• Did you see that Hall of Famer and Detroit Stars centerfielder Norman “Turkey” Stearnes will be inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame on Friday? The article in the Nashville Tennessean begins with this anecdote:
  

  Norman “Turkey” Stearnes could work for Walter Briggs. He just couldn’t play for him.

  During the offseasons between leading the Negro League in home runsseven times, the Nashville native worked in a Detroit car factory owned by Briggs, who also owned the major league Detroit Tigers.could work for Walter Briggs. He just couldn’t play for him.

  Stearnes hit .400+ three times and posted a .350 career batting average with the Stars, the Nashville Elite Giants, the Montgomery Grey Sox, and the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues.

• I’ve had it with the Johnny Damon saga. Here’s hoping that Dave Dombrowski and Mike Ilitch gave up dealing with Scott Boras for Lent. Assuming they’re Catholic, of course.

• I tweeted about this but it’s worth repeating (at least I think it is): On this date in 1995 Sparky Anderson lit the flame that burned his bridge to Mike Ilitch when he refused to manage replacement players. He was put on an involuntary leave of absence but probably would’ve been fired if someone hadn’t talked Ilitch down from the ledge. Quick quiz: Who managed the faux Tigers in Sparky’s absence? Answer: Tom Runnells.

Whew! I made it.

• I attended the Tigers Winter Caravan one time, in 1991 when I was living in Kalamazoo and had some connections with the local paper. Back then, only the media was invited. Or so I thought. I walked into a Kalamazoo hotel and saw dozens of fans asking for autographs from the players and Sparky Anderson.

  If memory serves me, Cecil Fielder was there. Recently signed Tony Bernazard was too. This I remember because I asked Sparky during the Q&A how he’d work Bernazard into the lineup without Tony Phillips losing at bats. The answer was classic Sparky and basically amounted to: “I have no idea but Tony is Tony and we’ll be all right.” Uh, yeah. (Bernazard was released in April after playing in just six games and hitting .167).

  The real story that winter was the recent firing of Ernie Harwell and, lo and behold, new Tigers President Bo Schembechler was on hand to answer questions about it. As you might guess, Bo was not happy with the first round of reporters’ questions being about Ernie and not the team. After that, he said he wouldn’t answer other questions on the topic and though people tried, he wouldn’t bite — other than to bite their head off for even asking.

  It was a great experience. If you get an opportunity to attend a Winter Caravan event, do it.

• I tweeted about this yesterday, but I think it’s worth repeating: Dave Dombrowski insists that the Tigers have no interest in Johnny Damon. Fine. But he said the same thing about Ivan Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez. Wouldn’t be surprised if Damon arrives in Lakeland in a few weeks.

• Speaking of moves, I don’t understand all the anger around the Jose Valverde signing. While he drove me nuts as the Diamondbacks’ closer a few years ago, that was mainly because of his antics after earning a save. Remember: no one could make sense of the Tigers signing Todd Jones and Kenny Rogers in the winter of 2005-06 but that worked out fine. Expect the same with Valverde.

• On this date in 1993, Tigers Hall of Fame second baseman Charlie Gehringer died at the age of 89, one month after suffering a stroke. During his 19-year career in Detroit, The Mechanical Man posted a .320 batting average with 184 home runs and 1,427 RBI. In 1937, he led the American League with a .371 average.

Finally, Happy Birthday to a pair of former Tigers: Wil Ledezma,29, and Tom Urbani, 42.

American League East Standings

September 24, 1987

At the outset of the first series the Tigers sat only a half-game out of first place. The game-one pitching match up featured two of baseball’s best in the 1980s: the Tigers’ Jack Morris and Jays lefty Mike Flanagan.

It didn’t take long for the complexion of the game, the series and perhaps the season to change dramatically. In the top of the third, with Bill Madlock on first, Kirk Gibson hit a routine double-play ball to second baseman Nelson Liriano. Liriano pivoted and threw to shortstop Tony Fernandez for the force at second; Madlock’s slide toppled Fernandez who fell to the artificial surface, breaking his elbow. (Shortly after Fernandez left the game the Blue Jays announced that he would need surgery and would be out for the remainder of the season.) Gibson reached first on the fielder’s choice.

