THE EPIC HISTORY OF THE DETROIT TIGERS!
The lineup
EDITOR & DESIGNER
Ryan Ford
FREE PRESS
SPORTS EDITOR
Bill Bradley
GANNETT BOOKS
COORDINATOR
Gene Myers
SPECIAL
THANKS
Nicole Avery Nichols
Caprice & Frank Catalano
Alicia Del Gallo
Vaughn Derderian
Bill Dow
Chris Fenison
George Harlan
Heather Hewitt
Pat and Glen Holt
Megan Holt
Michael Kern
Tim Marcinkoski
Jared Ramsey
Dora Robles Hernandez
Jared Sábado-Hernández
Bill Smith
Eros, Schrödinger, Bobo & Apple
Joe Coleman
1947-2025
Former Tigers pitcher Joe Coleman died on July 9, in Jamestown, Tennessee. Coleman pitched for seven teams across 15 MLB seasons, most prominently with the Tigers from 1971-76. In Detroit, he led the 1973 Tigers in wins (23), putting up a 3.53 ERA in 40 starts over 2881/3 innings.
About the book
Roar of 125 condenses
125 seasons of the world’s best coverage of the Detroit Tigers from the Detroit Free Press. Follow the Tigers online at freep.com and with a print subscription at 800-395-3300.
In memoriam
Ray Lane
1930-2025
Ray Lane, one of the most versatile broadcasters in Detroit sports, died on Sept. 27 at his home in Farmington Hills. Lane was best remembered for doing Tigers play-by-play with Ernie Harwell on radio from 1967-72. That came after pairing with George Kell for two seasons of radio broadcasts.
On the cover
Tigers outfielder Kirk Gibson said it all — captured by the Free Press’ Mary Schoeder — when he celebrated his second home run of Game 5 of the 1984 World Series, hit off Padres reliever Goose Gossage.
MARY SCHROEDER/DETROIT FREE PRESS
PUBLISHED BY PEDIMENT PUBLISHING
Chet Lemon
1955-2025
Former Tigers center fielder Chet Lemon, a member of the 1984 World Series champs, died May 8 at his home in Apopka, Florida. Lemon played in MLB from 1975-90, spending the final nine years, beginning in 1982, with the Tigers He was a three time All-Star: 1978-79 with the White Sox, and 1984.
On Page 1
8,000 fans were on hand for the Detroit Tigers’ inaugural game as a member of the American League, a win over the Milwaukee Brewers at Bennett Park (at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull) on April 25, 1901.
DETROIT FREE PRESS FILE PHOTO
©Copyright 2025 Detroit Free Press/USA TODAY Network. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by an information storage system, without the permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. Printed in Canada.
HUGH GRANNUM/DETROIT FREE PRESS JUNFU HAN/DETROIT FREE PRESS RICK OSENTOSKI/IMAGN IMAGES
EPIC HISTORY OF THE DETROIT TIGERS!
125 Roar OF THE
8 The players
Meet the 26 greatest Tigers of all time (or at least the franchise’s first 125 seasons)!
120
The playoffs
18 playoff appearances. 11 AL pennants. Four World Series titles. Relive them all.
190
The park
In 26 seasons, Comerica Park has played host to a cavalcade of memories. These are the best.
200 Scoreboard
Every Tigers season, from 1901 to 2025. Every no-hitter. Every Hall of Famer.
Allthein family
For 125 seasons, the Detroit Tigers have been there for Michiganders — through the spring, summer and fall, as beloved as a relative
BY MITCH ALBOM
Roger Angell once described loving baseball as “the business of caring.” We are in that business here in Detroit. Our currency is the Tigers. We watch them. We cheer them. Occasionally, we may even boo them. But we keep watching, year after year, decade after decade, now century after century.
Is that number really accurate? 125 seasons? And by seasons, we almost mean years. The Tigers are our spring and summer and early fall. They are buds and leaves and emptying branch-
es. They are jackets and tank tops and jackets again. They are the most ancient of Detroit’s four major sports teams; the Old English “D” on their caps goes back to the late 1800s.
