Re: World Series - Tigers vs. Cardinals?

[Nelson Bradford]

I'm not predicting the Tigers will play the Cardinals - but after last night's game, it certainly appears to be true.

However where do I find when those two teams played each other in another World Series?

It seems to me that Denny McClain was HUGE for the Tigers that year and Bob Gibson was the star pitcher for the Cardinals.

Anyone?

thanx
-neb

[LoraineStanton]

1968

http://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/1968_WS.shtml

I googled "Tigers Cardinals World Series"

[Gary Swartzlander]

Yep, it would be a rematch of the '68 series. If it works out this way it will be interesting due to the relationship that the managers have with each other. Jim Leland worked for the Cardinal organization for several years before coming to the Tigers. He credits them and Tony LaRussa with reenergizing him to come back to managing. Leland and LaRussa are reported to talk on the phone several times a day.

[Wilson L. Deaton]

It seems to me that Denny McClain was HUGE for the Tigers that year and Bob Gibson was the star pitcher for the Cardinals.


1968 was a great year for the Tigers! Besides McClain there was Al Kaline, Mickey Lolich, Bill Freehan, Norm Cash, Willie Horton, etc.

1968 - 1970 (ages 8 - 10) were the years I was most interested in baseball. I played Little League, collected baseball cards, etc. After that I began losing interest...

The week I moved to Kansas City for NTS the pastor of the first church I visited took me to the Royals' home opener. It hooked me again! The Royals beat the Cardinals in the "I-70" Series that fall. When I left Kansas City three years later, I lost interest again. Since moving to Kenosha, I've been to a few Brewers games but they haven't inspired much enthusiasm...

Wilson

[Bruce Carriker]

1968 Tigers: Denny McLain, Mickey Lolich, Earl Wilson, Joe Sparma (former Ohio State QB for Woody Hayes) were the starting rotation. In the bullpen there were guys like Pat Dobson, Fred Lasher, Darryl Patterson, and John Hiller, who was one of the premier relievers of the 70's, but was just a rookie in 1968. Through the season they acquired some older guys from other teams - Don McMahon and Elroy Face. And they had a young pitcher named Les "Sugar" Cain, who was supposed to be great but never really developed into anything.

Norm Cash, Dick McAuliffe (with that crazy open stance), and Don Wert were 3/4 of the infield. Ray Oyler was the SS most of the season, but he couldn't hit his weight (and he only weighed about .150), so in the World Series, Mickey Stanley, normally a CF, started at SS, with Oyler coming in for late inning defense.

That move allowed the Tigers to get Jim Northrup's bat in the lineup in CF, flanked by Al Kaline (aging, but still pretty good) and Willie Horton (no glove, great bat). The best hitter on the team, statistically speaking, was a no-neck pinch-hitter named Gates Brown, who hit about .400 that year.

The Cardinals were virtually the same as the 1967 World Championship team, except that Nellie Briles (who filled in brilliantly when Bob Gibson broke his leg in '67) was a full-time member of the rotation that also included Gibson, Steve Carlton, Ray Washburn, and sometimes, Larry Jaster. The bullpen was Joe Hoerner, Ron Willis, and Wayne Granger. A bunch of other guys made a few appearances - Mel Nelson, a young guy named Mike Torrez (who later starred with the Expos and Red Sox), and another young LH named Hal Gilson, who was St. Louis' answer to "Sugar" Cain - supposed to be great, never amounted to anything.

Cepeda, Javier, Maxvill, Shannon were the infield. Brock, Flood, Maris were the outfield. McCarver was the catcher. Ed Spiezio (Scott's dad) played RF for Maris against some LH pitchers.

The Cardinals took a 3 games to 1 lead in the Series, then TOTALLY collapsed. They lost a close Game 5, then got blasted in Game 6 (Ray Washburn was awful). In Game 7 Gibson, who had a string of seven complete game World Series victories dating back to 1964, started for the Cardinals. Mickey Lolich (baseball's proof that fat guys can be athletic) started for Detroit on TWO DAYS REST (take that, all you 6-inning, 4 days rest between starts, starting pitchers of today). They both pitched well. Late in the game Jim Northrup hit a fly ball to CF, where Curt Flood, probably the best defensive center fielder in baseball at the time, inexplicably misplayed the ball into a 3-run triple. Both teams added meaningless runs in the 9th inning and that was that.

1968 was The Year of the Pitcher. McLain won 31 games...and also grooved a big, fat fastball to his childhood hero, Mickey Mantle...who smacked it for HR #500. Gibson set the modern record for ERA (1.12), and set the major league record for consecutive scoreless innings pitched...broken later that same year by Don Drysdale, and now held by Orel Hershiser.