After a Trammell fly out, Larry Herndon singled, moving Gibson to second. The next hitter, centerfielder Chet Lemon, drove in Gibson and advanced Herndon to third. A Flanagan wild pitch scored Herndon and gave Morris a 2-0 lead.

In the bottom half of the third, Toronto scored all the runs they’d need. Catcher Ernie Whitt smacked a two-run single tying the score at two. Jays’ third baseman Rance Mulliniks followed with a double off the top of the left field wall moving Whitt to third. Whitt scored – narrowly – on a wild pitch. The ball ricocheted off the backstop to catcher Mike Heath who tossed it to Morris covering home. Morris arrived ahead of Whitt but over-ran the plate and couldn’t recover in time to apply the tag. Toronto led 4-2.

Flanagan blanked the Tigers until the seventh when three straight singles by Lou Whitaker, Trammell and Gibson narrowed the deficit to 4-3. In the ninth, Toronto closer Tom Henke shut the Tigers down to notch his league-leading 34th save and give the Blue Jays an early lead in the series.

“I just didn’t do my job,” Morris told the Free Press’s John Lowe after the game. “My team gave me a two-run lead and I gave it right back. That’s not the way you’re supposed to pitch.”

Sparky Anderson refused to make too much of the loss. “Crucial?”, he said to Tom Gage of the Detroit News. “How the heck do I know if it’s crucial? I’ll let you know in another 10 days.”

With the injury to Fernandez, Toronto lost arguably its most important offensive player. For one night, though, the Jays were able to overcome it.

A game and a half ahead of the Tigers, Toronto had to like how the weekend had started. The Tigers would need to bounce back quickly.

Tomorrow: Game Two

While this plays out, let’s look back at the final two weekends of the 1987 season when the Tigers and Blue Jays squared off for seven heart-pounding, one-run games that would ultimately decide the American League East title.

Today, Part 1.

Entering the 1987 season, little was expected of the Detroit Tigers. Just three seasons removed from a wire-to-wire championship season, the Tigers were considered mere also-rans in a division filled with potent lineups, solid pitching and the defending League Champions, the Red Sox.

Adding to an already challenging divisional landscape, the Tigers faced life without their All Star catcher and cleanup hitter, Lance Parrish. The Big Wheel rejected the Tigers’ two-year, $2.4 million contract offer and instead signed a one-year $800,000 deal with the Philadelphia Phillies.

That’s why in the first weeks of the 1987 season the story in baseball was not the Detroit Tigers. Hardly. The Milwaukee Brewers’ 13-0 start captivated the baseball world. After 13 games the Tigers had a less-imposing 6-7 record. Twenty games into the season Milwaukee had stormed to 18-2, four games ahead of New York, followed by Toronto (12-8), Baltimore (9-11), Detroit (8-12) and Cleveland (6-14).

The Brewers, though, soon came back to earth. On May 1 the club sat atop the A.L. East with a 19-3 record. Fueled by a horrific stretch that saw the team lose 12 straight and 18 out of 20, Tom Trebelhorn’s team limped into June at 24-21 and would eventually finish seven games off the pace.

By the middle of May the Tigers’ record was a lackluster 11-19. But whereas Milwaukee’s season had imploded by Memorial Day, the 24-24 Tigers began showing signs of life.

The Tigers Find Their Groove

In June, things started clicking for the Tigers. The loss of Parrish was buffered unexpectedly by slugging catcher Matt Nokes called up from Triple-A Nashville in May. Detroit found more punch on the waiver wire on June 4, when the team signed four-time National League batting champion Bill Madlock who had been released by the Dodgers. Madlock, a career .306 hitter, brought an experienced and still-dangerous bat to a Detroit lineup lacking in right-handed pop.

After acquiring Madlock, the Tigers rolled to a 73-40 record, a .646 winning percentage. Along with shortstop Alan Trammell, who was crafting an MVP-caliber season, Madlock helped catapult the team into contention in the A.L. East.

By July 1, Detroit posted a 41-32 record and on August 1 they were 58-41, good for third place, just a game and a half behind the second-place Blue Jays and three games behind the Yankees.