But that’s not why we love them.
We love them because they are generational, interwoven into our
Michigan lives. We love them because our great-grandfather had seats at Bennett Park, and because our grandmother used to listen to Ernie Harwell’s broadcasts with an earpiece, and because Dad had a crinkled baseball card signed by Al Kaline and because Mom actually cried when they demolished Tiger Stadium.
Tiger Stadium — at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull — hosted 7,698 regular-season and playoff Tigers games from 1901-99. One of the last parks to embrace night games, visits to “The Corner” at any time became a rite of summer for countless Michigan families.
J.KYLE KEENER/DETROIT FREE PRESS
We love them because we can tell you what class we skipped to watch the Tigers beat the Cardinals in 1968, and how high we jumped when Gibby hit that homer in Game 5 in 1984.
We love them because of the parades down Woodward Avenue. We love them because Willie Horton once stood on a car, still wearing his uniform, pleading for peace in the violent Detroit streets.
We love them because, through the city’s bad and good, through 104 wins in a single season and 119 losses in another, the Tigers and Detroit have been intertwined, a hand in a leather glove. There has never been an adequate sentence to describe the feeling of a child emerging from the tunnel to see his or her first major-league field. And there has never been an adequate sentence to explain why baseball fans love teams like the Tigers the way they do.
All we know is that the word “fan” comes from the Latin “fanaticus”, which means “insanely and divinely inspired.”
And if you think about how many times the Tigers have made you scream, “Oh my God!” and “This is crazy!” … well, “insanely and divinely inspired” kind of says it all.
MORE THAN A FAMILY
Not long ago, the actor J.K. Simmons came to Detroit for an event called “Homecoming” — something Crain’s Detroit Business puts together every year, bringing former Detroiters back to the city. Simmons, an Oscar winner, can live anywhere he chooses, and, as a movie star, often does. But every day he was back in Detroit, he went to Comerica Park. Three straight games. And if you wanted to talk movies, OK — but he really wanted to talk Tigers.
Why? Is it because he grew up here? Sure. But people grow up lots of different places. They move. They find new lives. They
KIMBERLY P. MITCHELL/DETROIT FREE PRESS
44,735 fans packed into Comerica Park for the 2025 season opener against the White Sox on April 4, including 64-year-old Marty Luther, of St. Clair Shores. Luther and a Comerica Park usher got to celebrate a homer by Tigers outfielder Kerry Carpenter in the fourth inning and a 7-4 victory, their third of the season.
don’t always drag their childhood sports teams with them. Tigers fans do. Tom Selleck wore that cap all those years. Eminem wears one on stage. Being a Tigers fan is a permanent imprint, like a smallpox vaccine scar or a beauty mark (at times, it’s just as painful or as glamorous.)
But mostly it’s being part of a family, a really big family with countless distant cousins spread all over the world. You could be sailing in the French Riviera, or trekking in the Australian outback, and if you see someone wearing a Miggy jersey, you start talking Tigers. You chat about the season. You wonder whether they have enough relief pitching, whether the new kids are ready to contribute. You reminisce about Tiger legends in the One-Name Club: Ty and Kaline and Lolich and Denny and
Fans flooded Campus Martius Park in downtown Detroit to celebrate the 1984 World Series championship on Oct. 16, 1984, two days after the Tigers won the title, and the resulting celebration resulted in numerous injuries and arrests. Asked if he had thought of canceling the parade and rally, Detroit Police chief William Hart said, “Are you kidding? This is a hell of a town.”
DETROIT FREE PRESS FILE PHOTO
Sparky and Tram and Lou and Cecil.
You do the geography thing. Michigan and Trumbull. Woodward and Montcalm. You debate the arenas (“the seats were so much closer in Tiger Stadium…” “the food is so much better in Comerica…”)
By the time you finish the conversation, you might as well be neighbors. The Tigers do that. It’s like a secret society, only there is no secret. You simply board the train. Baseball does the rest.
