Today would have been Dwight Lowry’s 51st birthday. Fans old enough to remember Tigers baseball in the mid-1980s remember the tall gentle giant of a catching prospect.

Lowry, an 11th-round pick in 1980, emerged from nowhere in Spring Training 1984 jumping from Double-A Birmingham to big club as Lance Parrish’s backup. As Sparky Anderson liked to [...]

Happy 59th to Enos Cabell.
The Tigers picked him up at the end of Spring Training 1982 from the Giants for Champ Summers. In two years with Detroit he hit .286 — .261 in ‘82 and .311 in ‘83.
I remember being surprised that the Tigers cut him loose after the ‘83 season but then [...]

So much could be said about this team and most of it would be vitriolic. Instead I offer four semi-related thoughts…

Long-time Detroit sportscaster Al Ackerman — who coined the phrase “Bless You, Boys” long before the 1984 season — often referred to Sparky Anderson as “Fifth-Place Sparky.” Anyone old enough to remember Sparky’s first four [...]

This is the second and final installment of my conversation with former Tigers outfielder and pinch-hitter extraordinaire, Johnny Grubb. You can find the first installment here.

Mike McClary: Heading into the 1984 season, was it a long off-season? It would seem like you would be chomping at the bit to get back on the field shortly [...]

Yesterday was Johnny Grubb’s 60th birthday. Yes, 60th. I recently had the pleasure of talking with him while doing research for SABR’s book on the 1984 Tigers. (I’ve written the biographies of both Grubb and outfielder Rusty Kuntz.) We spoke about his entire career and focused a lot, of course, on the ‘84 team.

In honor [...]

Three quick hits:

This past weekend my wife and I traveled to Indian Wells, Calif., to watch the second round of the Pacific Life Open tennis tournament.

When you take away the two-hour line to park and the gale-force winds, we had a great time watching some big-name players including Lindsay Davenport, Ana Ivanovic, Carlos Moya and [...]