Over the final two months of the season it became clear that the Tigers were in a three-team race, though the Yankees would eventually fade. But to compete with the pitching-rich Blue Jays, the team needed a B-12 injection for the rotation.

On August 12, the Tigers acquired veteran right-handed pitcher Doyle Alexander from the Atlanta Braves in a trade for minor league prospect John Smoltz.

In Alexander the Tigers had found a complementary arm to a seasoned rotation of Morris, Frank Tanana and Walt Terrell. Alexander posted a perfect 9-0 record in his 11 starts with Detroit.

Heading into the next-to-last weekend of the season, the Tigers and Blue Jays were cruising. Detroit had taken two of three from Boston at Fenway Park and Toronto had swept three in Baltimore.

Then the baseball world turned its attention toward Toronto and a series that could decide the division champion.

Tomorrow: The First Showdown — the Tigers and Jays in Toronto

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 do with new players, he got Lowry into action right away: as a seventh-inning defensive replacement for Parrish on Opening Day 1984 in Minneapolis.

Lowry was born Dwight Lowery and was 26 at the start of his rookie season. The 6′ 3″, 210-lb. left-handed hitter appeared in 32 games for the Tigers knocking 11 hits (two of them homers) in 45 at bats for a .244 average. His first major-league hit came on April 24 during the second game of a doubleheader against the Twins in Detroit: a single off Frank Viola in the seventh inning. The Tigers won the game 4-3 with the win going to Glenn Abbott. On May 20, he hit his first big-league homer off Oakland’s Lary Sorensen at Tiger Stadium. Sparky wrote about it in his 1984 diary Bless You Boys:

Dwight Lowry is a rookie catcher with us. He hit his first major league home run, so you know he’ll never forget May 20.

Lowry spent part of the season at Triple-A Evansville where he hit .220 in 61 games before being recalled by the Tigers in September.

In 1985, he spent the entire year with the Tigers’ new Triple-A affiliate, the Nashville Sounds. In 74 games he hit just .182. The next year he again split time with the Tigers and Triple-A. He appeared in 56 games in 1986 — the year Parrish hurt his back and was out after June — mostly at catcher but appeared in one game at each first base and rightfield. In the 1987 Tigers Yearbook the editors pointed out Lowry’s highlights from ‘86:

Had three-run homer against Cleveland and hit .370 against the Indians; hit .500 against Kansas City and .389 against Toronto; against Oakland he hit .375 with eight RBI.

The ‘87 season was Lowry’s last in Detroit. Appearing in 13 games, he hit .200.

Shortly after the Tigers were bounced from the ALCS by the Twins, Oct. 16, 1987, the Tigers released him. A week later those same Twins signed Lowry as a free agent. He went hitless in seven games for the 1988 Twins and played his final game on April 23, 1988.

His final major league stats: 108 games, 227 at bats, five home runs, 26 RBI and a .273 average.

According to Baseball-Reference.com, in 1989, Lowry played for the St. Petersburg Pelicans of the Senior Professional Baseball Association. He batted .245 in 43 games.

He returned to the Tigers organization in 1994 as manager of the Double-A Fayatteville Generals of the South Atlantic League. That season they finished in 10th place with a 62-75 record. The next season the Generals finished atop the Sallie League with a 86-55 record.

In ‘96 the team finished fifth at 76-63 but won the second-half South Atlantic League Division Title. For his work with the Generals, Lowry was named the Detroit Tigers Player Development Man of the Year. In 1997, Lowry moved on to the Tigers’ New York-Penn League affiliate, the Jamestown (N.Y.) Jammers. Just 22 games into that season, on July 10, Lowry collapsed and died outside his Jamestown a short time after a 9-8 victory over the Batavia Clippers. According to the team’s GM Mike Ferguson, Lowry was taking out the trash when his wife heard him collapse. He was just 39 years old.

Shortly after Lowry’s death, the Tigers renamed their annual Player Development Man of the Year Award in his honor. Lowry is survived by his wife Pamela and children Sesilie, Amanda and Zachary.

I remember reading about Lowry’s death and being really saddened by it. It was the first time a Tigers player that I’d watched in person — and particularly one from that 1984 club — had passed away. And at 39 it seemed even more cruel.