A MICHIGAN TEAM, FOR MICHIGANDERS
There is no one left alive to recall the Tigers’ first of 125 major league seasons. (There were a few years in the 1890s where they were a minor-league club in the Western League, but who’s counting?)
Yet there is someone in your circle who remembers some -
52,168 fans packed Tiger Stadium to watch the Tigers beat the Royals, 1-0, in Game 3 of the best-of-five ALCS on Oct. 5, 1984. That included Michigan Gov. James Blanchard, sitting near the Royals on-deck circle and Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young. “I’ve never seen such warmth,” said Young of the enthusiastic crowd. “It gives Detroiters a feeling of togetherness; we’ve had some real rough times (and) something like this comes at a time when we needed a lift.”
one who remembers someone who remembers that first game, against the Milwaukee Brewers, at Bennett Park — a farmland-turned-field where people scurried to the rooftops of nearby houses to watch the games. A young Ty Cobb played several seasons there, which would have already made it hallowed ground. It later became Navin Field, and then Tiger Stadium, and will forever be known around here as “The Corner.”
And maybe that’s part of it, too. The Tigers didn’t move here from some other city. They never jumped to the suburbs. Their owners over the last century have been Michigan men: Frank Navin, born in Adrian; Walter Briggs, born in Ypsilanti; John Fetzer, who came to attend college in Berrien Springs; Tom Monaghan, raised in an orphanage in Jackson; Mike Ilitch, born in Detroit, went to Cooley High; his son Chris, the current owner, a Detroiter through and through.
It’s a homegrown franchise, and it feels like home when you are away, when you see the blue and white uniforms on a hotel TV screen, when you hear an old radio clip of Harwell yelling “That one is lonnng gone.”
They are lonnng here, these Tigers, 125 seasons and counting, and we are right there with them. Why does it matter so much, year after year, who they sign, who they trade, who bats cleanup, who comes in as closer, where they are playing, and when, oh, when, is Opening Day?
It matters because, as Angell suggested, this is our business, The business of caring.
Baseball. Family. Tigers. Love.
If it feels like those words go together, it’s because, at least around here, they do.
DETROIT FREE PRESS FILE PHOTO
Six stainless steel statues of Tigers greats — Willie Horton (not pictured), Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg, Charlie Gehringer, Hal Newhouser and Al Kaline — adorn the plaze above left-center field at Comerica Park. Omry Amrany, one of the artists who designed the pieces, said he opted for steel to evoke the feeling of ghostlike heroes of the past.
J. KYLE KEENER/ DETROIT FREE PRESS
The players
The Tigers All-125 Team
MANAGER: Sparky Anderson
STARTERS
C: Bill Freehan
1B: Hank Greenberg
2B: Lou Whitaker
SS: Alan Trammell
3B: George Kell
LF: Willie Horton
CF: Ty Cobb
RF: Al Kaline
DH: Miguel Cabrera BENCH
C: Lance Parrish
1B: Norm Cash
2B: Charlie Gehringer
OF: Harry Heillmann ROTATION
LHP: Hal Newhouser
RHP: Justin Verlander
LHP: Mickey Lolich
RHP: Denny McLain
LHP: Tarik Skubal
RHP: Jack Morris
RHP: Dizzy Trout
RHP: Max Scherzer BULLPEN
CLOSER: John Hiller
RP: Willie Hernández
RP: José Valverde
RP: Aurelio López
RP: Todd Jones
MSparky Anderson
ALSO KNOWN AS: “Captain Hook.”
HALL OF FAME INDUCTION: 2000 (Veterans Committee).
YEARS WITH DETROIT: 1979-95.
YEARS WITH OTHER TEAMS: 1970-78, Reds.
RECORD WITH TIGERS: 1,3311,248; 1984 World Series title; 1984, ’87 AL East champions.
HONORS: 1984, ’87 AL Manager of the Year.
Anderson Sparky
THE STARTERS MANAGER
SA wizard with his words and his players, the skipper became the face of Tigers baseball
parky Anderson, in his second life as a bigleague manager after leading Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine,” was many things to the Tigers.
