most revered teams in the history of the game, the 1984 Tigers had as much personality in their dugout as they had talent. Managed by the legendary Anderson, that unforgettable squad also boasted Hall of Fame double-play tandem Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker; intensely competitive superstar-in-the-making Kirk Gibson in right; fiery starter Jack Morris heading the pitching rotation; slugging catcher Lance Parrish behind the plate; and free agent newcomer Darrell Evans shoring things up at first base. They also received pivotal contributions from players such as Chet Lemon, Tom Brookens, Dave Bergman, Dan Petry, Aurelio Lopez, and an MVP season from newly acquired closer Willie Hernandez.

Longtime Detroit columnist George Cantor coaxes each of these players to speak out in Wire to Wire, describing their different roles throughout the season and what it was like to make baseball history. His book looks at each individual player and how their different personalities meshed together to form their perfect, once-in-a-lifetime team chemistry and how Anderson was able to get everything he could out of each one of them during one of the most celebrated seasons in team sports.

The 1984 Detroit Tigers were the kind of team that comes along once in a rare while. Like the 27 Yankees or the 75 Cincinnati Reds, everything came together for the Tigers heading into the 84 season and they never looked back en route to the franchise s fourth World Series title. But while their domination on the field is now a significant piece of baseball history, the behind-the-scenes story of how the team went from contender to juggernaut has never been told. In Wire to Wire, longtime Detroit sports columnist George Cantor introduces the different personalities that came together to shock the baseball world with a record-breaking 35 5 start, and tells how they were able to hold everything together for one glorious, memorable summer in the Motor City.

Wire to Wire

Inside the 1984 Detroit Tigers Championship Season

Triumph Books

Contents

A Moment in Time

Look around.

Take a good, long look. Because it will never be like this again.

Darkness has long since settled over Tiger Stadium. By the eighth inning the temperature has dipped into the low 50s and the lined jackets are coming out in the stands.

Almost fifty-two thousand people are in the ballpark on this chilly Sunday evening in October, and they begin to stir restlessly as the Tigers come to bat.

Because the fifth game of this World Series is close. Way too close. That annoying Kurt Bevacqua, San Diego's most surprising hitter, homered again in the top half of the inning and the Detroit lead is now only 5–4.

Yes, Willie Hernandez will be pitching the ninth, and he has been unbeatable in almost every save situation this season. On the other hand, it was Hernandez who had given up Bevacqua's homer. And Detroit fans know, it is imprinted in their genetic code, that nothing can be counted on, least of all those things that look the most assured.

Two runs by the Padres in the ninth, a bloop single and a long fly ball into that right field overhang, and the Series could be heading back to San Diego for a sixth or, God forbid, a seventh game. Only a few days before, the Padres had trapped the favored Chicago Cubs in their ballpark and beaten them up three games in a row to win the National League playoffs.

So there is a certain skittishness, a tension that gnaws at the gut. You can feel it in the stands and in the Detroit dugout, too.

"We knew if we didn't win it all, it would have all been for nothing," says Kirk Gibson.

"Nobody would have remembered what we had done during the season. The 35–5 start, Willie's season. It would have been a footnote somewhere.

"Look at what happened to Seattle in 2001. They broke every record in the book and went down in the playoffs. So no one will remember them. That's just how the game is."

The University of Michigan Marching Band had performed before this game, setting up in front of the 440-foot marker in the deepest part of center field. They played the music to the Wolverines' "Let's Go, Blue" cheer. But the fans changed the words. This time at the rhythmic break the entire stadium yelled the phrase, "Bless You, Boys." It was the motto of the 1984 Tigers, dreamed up in a fit of irony by television sportscaster Al Ackerman and adopted passionately by the entire state.

The U of M band went on to toot the theme to Ghostbusters, the big movie hit of the summer. "Who ya gonna call?" asked the lyric. Once more, the Detroit fans came up with their own words. Their bellowed response: "Goose Busters."

It was their tribute to the menacing figure who is walking to the mound for San Diego. For years Goose Gossage had tormented them and the entire American League. As the closer for the Yankees, Gossage had saved 150 games over the previous six seasons. In two World Series with New York, he had pitched in six games and never given up a run.

"I never fooled anyone in my life," says Gossage. "I had to throw it, and they had to hit it. To me that's what baseball's about."

He can't bring it quite as hard as he used to with the Yankees, when he regularly threw in the high 90s. But at 33 years old, he is still a presence, one that opens up vistas of constant pain to the Tigers. They had never come close to hitting him.

Gossage came to the Padres as a free agent before the 1984 season, one of many Yankees who had enjoyed all of George Steinbrenner that he could stand. He is a big reason that San Diego, a reliably hapless organization, is a participant in this Series.

Gossage stalks to the mound and the noise level rises.

Look around. Now. Quickly.

It will never be like this again.

The ballpark is in its 73rd "official" season. It had been entirely reconfigured in 1912, and that is regarded as its historically correct founding date. But the Tigers had played at no other site since 1901, when the American League was born and it was called Bennett Park. Its dimensions, strange crannies, endless center field, short porch in right — all of it memorized and loved by Tigers fans for generations.