There are probably a number of people who’ve won the Lowry Award who never knew of him or saw him play. Let’s hope the Tigers make a point of telling these winners who Dwight Lowry was: a marginal major-league player who was helping shape a future generation of Tigers players.

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 we heard rumblings that Old E liked the nose candy — and who among major leaguers didn’t in those days? A quick check of the always-reliable-if-not-accurate Wikipedia reports:

On February 28, 1986, Cabell and six others were suspended for the entire season for admitting during the Pittsburgh drug trials that they were involved in cocaine abuse. The suspensions for all seven were avoided after agreeing to large anti-drug donations and community service.

I’m guessing Sparky didn’t care for Cabell’s extracurriculars and thus was shown the highway component of Anderson’s “my way/highway” mantra.

Today, Cabell’s a special assistant to Astros GM Ed Wade. What’s more, he lives in Missouri City, Texas, the Houston suburb I once called home.

(Did you know that he’s a cousin of Dick Davis and Ken Landreaux? True.)

1. 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 seasons in Detroit, that’s often where his clubs ended up. The saving grace was that back then the American League East was a seven-team division. This Tigers team sitting in fourth place should be humiliating for everyone in the organization. I wonder if it’s as embarrassing as it should be for some players in the clubhouse?

2. The last time the Tigers were in fourth place this season was on June 16. They’d lost to the Giants in San Francisco to fall six game under .500 at 32-38. Today the Tigers are four games under and it sure seems closer to eight, doesn’t it?

3. Not only did Chris Lambert make his major-league debut tonight, he made the first appearance by any Tigers player in club history with the last name Lambert. Speaking of name-game firsts, Gary Glover is the first-ever Glover to play for the Tigers. Insert punch line(s) here.

4. Finally, in the spirit of the bad old days Tigers fans seem to be reliving this season, let’s wish a Happy 32nd Birthday to Alex Sanchez. Could you imagine him lasting one day on a Jim Leyland-led team?

Hang in there…

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 after a little break. Was everyone coming into spring training raring to go?

Johnny Grubb: Yeah, I think so. I remember us getting Dave Bergman and Willie [Hernandez]. So they came over, and they fit right in with the team, too. I mean, we just had a good group of guys that got along, and Dave Bergman is a heck of a guy and so was Willie. So it worked out great.

MMc: Let’s talk about the ’84 season in general. Obviously, you got off to a great start, 9-0, and in the middle of that, Jack Morris throws a no-hitter. As you were getting older and becoming the seasoned veteran, were you really just enjoying about every moment of that season?

JG: Oh, gosh, yeah. It was fun to watch those guys play and every once in a while to jump in and do something myself. But it was a lot of fun watching Gibby and Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker and Darrell [Evans] — and Lance did a great job. And Howard Johnson had the great season for us. I thought he did a great job. And Larry Herndon and all those guys really did well in the pitching.

So really what I remember most about it is that I never really felt like we were out of any ballgame. Any lead a team could get, we felt like we could have a big inning and jump right back in the game. And we had real good pitching, so if we had the lead, we had Willie and [Aurelio] Lopez coming in to shut the door on them. The pitchers did their job, and the hitters did their job. And we just felt like we could win any game.

That 35-5 start really helped a lot, too. But I think that pretty much was an indicator of how strong we were because that’s pretty phenomenal when you think about a 35-5 start in the major leagues. That’s pretty good.

MMc: Even today when you see teams get off to a good start, and then you look at the record and you think, That’s a good start, but that’s not 35-5.

JG: Yeah, that was awesome.

MMc: One moment of the ’84 season in particular I want to ask you about is the second game of the playoffs in Kansas City. Eleventh inning and you got the hit that drove in the go-ahead runs. That came off Dan Quisenberry. What do you remember about that at-bat? What were you looking for from him, and what did you get? Because you drove that ball deep.

JG: Actually, he got two strikes on me and (Royals catcher) John Wathan went out to the mound to talk to the pitcher. I guess he wanted to make sure that they were going to be on the same page.

We didn’t get the bunt down to get the runners over to second and third, so there were runners on first and second and one out. And he got two strikes on me, and I kind of was watching them when they were out there talking. I thought I could read their lips and I thought I saw them saying fastball.