A seer? He hinted at a World Series title within five years of his hiring and, lo, there was the parade in 1984. (He wasn’t so great at predicting individual successes; the halls of Tiger Stadium were littered with the players he proclaimed couldn’t miss … and then did.) A spectacle? No one quite zinged the game and his players like Anderson, all while getting his meaning across, in the tradition of baseball’s most memorable managers. (Example: “Problem with (John) Wockenfuss getting on base is that it takes
three doubles to score him.”) Even when his Tigers were on top, Anderson had plenty to say, including soon after the Tigers won the 1984 World Series in five games: “I hoped the Series would have gone seven games, because I had so much more to say.”
“Captain Hook,” as he was called in his Cincinnati days, didn’t always get along with his players, but he was under no illusions as to his role: “The players make the manager, it’s never the other way.”
But above all else, he was a success — his 1,331 wins were 200 more than the Tigers’ No. 2 skipper (Hughie Jennings), and he somehow maintained a winning percentage above .500 (.516 to be exact) despite nearly a decade managing a Tigers squad missing the overall talent of that 1984 team.
MARY SCHROEDER/DETROIT FREE PRESS
Years after he signed a five-year contract to manage the Tigers in 1979, Sparky Anderson wrote about what convinced him: “I remembered the Tigers from spring training. I remembered all those fine young players. Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker were just coming up.” Trammell played nearly 2,000 games with Anderson as his manager.
How did Sparky Anderson remain humble more than two decades into his managing career?A sign hung in his mostly unadorned office at Tiger Stadium: “Every 24 hours the world turns over on someone who was sitting on top of it.”
PRESS
PHOTO
Ty Cobb ALSO KNOWN AS: “The Georgia Peach.”
HALL OF FAME INDUCTION: 1936 (inducted by BBWAA).
YEARS WITH DETROIT:
1905-26
YEARS WITH OTHER TEAMS: 1927-28, A’s.
KEY TIGERS
STATS: .368, 3,900 hits, 665 doubles, 284 triples, 111 homers, 869 steals, 2,806 games.
HONORS: 1909 AL Triple Crown; 1911 AL MVP.
Cobb Ty
THE STARTERS
CENTER FIELD
AThe Tigers’ first star, “The Georgia Peach” set an example at the plate few could match
plaque on the north side of Comerica Park, the Tigers’ home since 2000 — nearly 75 years after Ty Cobb played his last game for the franchise — identifies Ty Cobb as the “Greatest Tiger of All,” and for the first 50-some years of the Tigers, it would be tough to argue with that identifier for the fiery player known as “the Georgia Peach.” A member of the first class of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, Cobb received more votes from the panel than any other inductee (including Babe Ruth). His best season — though it’s tough to pick just
one — was likely 1911, when a 24-year-old Cobb led the AL in runs (148), hits (248), doubles (47), triples (24), RBIs (127) and average (.419) while posting a 1.086 OPS and winning the inaugural AL MVP vote. Cobb still owns the franchise marks for bWAR (by more than 50, at 145.8), batting average (.368), on-base percentage (.434), runs (2,087), hits (3,900), bases (5,466), doubles (665), triple (284), RBIs (1,811) and steals (869). Those were set during a 22-season run in which Cobb led the AL in hits eight times, batting average 12 times, steals six times and RBIs four times. He even led the AL in homers once, albeit in the days when nine was enough (topping Boston’s Tris Speaker by two).
Ty Cobb won 12 batting titles as a Tiger, including his 1911 MVP campaign in which he hit .419 — still the record in a season by a Tigers hitter, by 10 points (over Cobb’s .409 average in 1912).
DETROIT FREE PRESS FILE PHOTO
In 1942, Ty Cobb won a vote sponsored by J.G. Taylor Spink, the publisher of the Sporting News, as baseball’s “greatest player of all time.” In a poll of 102 former stars and managers, Cobb received 60 votes, with Honus Wagner finishing second with 17 votes.