Now the concrete and steel of the old park seem to be a living thing. Every single fan is in motion, standing up to relieve the tension or squirming in their seats.

True, Lance Parrish had hit a home run off Gossage in the seventh, on the second pitch he threw in the game. Goose also had looked shaky in getting the subsequent outs.

"Every once in a while, Goose would fire one into the backstop, just to get your mental processes going," says Alan Trammell. "He liked to let you know that maybe his control wasn't all that it should be today.

"There was a definite fear factor when you faced him. I think all the great relief pitchers have it."

But Gossage is struggling for real tonight. He walks Marty Castillo, the surprise choice to start at third base for the Tigers in the Series, to lead off the bottom of the eighth.

That brings up the top of the order, Lou Whitaker.

The obvious play here is to bunt Castillo to second and then set up the run that would give the Tigers back their all-important two-run lead. Whitaker gets it down toward third base and Graig Nettles, another former Yankee, charges in. Nettles is an accomplished fielder and he has a relatively slow runner at first.

But he can't make the play. Shortstop Garry Templeton is not on the second base bag to take the throw. Castillo slides in safely.

First and second, none out.

Now it is Trammell's turn, and once again Sparky Anderson flashes the sign for the sacrifice. This time Gossage fields the bunt and tosses it to second baseman Alan Wiggins, covering first. Now there are runners and second and third, with one out.

This brings up Kirk Gibson, with Parrish on deck. Gibson has been playing like a man with his socks on fire. His two-run homer in the first had given Detroit the early lead. After San Diego tied the score, he had roared home from third like a runaway truck on a pop fly to short right field in the fifth. That run is now the difference.

He had torn the pants of his white uniform as he slid across the plate. With the blond stubble on his chin, it gave him the look of a wild man, a guy who'd just as soon knock you down as look at you. An irresistible force to be tampered with at your peril.

San Diego manager Dick Williams holds up four fingers and waves his hand to the side — the sign for the intentional pass.

This is the obvious call. Everyone in the ballpark knows it is coming. Parrish is next up, and even with his home run the previous time at bat, Gossage always handles him well.

"I was already thinking to myself, 'OK, you're not the fastest guy in the world and we're going to have 'em loaded up with one out,'" says Parrish. "'Just stay out of the double play.' That's all that was running through my mind. Stay out of the double."

But Gossage is not buying it. He turns to the first-base dugout and shakes his head at Williams.

Anderson sees it from across the field. He sees it but he can't believe it. He had been miked for a film on the Series and the surprise in his voice is evident as he calls to Gibson.

"He don't want to walk you."

"Dick Williams was a great manager," says Sparky, "and for him to get talked out of the pass ... well, Gossage must have done one hell of a sales job on him."

"I almost never got a sniff at him," says Gibson. "He just abused me from the first time I faced him, and I knew that's what he was telling Williams. That's what you want in a great pitcher. A guy who knows he can get it done. What he didn't realize was that he had just presented a challenge to me."

"Kirk is a guy who thrives on challenges," says Darrell Evans. "It's almost as if he has to create them for himself if they're not obviously in front of him."

Williams heads back to the dugout and Gibson steps in to hit.

It is just past 7:30 p.m. and there is a slight breeze toward left field. The darkness is complete and the lights are at their brightest. Gibson settles in, and as the fans realize what Gossage has chosen to do a roar washes over the entire ballpark.

Everyone is standing. The noise seems to be building from within your own head.

Look at it now. Remember.

There was a time when Tiger Stadium had the fourth-largest seating capacity in the major leagues. Until the early sixties, it trailed only Cleveland's cavernous Municipal Stadium, Yankee Stadium, and the Polo Grounds, and could accommodate crowds of 55,000 or more. They even managed to shoehorn a record 58,000 people into the park for a doubleheader with the Yankees in 1947.

After various reconfigurations and seat widenings, however, absolute capacity for the three home games of the 1984 World Series was 52,000. For regular-season games, when many obstructed-view and third-deck seats were held back from sale, capacity was usually given at 48,000.

At the stadium's last Tigers game, in 1999, although it appeared that every seat in the ballpark was taken, the announced attendance was barely 45,000.

The ideal number of seats for a modern baseball stadium is usually said to be 40,000 — large enough to accommodate a high demand, but small enough to lend a sense of urgency so advance ticket sales will be locked in. Comerica Park has approximately 40,000 seats.

A Genuine Anger

To understand how we arrived at this moment, you have to go back a full year. Because, just as with the 1968 Tigers, the '84 team felt it had been jobbed out of a pennant the previous season.

The logic may be a bit hard to follow. Unlike 1967, when the Tigers were beaten out on the last play of the last inning of the last game of the season, the '83 team finished six full games behind Baltimore. When the opportunity had come to play the Orioles in a September doubleheader at Tiger Stadium, Detroit lost both games.

But logic isn't really important when it comes to motivation. Any old flame will do. And the Tigers had managed to talk themselves into an inferno.