And I said, well, I can’t trust that, but I’m going to be ready for it. And he threw a fastball, and I’m sure Willie Wilson was cheating in a little bit on me with two strikes on me. But I happened to get a hold of one and drove it over his head. So I’m glad I came through to help out. That was my turn I guess to do something to help the team.

MMc: Would you say that’s one of the biggest — if not the biggest — hit of your career?

JG: Yeah, I’d say that was the biggest hit for me helping the ball club and everything. It came at a great time because he was a tough relief pitcher, and he’d gotten it to the eleventh inning. And being at their ballpark, sometimes it favors the home team when it starts going extra innings. But things worked out.

MMc: Did you have success against Quisenberry throughout your career?

JG: You’d have to check my record on him because I felt really good against him because he was a sinker ball pitcher, and I’m a good low ball hitter. And I felt like I hit the ball hard on him, but I don’t know how many hits. I can remember a lot of times coming back across the diamond going into the dugout thinking you lucky son-of-a-gun. It was like I hit the ball hard, but it’d be at the second baseman or right at the centerfielder.

So I don’t know if my batting average was that high against him. But it’s one of those pitchers where maybe my batting average wasn’t – I’m not sure. I don’t know what my batting average was against him. But I felt good facing him. I felt good hitting against him.

[Note: According to Baseball-Reference.com, Grubb had a .200 career batting average (3 for 15) against Quisenberry, with just one RBI. Before facing him in the A.L.C.S., Grubb had one plate appearance against the Royals' submariner in 1984: a flyout to left on Aug. 3.]

MMc: After sweeping the Royals in the A.L.C.S., what was the confidence level heading into the World Series? It looked like it was going to be against the Cubs until the Padres came back to win the N.L. Pennant.

JG: Well, I remember watching the [N.L.C.S.] because we wanted to see who we were going to be playing. And you’re right, I thought it looked like it was going to be the Cubs, and then all of a sudden it turned out to be San Diego. And I don’t remember knowing that much about either team.

I knew more probably about the Cubs than we did about San Diego. But I think most of the guys, the way that team was with Detroit, I think we just felt like we’re going to play them, we’re going to take care of business with them. I don’t think it would have made any difference. I think we were destined to have a good year wherever we played it. We planned on going out there and taking care of business.

MMc: What was that like for you going back to San Diego where you started your career?

JG: It was real neat to go back. When they did the introductions, I remember they gave me a nice ovation. I wasn’t sure really what they might do. You’re not sure if fans are going to turn on you or not. But they were really, really nice. And I remember Ruppert Jones was with us, and they gave him a nice round of applause, too. So it was neat. And, of course, we had friends that still lived back there, and just going back where I started my career was a neat feeling being in that stadium.

MMc: Talk about the whole World Series experience for you as a player at that point in your career.

JG: Well, it was all new to me. I’d gone to College World Series, Junior College World Series, watched them on television. And I guess as a kid you put yourself in that position where you could just imagine and dream about being in the World Series. So it wasn’t like I was intimidated or I don’t think any player at that level are going to be intimidated. The big crowds and all the media and all that were a little different.

But as players you get focused on what you’ve got to get done. And you still just make it this same game. It’s still the same ball and the same bat and gloves, and you don’t try to make it any different than that and make the plays.

And all the hype and all the media and all that, that I guess can get to some players. But Sparky had pretty much told us not to talk too much to the media and just get focused on the game. He said, “Let me speak to the media” and that let us go out and do the work on the field. So I think that was good advice.

MMc: It seemed like it was a very focused group, but everyone assumed it was going to be a quick World Series with the Tigers coming out on top. Did the team self-police each other in terms of getting overconfident or did Sparky have to do that — or was that even an issue?

JG: I don’t think it was an issue. We had guys on the team like Gibby and Chet [Lemon] and, of course, you’ve got a veteran player like Darrell. And Lance was kind of quiet, so he didn’t do a lot of rah-rah stuff. But we just had a group of guys that all of us, we weren’t going to be intimidated, and we didn’t take anybody lightly.