A plaque honoring Cobb hung at Tiger Stadium until 2005, when it was moved to Comerica Park.
RASHAUN RUCKER/DETROIT FREE PRESS
THE STARTERS
CENTER FIELD TY COBB
Fire and phenomenon
There was, frankly, no one in baseball — or Tigers — history quite like the combustible outfielder, on and off the field
BY JOE FALLS
Ty Cobb quit playing in 1928, the year I was born. So, even if I wanted to, I cannot speak as an expert on the man.
Yet, though I met him only once, I find myself strangely saddened by his death, and curious, too.
I’m sad because I think of the times my boy, Bobby, who is 9, would ask me to tell him about Cobb.
I’d disguise my ignorance of the man by merely saying, “Bobby, he was the greatest player who ever lived.”
And he’s ask, hesitantly, “Even greater than Babe Ruth?”
I’d reply, “Yes, even greater than Babe Ruth,” … and his eyes would light up with an admiration that can come only to a hero worshipper of 9.
I am curious because I wonder what made this man so great … so feared .. and so respected by those who played against him.
So, as lamely as I spoke to my son, I went into the Free Press morgue (a dismal word on a day like this) to find out, if I could, the secret of Cobb’s greatness. I was staggered by the file on him … 18 envelopes, most of bulging with the brownish clips of yesteryear … thousands upon thousands of words.
(Cobb
I sifted through the stories, awed not only by what I read, but by the men who wrote them. These were my heroes: Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner, Paul Gallico … even the pixyish “Iffy the Dopester,” the inimitable Malcolm Bingay, former editorial director of the Fre Press.
I read of Cobb’s amazing records … most games, most hits, most runs, most stolen bases … 90 records in all.
But, as I peered into the past, I got the feeling they left out his most indelible mark of all — most opinionated.
Cobb, it seemed, would offer an opinion ion anything, the subject didn’t matter.
A debate as old as time, perhaps — while Ty Cobb topped the Sporting News’ “greatest player of all time” poll in 1942, Babe Ruth took the crown in the Associated Press’ 1950 vote, with 253 of 393 votes cast, while Cobb received 116 — accounting for all but 24 votes.
RICHARD
BAK COLLECTION
Ask a question and you got an answer. I read of him criticizing moder-day baseball, and then defending it in Congress. I read of him rapping Bobo Newsom for being too lazy, and telling Byron Nelson how to putt.
What pleased me most, though, was the Free Press article of March 15, 1937, when Cobb was asked if he could beat Ruth at a game of golf.
He bellowed, “I can beat Ruth at ANYTHING. You name it and I’ll beat him. I’ll play him any time, anywhere, for any amount.”
And that, as I read on, was the way he
ONE PURR-FECT MOMENT
Ty Cobb’s best game as a Tiger:
MAY 5, 1925: Cobb was much more of a hit collector than a home run slugger, and yet he had just one game with six hits and one game with three home runs — and they were one and the same, a 14-8 Tigers win over the St. Louis Browns. Then 38, Cobb went deep to right at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis in the first, second and eighth innings. In between, he doubled to center in the fourth, beat out a weak grounder to second base for a single in the sixth and then reached on another grounder to second in the ninth inning (and making it to second base on an error on the throw). He finished 6-for-6 — the third six-hit game in franchise history (there have been six since) — with four runs scored, five RBIs and 16 total bases.
Ty Cobb led the AL in home runs just once, hitting nine in 1909 as part of a Triple Crown season.
also led the AL with a .377 average and 107 RBIs.)
104-58
MANAGER: Sparky Anderson (5th season).
DAYS IN FIRST PLACE: 182.
ALL-STARS:
LHP Willie Hernández, OF Chet Lemon, RHP Jack Morris, C Lance Parrish, SS Alan Trammell, 2B Lou Whitaker.
PLAYOFF
BERTH: AL East champs.
POSTSEASON
PATH: Beat
Royals (3-0) in ALCS, beat Padres (4-1) in World Series.