"There wasn't a doubt in anyone's mind that we were the best team in the league when that season ended," says Lance Parrish. "We just ran out of games before we could get there."

"When I walked into that clubhouse the next spring I felt more than motivation," says Darrell Evans. "There was genuine anger. It kind of rocked me. I had never felt anything like that before."

Detroit had finished with 92 wins, the best record of any Tigers team since the '68 champions. It was a significant improvement.

Since Sparky Anderson arrived as manager in 1979, there had been little movement. The team's win total had been stuck in the mid 80s, and the Tigers remained mired right in the middle of the division standings.

In the peculiar split season of 1981, occasioned by a players' strike, the Tigers actually made a serious run at the second-half pennant before succumbing to Milwaukee. But then they slid back to the middle of the pack again in 1982.

Somewhere in the summer of '83, though, it clicked.

"There's a time when a good team feels like it's ready to win," says Sparky, "and when that happens there isn't too much can stop 'em. This was still a very young team in '81, and winning a pennant in baseball is the hardest thing there is to do.

"Now you wonder how I can say a thing like that. Isn't it hard to win in any sport? But it's the day after day after day. You can't get up for every single game. No one in the world can do that, and if he says he can, then you can shake his hand because you're looking at Superman. So in every season, a team hits a wall and when that time comes a young man doesn't know what he has to do to deal with it.

"You can talk to him, but until he goes through it himself he just don't know. This team had to go through it before it was ready to win."

Several other things had come together in 1983. The core of the team, Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker, both hit over .300 in unison for the first time. Parrish knocked in 100 runs for the first time. Jack Morris won 20 games for the first time.

All of them had come up to the majors at the end of 1977. This was their sixth full season together, and they had emerged as the heart and guts of this team.

Outfielders Chet Lemon and Larry Herndon were both in their second year with the Tigers and were steady, stabilizing forces. Dan Petry had broken through and become a 19-game winner.

Everything was falling into place. Yes, there were questions at first and third base, and maybe the bullpen could use a little depth, but the consistency of belief that Sparky was looking for, the conviction that this team was there — not almost there, but there — had formed.

With one big exception: Gibson had regressed in 1983. While his peers had made their breakthrough, the team's anticipated superstar, the man Sparky once said had "a chance to be the next Mickey Mantle," struggled.

Leg injuries had played a part, limiting him to more appearances as a designated hitter than as the right fielder. But it was more, much more than that. He seemed to be at war with himself. The man who could have been a first-round draft choice as a football player, who could run like a wide receiver and hit home runs that seemed to come down in another dimension, appeared unsure of his own abilities, baffled by the expectations that had been placed upon him.

He had played in more games than any of his previous three seasons, but he looked tentative as a hitter, unsure and overmatched by most left-handers and even average right-handers.

His name was just as apt to turn up in the gossip columns of the Detroit papers as on the sports page. He and his buddy, pitcher Dave Rozema, were living large, bigger than life. They had plenty of money, good looks, and instant recognition wherever they went. They were a couple of kids who had grown up in Michigan and everybody loved them.

But when the Tigers needed the lift that might have put them over the top in '83, Gibson was missing. There was the suspicion that he might never match the hype. That he had been rushed too soon into a pressure-filled role. That his experience as a college player at Michigan State University and in the minor leagues had been far too brief.

The verdict was: not ready. Maybe never ready.

Gibson knew it, too. Whatever else he was, the man was not dumb. Abrasive, cocky, and loud, oh yes. But you'd also have to write down smart to complete the sketch. And when 1983 ended, he knew that it was on his shoulders as never before.

Telling only a few close associates, he slipped out of town and headed for the West Coast. The simple goal was to remake his mind and regain the confidence that had somehow slipped away. His destination was Seattle, and what happened there would redefine who Gibson was.

But something else had happened in 1983, too, something that had shaken this entire franchise to its core. On the eve of the World Series opener, the Detroit Tigers had been sold.

John Fetzer, sole owner of the team for 22 years, decided at the age of 81 that he'd had enough. Taking the advice of his mosttrusted aide, team president Jim Campbell, he had sold the ballclub to Tom Monaghan, a little-known pizza baron from Ann Arbor.

Even the most casual fan knew that this, somehow, had changed things. No one could have guessed how profound those changes would be.

Changes in Attitude

Fetzer insisted he hadn't even known himself that he was ready to sell his ballclub. "It's painful for me even to think about that," he told Monaghan when the two men met for the first time the previous April. "This team has been my life."

But the longer that meeting between the two self-made business tycoons lasted, the more Fetzer thought he saw something in the younger man. He saw John Fetzer.

Same Midwestern upbringing. Solid religious values. Building a business empire after starting out on a shoestring. An unshakable belief in positive thinking as the path to achieving the highest degree of self-actualization. Being all that you can be, as the ads for the army put it.

More than that, Monaghan unquestionably loved baseball. In fact, dreams of the game had sustained him during an impoverished, hard-knock boyhood spent in a Catholic orphanage and as a farm worker.