Following 1968, the Cardinals made a series a disastrous moves over the next two seasons. They traded Orlando Cepeda to Atlanta for Joe Torre (nice talent exchange, but it gutted the team emotionally - Cepeda was the heart and soul of the 67-68 teams). They traded Wayne Granger to Cincinnati for Vada Pinson, who they turned around and traded for Jose Cardenal. They traded McCarver, Flood, Hoerner to Philly for Richie Allen, who was a great hitter but a clubhouse cancer. When Flood refused to report to Philly and sued baseball instead, they sent a young OF prospect name Willie Montanez to the Phillies. Montanez made a couple of All-Star teams in the 70's.

The collapse in the 1968 Series was a harbinger of what was to come for the next 13 years, before a White Rat named Herzog won another World Series for St. Louis.

[Nelson Bradford]

thanx for all the info!
NazNet comes through again and again and again!
-neb

[Bruce Carriker]

I grew up in St. Louis, and the World Series was one of the very few times I remember them letting us watch television in school. They had it in the gym, and during lunch and recess, we could watch the Series. One of my teachers, Mr. Zeilman, also had a small portable TV in his classroom, which was, I'm sure, against the rules...but we weren't telling! :)

And of course, all us kids who had transistor radios had the earplugs run up our shirtsleeves...like the teachers couldn't tell and didn't know what we were doing! Ha, ha.

When all the boys let out a simultaneous groan in the 2nd inning of Game 6, it was pretty obvious we weren't really paying attention to math class.

[Bob Evans]

Bruce

I was going to comment on you being really old with your recounting of the 68 series but then I read your post about watching it at school and I realized I did the same thing.

[Gina Stevenson]

Bruce

I was going to comment on you being really old with your recounting of the 68 series but then I read your post about watching it at school and I realized I did the same thing.

'Remember, too, all the radios/earplugs being carried/worn around that time in a lot of classes. ;)

[Walter Thompson]

OK, I am late in the discussion. But some more trivia. Denny McClain was the premier pitcher but he lost three games in that series. Lolich is the star pitcher. Also McClain then went on to become a huge disappointment with his gambling and went to prison, twice I believe for the same thing.
Also another little remembered fact, Gibson was a diabetic and made a few commercials after that for the diabetes association, I believe.
I was aboard ship in Mayport, Florida when they played waiting for my ship to get in from the Med. because I was TDA I got to watch the whole series. Can't add much but it will be full of trivia if it happens by the TV crews.

[Wesley Smith]

I'm pretty sure Bob Gibson was not a diabetic. He was asthmatic and made several commercials re. asthma.

Wes

[Walter Thompson]

You are absolutely correct:
Bob Gibson suffered from a multitude of medical problems as a child. He persevered through bouts of rickets, pneumonia, asthma, hay fever and also was diagnosed with a heart murmur. I remembered the commercials but the wrong illness. Sorry for the mistake.:basic03 :)

[Monty Stewart]

3 more to go!

Go Cards!

[Gary Swartzlander]

3 more to go!

Go Cards!

3 more to go!

Go Tigers!!

[Jim Franklin]

Did not Bob Gibson play for the Harlem Globetrotters before he went to baseball?

[Monty Stewart]

Did not Bob Gibson play for the Harlem Globetrotters before he went to baseball?
Yes, that is true.

[Jim Franklin]

Thanks Monty, I thought I remembered seeing him play with them in The Dalles, OR during my senior year in high school in about Feb. 1956.

[Bruce Carriker]

Did not Bob Gibson play for the Harlem Globetrotters before he went to baseball?

I'm late responding to this, and I see it's already been answered, so I won't respond directly.

Bob Gibson played basketball at Creighton University in Omaha, and was an exceptional athlete. I heard one former Cardinal old-timer (don't remember who - maybe Enos Slaughter, maybe Marty Marion) commenting on pitchers who were complete ballplayers who just happened to be pitchers.

Whoever it was (Marion or Slaughter) said there were two guys pitching at the time who, if they hadn't made it as pitchers, could have moved to the outfield and been stars there, too...Bob Gibson and Jim Kaat. This is one of the reasons I hate the DH. Pitchers who are complete ballplayers (Kaat, Gibson, Gary Peters, Don Drysdale, Don Newcombe all come to mind...guys who could hit some and run the bases) deserve the competitive advantage that gives to them and their teams.

[Sara Sheppard]

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