We understood what it would take to win ballgames, and went out there and played hard every pitch. And we respected Sparky’s decisions. I know we had Marty Castillo starting at third base, and I’m sure, myself included, when we saw him starting at third, it was like, wow, I wonder why Howard is not starting at third? But that’s who he’s going to play. We’ll just go out there and take care of it with Marty at third, too, because he’s a good ballplayer as well. And darn it if he didn’t hit a home run (in Game 3). It was like Sparky made all the right calls.

MMc: I want to talk to you about your final season which was also, from a team perspective, a good one, the 1987 season. Heading into that season, did you have a sense it was your last year, or were you just going to kind of see how it played out?

JG: Well, I was close to 40, so I knew it was getting right down to the end. And I knew Sparky probably saw me as not going to have a whole lot of playing time, a guy off the bench. And he’d pretty much shown to some of the veteran players that he was starting to move a little bit more towards younger players (like) Scott Lusader. So I knew it was a good chance it might be my last year, but I wouldn’t allow myself to think that way. And I just had a poor season, but ended up having a good playoff for us. But I wish I’d have had a better season for us. I just didn’t do that well that year.

I know I was hoping that the team would do it again, and I’ve got two boys, so my little extra motivation was that I would have liked to have had two World Series rings so I could pass one down to each child. So it would have been nice.

But that was a heck of a ball club. We had a good team, and we had some new players that I believe Mike Heath was the catcher that year. And, of course, we had Frank Tanana and Walt Terrell, and it was a number of new faces, but real good ballplayers.

So we had a good team. We caught Minnesota when they were hot, and we had come off a real tough series against Toronto. So it just was one of those situations that you catch a team hot and maybe you’re not as hot as you’d like to be, and anything can happen. They won the whole thing that year, so I guess they were destined to win, too.

MMc: Were you surprised that you only got one World Series out of that collection of talent?

JG: Well, see, ’87 was my last year, so I don’t know how they did the following year. But that Eastern Division at that time was a tough division. And just to win the American League East, that in itself was saying a whole lot because Toronto, Baltimore, Yankees, Boston, there’s some good ball clubs, and just to win the American League East is tough. So it’s a shame we didn’t beat Minnesota, but they played better. They came with their fans with those whistles.

MMc: Yeah, their Homer Hankies.

JG: The Homer Hankies and all that. But they had a heck of a ball club, so you’ve got to give them credit. They were scrappers and they played hard. So they got the job done.

MMc: I understand that you’re involved with Tiger Fantasy Camps. Is that something you do every year?

JG: Yeah, I enjoy going there. That way, I get to see my old teammates and, of course, the people that do the fantasy camps are real nice people, and I’ve gotten to know a lot of them over the years. So it’s a great experience and look forward to going every year. Jim Price is one of the guys that helps along with Jerry Lewis. And, of course, the Tigers I think operate it and everything. It’s a fun time.

MMc: And do you stay in touch with a lot of your old teammates and follow the Tigers in general?

JG: I still follow the Tigers and get Christmas cards and stuff from the teammates. And I don’t talk to them as much as I’d like to, but I usually catch up with them at Tiger Fantasy Camp or some reunion that we might have. But it’s every time you see them, just like I saw Darrell Evans recently at the Tigers camp, Milt Wilcox, and those guys, it just seems like it was just yesterday that we were playing. So it’s great seeing them.

In honor of Johnny Grubb’s birthday, here’s the first of two installments of the discussion. Beginning with the trade that brought him to the Tigers from the Rangers for reliever Dave Tobik.

Mike McClary: What was your mindset coming to Detroit in 1983?

Johnny Grubb: Well, [Rangers manager] Doug Rader called me in his office in spring training when I was with Texas and he told me that they had made a trade.

He used to call me Grubsteaks. He said, ‘Grubsteaks, you’re going to like where you’re going.’ I said, ‘where’s that?’ And he said, ‘Detroit.’

And, of course, if you get traded, that would be a good team to go to because we knew they were strong and getting better each year and right on the verge of being a real, real good ball club. So I was happy to go there.

MMc: Did you know anything about the team in terms of who your new teammates were going to be or Sparky’s reputation?

