Remembering some great baseball “fall” performances by Mickey Lolich

           

Baseball is the ultimate game of and for statistics.  So much so, that, in recent years they have added terms I never heard of when I was growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s, such as “WHIP” and “holds”.

Another is the modern-day definition of a “quality” start.  Nowadays a “quality” start is considered 6 decent innings, where a pitcher gives up no more than three runs.

It’s a major accomplishment these days when someone pitches a complete game.  I well remember when good starting pitchers were expected to pitch late into the game, when complete games were much more then norm than they are today.

My point is not to debate the value of ‘saving’ pitchers’ arms or baseball having created the need for long-relief specialists, set-up men and one-inning closers.  It’s more to tip my hat to pitchers like Roy Halladay, who still strive to be 9-inning pitchers.

That said, there was one old-time pitcher who not only routinely pitched complete games, but went above and beyond on a couple of occasions in his career.

I’m thinking of the man with the effortless delivery—long-time Detroit Tiger lefty Mickey Lolich.

Now, I was raised in a very small town outside of Windsor, Ontario, which itself is right across the border from Detroit.  But I was no Tiger fan in those days, and outside of the Yankees, probably disliked the Tigers more than most teams (I was a White Sox fan, but that’s a story for another day).

I may not have liked them much because they were the “local” team and the Detroit media focused so much on the club.  Maybe I was just a bit contrary.

 Nonetheless, I think Lolich may have been one of the most under-appreciated pitchers of that generation.

 He was a pot-bellied lefty, did not look much like an athlete, though many pitchers didn’t in those days.

 But he could throw like he was in a rocking chair, relaxed and fluid.  He threw hard, and had a dandy old-fashioned curveball.

But the most impressive thing about Lolich (besides winning 3 games in the ’68 World Series, the Game 7 victory on just two days rest, I believe) was his reliability.  You could count on him pitching every fourth day, which was the norm in the ‘60s and the days of the four-man pitching rotation.

He was an excellent pitcher who could log 300+ innings a season.  (These days it’s an accomplishment if pitchers can make it through 200 innings without breaking down.).

He never wore down.

Yet he was overshadowed by his more quotable and controversial teammate Denny McLain, who won 31 games in that famous 1968 season and became the first pitcher to do so since Dizzy Dean in the 1930’s.  It was a very big deal at the time. (And no one will ever do it again, as most pitchers barely get 30 starts in a season now.)

 But Lolich was the real rotation workhorse, the guy who never missed a start.  He was the pitcher the Tigers could count on while McLain was hurt (a mysterious late season injury in 1967, for example), or had a sore arm (as he constantly constantly after 1968 and taking way too many cortisone shots), or was suspended (1970) by baseball and ultimately traded away by the Tigers.

My most cherished baseball memory of Lolich, besides his fabulous performance against Bob Gibson and the Cardinals in the ’68 Series, was his gutsy display on the final weekend of the 1967 season.

A number of teams were in the hunt for the AL pennant, in the days when only one team from the AL went to the playoffs (this was before divisional play).

Detroit was fighting Chicago, as I recall, as well as Boston and Minnesota.

It’s been about over 30 years, so my memory is failing a bit, but I believe the Tigers had to play double-headers back to back on the last weekend of the season, against the Twins—five games in three days, if you include the Friday night series opener.

They split the two games on Saturday, if I recall correctly, one behind Lolich pitching a complete game gem in the game the Tigers won.

The very next day, on NO days rest, he pitched several innings in relief to try and get the Tigers into the World Series.

Unfortunately for Detroit, they also split the final two games, despite Lolich’s heroics, and Boston squeaked into first-place by a game.   Boston rode the back of Carl Yastrzemski, who had the most remarkable month of September one can imagine.

But Lolich’s performance under pressure has always stayed with me.  I can’t think of anyone in baseball, a pitcher that is, who has done what he did.  Randy Johnson did something very similar in the ’95 playoffs against the Yankees, making him (along with his many other accomplishments) a Hall-of-Famer in my mind.  (And Johnson pulled off another such display in 2001 for Arizona in the World Series, also against the Yankees.)

 But I don’t know if any other pitcher, since Lolich, has pitched so many innings back-to-back over two days, and certainly not under the pressure Lolich did.

 In later years, Lolich once lost 20 games in a season.  But he was the best 20-game loser in history, in my mind.  (You’ve generally got to have something special to lose that often and for the manager to still keep sending you out there.)

            Lolich finished his career fairly quietly with the Padres, I believe, in the late 1970’s or early 80’s.  But to me he was a Tiger—and I would imagine Detroit fans of that generation remember Lolich fondly.  I certainly do.