1984
WORLD CHAMPIONS! TIGER STADIUM
TEast leaders all year, they set a franchise record for wins — a come-from-ahead squad from a come-from-behind city
he Tigers — aka the “Bless You Boys” — were the class of baseball with an MLB-best 104-58 record (sparked by a 35-5 start to the year, a no-hitter by right-hander Jack Morris and a wire-towire lead in the AL East), a three-game sweep of the Royals in the ALCS and a five-game triumph over the Padres to secure the franchise’s fourth World Series.
In the three-game ALCS sweep, outfielder Kirk Gibson earned MVP for hitting .417 with two RBIs. In the World Series, the Tigers took Game 1, 3-2, thanks to a two-RBI double from Larry Herndon, dropped Game 2, then won three straight at Tiger Stadium. Gibson
finished off the World Series with a two-homer performance in Game 5, including the iconic three-run shot off fearsome Padres reliever Goose Gossage in the eighth to clinch it.
Shortstop Alan Trammell won World Series MVP for hitting .450 with two home runs (both in Game 4) and six RBIs. Gibson, Trammell, catcher Lance Parrish, center fielder Chet Lemon, and second baseman Lou Whitaker provided the offense while right-handers Dan Petry, Dave Bergman and Wilt Milcox backed Morris in the rotation and relievers Willie Hernández — the AL MVP and Cy Young winner after joining the team in a trade from the Phillies in spring training — and Aurelio López were electric in closing out games.
Willie Hernández celebrates after getting the final out of the Tigers’ AL East clincher on Sept. 17, 1984. Hernández, the AL MVP and Cy Young winner, finished off the division clincher, the ALCS against the Royals and, of course, the World Series against the Padres.
DAVID C. TURNLEY/ DETROIT FREE PRESS
MARY SCHROEDER/DETROIT FREE PRESS
Lou Whitaker had an extra reason to celebrate on Oct. 14, 1984, the day the Tigers won the World Series. His second daughter was born at 8:45 a.m., roughly eight hours before the Tigers took the field for Game 5 against the Padres. Afterward, Whitaker called it “the greatest feeling of my life. I told her (wife Crystal) not to worry. After she had the baby I knew everything would work our way today.”
Blessed at last
The “Bless You Boys” delivered a heavenly triumph with a five-game rout of the Padres, capped by Gibby’s 2 home runs
BY MIKE DOWNEY
This story ran on the front of the “Roar of ’84” section in the Oct. 15, 1984, edition of the Free Press, the morning after the Tigers defeated the Padres in Game 5 for their third World Series championship.
Detroit, Wave good-by to the Tigers. They are going, going, gone. There are no more games until April. There is no more reason to go to Tiger Stadium, except to see if it’s still standing. Maybe the fans tore it down Sunday. Maybe it will be torn down this winter and turned into a Domino’s.
Let’s hear it for the boys. The World Series is over, the season is over, and oh, the sights we shall miss. From Darrell Evans ringing the dinger on Opening Day to Kirk Gibson’s monster mashes on Closing Day. From Jack Morris throwing a no-hitter in national TV’s face to Lance Parrish going after a base
runner the way a smokey goes after a bandit.
Let’s hear it for the boys. They played 170 games and won 111. They did not have a pitcher with a losing record. They did not have a serious injury. They used players from Cuba and Mexico and Puerto Rico and Panama. They used players like Rod Allen and Glenn Abbott and Doug Baker and Dwight Lowry and Sid Monge, men whose names were rarely mentioned during the World Series.
They beat the American League East by 15 lengths. They beat the heck — nine of 12 — out of the Minnesota Twins, who challenged in the American League West until the final days. They played the Kansas City Royals, the AL West champions, eight times at Royals Stadium and went 8-0. They played the San Diego Padres, champions of the National League, best-of-seven for the world championship and lost but once.
Let’s hear it for the boys.
Even when the Tigers lost, they went down growling. San Diego’s only success of the Series came on
a night when the starting pitcher surrendered three hits to the Tigers on his first three pitches. He faced only seven batters that night, but at least he outlasted Sunday’s pitcher, who never got to the seventh man. Few of the autombiles in Detroit have had as much starter trouble as San Diego’s baseball team.