JG: I knew Sparky’s reputation as a manager from playing against him in the National League. And then, of course, they did have a boy on the team, Mike Ivie, that goes back to when I played minor league ball. He was a teammate of mine, and he was a player with Detroit then. So I was going into a ball club there that at least I knew one guy real well.

MMc: Anything in particular that you needed to do as a player to adjust with Opening Day around the corner?

JG: Actually, I hadn’t had much playing time in spring training in Texas, so I knew something was going to happen. Either they were going to just release me or make a trade. And I didn’t think they would just release me because I felt like I could still play. But I knew because of the lack of playing time in spring training that something was probably going to happen.

So when Doug called me into his office, I figured then this was it. When I went to Lakeland, I didn’t feel like I had to prove anything because Sparky should have known me as a player and pretty much understood my role when I got there. If you can hit, they will find a place for you somewhere, and I felt like I could still swing the stick. So all I had to do is just show them that I was healthy and I could still swing the stick.

MMc: When you got to Lakeland, did Sparky call you in and talk about how he saw you fitting in with the team?

JG: He pretty much called me in and welcomed me to the ball club. He knew I was a veteran player, so you pretty much said the same thing. But I know you’re going to be glad to be with this team. It’s a great bunch of guys, and we’ve got a real good team, we’re real close. So he made you feel good about being part of a team.

Sparky always had a good knack for doing that where he made you feel like he was picking good people that were going to get along together as teammates and always encouraged everybody to go out and work hard. He was a good motivator.

MMc: So that 1983 season, your first year in Detroit, you could probably see the makings of the ’84 team. You had finished behind Baltimore that year. What was the mood of the team and your thoughts going into the off-season in ’83?

JG: Well, I was thinking that we were right there. I mean, we were real close. And knowing the makeup of all your teammates, that first year you get to learn a little bit more about the guys.

So we had a couple guys that left, [John] Wockenfuss left and Glenn Wilson and some of those guys from the ’83 team. But, I mean, my feeling was that we were so close and everybody on the team were hard workers that if we put our minds to it, we could win the whole thing. I think that’s the way most of the guys felt. We work hard, we could win it.

MMc: As a player in the ’83 season finishing in second, was that about as close to first that you were in any point in your career? Obviously, when you got traded to Texas, they were still in the hunt. But was that kind of a first?

JG: Yeah, that was the first team in the major leagues that I played on that we were that close to going to playoffs or anything. San Diego, we never came close. Cleveland, no, and Texas we did that one year when I got traded over there. Of course, that was a month to go. Well, I take it back. I think there was one other team in Texas that we had a chance. And I think because of the strike, we ended up getting shortchanged that we lost a game to Milwaukee that kept us out of the playoffs. Had we won that game, I believe we would have been in the playoffs.

But we had a good team in Texas a couple years. But Detroit, I really sensed that we could get to the playoffs and do well. We had the right group of guys.

Tomorrow: Johnny Grubb talks about the 1984 season.

1. 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 defending champ Rafael Nadal.

   Between matches I pulled out my recent issue of Sports Illustrated and read about youngsters and teams making noise in big-league camps. The first snippet was on Tigers phenom Rick Porcello:
   

   Already Porcello, who has a repertoire of a mid-90s fastball, curve, slider and changeup is drawing comparisons to Josh Beckett (and even Jim Palmer) and stirring talk of a possible late-summer debut.

   Jim Palmer? No pressure there. Though, with all the young talent the Tigers have brought along — or traded — in the past few years, I find myself longing for the days of Sparky Anderson’s predictions. Can you imagine what Sparky would have said about Justin Verlander, Curtis Granderson, Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller and Porcello?

   And while I’m glad the Tigers are high on Porcello, why even toy with a post-Sept. 1 callup? What’s the rush?

2. With a name like Michael Patrick McClary you can imagine that St. Patrick’s Day is a big deal in my family. Yet, March 17 is probably a much bigger day for Tigers catcher Vance Wilson who happens to have the good fortune of a St. Patrick’s Day birthday. He’s 35 today.
3. Did you happen to catch the Dontrelle Willis topic on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters on Sunday? It appeared that they needed a hook to talk about the Tigers and asked the panel if the D-Train would be running on time this year now that he’s with a better team. The consensus? A resounding “yeah, probably.”
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