Counting the first innings alone, the Tigers racked up nine runs off enemy pitchers. The Padres scored 15 runs in the whole blasted Series. So, that’s it for 1984. No more games at Tiger Stadium. No more Waves or beach balls or boogies by Herbie the Dancing Groundskeeper. No more long nights at Hoot Robinson’s and the Hummer and Nemo’s. No more “Looooos” and “Rooooops” and vulgar chants by the bleacher creatures. No more roars for ’84.
Like the Lone Ranger, their work here is finished. They can ride off into the sunset now. They can squat on bar stools with the ’68 Tigers and talk about old times. Some sunny day, in the year 2000, frustrated autoworkers and mild-mannered accountants and pot-bellied lawyers will pay a couple thousand bucks apiece to be in a “Fantasy Camp” with the Tigers old-timers of 1984.
They will talk about the weekend’s worth of ball games against San Diego, the same way they talk about those final two games of 1968 in St. Louis. More than 150,000 people came to the games in Detroit, but about 1.5 million will fib about being there a few autumns from now.
They will talk about the way San Diego wouldn’t quit, wouldn’t throw in the beach towel when the going got tough. When the Cubs had the Padres three runs down in the final game of the National League playoffs, the Padres came back.
When the Tigers had them three runs down in Game 2 of the World Series, the Padres came back. When the Tigers had them three down in Game 5 of the Series, the Padres came back. Muhammad Ali didn’t make this many comebacks.
To their everlasting credit, the Padres refused to make the final Tiger Stadium date of 1984 a startto-finish party. Detroit had started scoring from the minute the TV cameras turned away from George Bush, who got pretty fair applause for a guy best remembered in Detroit sports lore for having tied up
traffic on the way to Super Bowl XVI.
This has been a special day and age in Detroit. The
and to people in food-stamp lines, to cops and to crooks, to priests
sinners, to baseball fans and to human beings who wouldn’t know Kirk Gibson from Kirk Douglas. There were baseball fans mobbing the streets outside Tiger Stadium on the day of the final game of the season there — not just before the game, but during the game, just to be close to the action. A beer company erected an advertising display on the roof of a nearby building, a display featuring enormous beer cans and a humongous gorilla called King Kan. The baseball fans milled beneath this display, listening to a radio broadcast of the game over loudspeakers.
An hour before the first pitch, music was piped from those speakers, and the fans swayed and danced better than Herbie the Groundskeeper ever did. One tune that caught their attention was the song by Deniece Williams, “Let’s Hear It for the Boy.”
And after the fifth inning Sunday, after Rusty Kuntz’s sacrifice pop put the Tigers on top, a film of 1984 highlights flashed across the center-field screen. It was accompanied by the song by Deniece Williams, “Let’s Hear It for the Boy.” Play it again. Play it louder. Let’s hear it for all the boys, the boys of summer, the boys who did — when all was said and done — turn out to be blessed.
Sunday funday
Few sporting Sundays in Metro Detroit have been as action-packed as Oct. 14, 1984: In addition to the Tigers’ Game 5 win over the Padres at Tiger Stadium, Loren Bandt and Karen Hubbard won the annual Free Press Marathon on the streets of Detroit and Windsor, the Red Wings lost to the Sabres, 6-4, in Buffalo and the Lions beat the Buccaneers, 14-7, in Pontiac. Oh, and the Pistons? They beat the Cavaliers, 120-114, in a preseason game — in Toledo, of all places.
FREE PRESS ARCHIVES
of dreams Field
The Tigers’ second home in Detroit, Comerica Park, was filled with memories over its first 26 seasons
BY RYAN FORD
The Tigers spent their first 99 seasons at one park, under various names — Bennett Park, Navin Field, Briggs Stadium and, finally, Tiger Stadium — but all at Michigan and Trumbull … aka, The Corner.
But season No. 100, in 2000, saw the team relocate to a brand-new facility in the heart of downdown Detroit: Comerica Park (aka, The CoPa, as long as you were out of earshot of any team officials). The move turned out pretty good for the Tigers. Sure, there were some hiccups: the abundance of flyouts the first few seasons, the smoldering hatred from hitters, the “Comerica National Park” nickname, the ensuing constant adjustment of the
outfield fences — did we mention how much hitters complain about it? — and, in 2025, a premier seating section behind home place that wound up appearing mostly empty for most of the season. But … overall? The ol’ Green Lady held up OK over its first 26 seasons.
Among the milestones over the first 26 seasons, Miguel Cabrera was the alltime homer leader, with 191, while David Ortiz was the visiting champ, with 23 (with active leader José Ramírez, at 18, charging hard). Justin Verlander was the winningest pitcher, at 101 victories, while CC Sabathia was the winningest visitor, at 11 wins.
Along the way, the Tigers played 2,077 games at the CoPa — 2,050 in the regular season (with 1,035 wins, for a .505 winning percentage) and 27 in the postseason (with 16 wins, for a .593 winning percentage).
But a straight recounting of wins and losses could hardly tell the story of The CoPa. And so, let’s review the 25 most memorable games since the move from The Corner, proper, to the less-famous corner of Witherell and Adams.
25. April 11, 2000: Welcome to Comerica National Park
The headline in the Freep the next day said it all: “Icebreaker,” as the Tigers and Mariners weathered (literally) temps just above freezing — 36 degrees for the first pitch, delivered by Detroit’s Brian Moehler
Comerica Park opened to great fanfare on April 11, 2000 — longtime Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell said, “Comerica redefines what a day at the ballpark means” — but for the opener (a 5-2 victory over the Mariners), it also redefined cold for the fans in the stands and the players on the field, with a 36-degree temperature at the start of the game.
JULIAN H. GONZALEZ/ DETROIT FREE PRESS
had the first Tigers hit — a triple — and Bobby Higginson drove in two runs on another triple. The reviews were positive, especially from the pitchers; as reliever Doug Brocail put it: “You can definitely make mistakes and the ball will not get out of the ball park.”
24. Oct. 18, 2012: Go Home, Yankees (Part II)
After three straight nail-biting wins to open the ALCS, the Tigers’ berth in the World Series was all but assured. So it was nice to get an 8-1 blowout for once, as the Tigers became just the third team to sweep the Yankees in a best-of-seven series.
Max Scherzer struck out 10 and Jhonny Peralta homered twice and then caught a popup for the final out, with former Yankee Phil Coke on the mound, as the CoPa crowd went nuts.
23. Aug. 3, 2016: Turn down (and up)
for J.D. Martinez
As J.D. Martinez, returning from a six-week stint on the injured list with a broken elbow, was announced as a pinch-hitter to open the eighth inning of a 1-1 tie with the White Sox, the CoPa crowd rose in a gigantic ovation. “That was probably the coolest moment of my career right there,” Martinez told reporters. “When the crowd gets like that — that’s why you always hear guys in here always stressing about the fans here. We want the fans to be in it because when they’re in it, you kind of live up to it. You feed off that energy.”
And, indeed, Martinez fed them back with a 434foot shot into the center-field shrubs off to the left of the outfield camera well on the first pitch from Chris Sale — the winning run in a 2-1 victory.
at 1:18 p.m. — in the CoPa’s first game. After hitting 118 homers at Tiger Stadium the season prior, the Tigers won this one, 5-2, without a ball over the spacious fences.
Moehler scattered 10 hits (including the ballpark’s first, by Seattle’s John Olerud, a double in the first inning) over six innings for the win, while Luis Polonia
22. May 25, 2025: A “Maddux” for
Tarik Skubal
No pitcher in MLB history had accomplished what Tarik Skubal did in his two-hitter for a 5-0 victory over the Guardians. Not only did he throw his first complete game AND his first shutout but he closed it out in just 93 pitches — a “Maddux,” the term for a sub-100-pitch shutout. (It was the fifth “Maddux” by