Tag: Sparky Anderson

Sunday Snacks: Sparky Leftovers

SaltySnacks.jpgAs much as I want to bash the re-signing of Jhonny Peralta, I’m going to rely on lessons learned from 2005 when the Tigers inexplicably signed Kenny Rogers — Kenny Rogers?! — and Todd Jones — Todd Jones?!. Those signings turned out pretty well, all things considered.

Besides, I don’t have the energy to get all riled up; watching that Michigan game wore me out.

  • With the exception of the Detroit papers, most obituaries on Sparky Anderson have been wire copy. The notable exceptions include this one from The New York Times and this one from the closest thing to a hometown paper, The Los Angeles Times.

  • On case you were wondering about how the newspaper in Sparky’s real hometown, his birthplace, Bridgewater, S.D., covered his passing, well, they didn’t as far as I can tell.

  • Here’s one more for you on Sparky, courtesy of Chris Jaffe at Hardball Times.

  • The guys at Stadium Journey keep churning out great reviews of ballparks and arenas around the country. Recently they posted their review of Fifth Third Field in Toledo.

  • We all know that the Cardinals had no business beating the Tigers in the 2006 World Series. Now the rest of the world is reminded of it thanks to this piece by Joe Posnanski on SI.com in which he ranks the 10-weakest World Series winners since 1946. Savor the ’06 Cardinals’ ranking: the second-weakest.

  • Speaking of Mr. Posnanski, he wrote a terrific piece, of course, on Sparky.

Finally, Happy 53rd Birthday to Christopher Knight, who played Peter on “The Brady Bunch.”

Anderson’s Passing Sparks Memories Aplenty

SparkyAutograph.jpgI can clearly remember the bright June day in 1979 when the Tigers fired their manager of only two months, Les Moss, and replaced him with Sparky Anderson, who was fired from the Reds the previous winter.

Upon hearing the news on WJR I ran over to the playground where my brother was playing basketball to tell him the news. He wasn’t as excited as I was, but he was happy the Tigers went after a big-name manager. In fact, Sparky was the first star coach or manager hired by any Detroit team.

By hiring Sparky, at least to my then 11-year-old mind, the Tigers were going to be good at last. Finally, I told my Dad, a good manager. He was quick to remind me that a manager is only as good as his players and that the Tigers “didn’t have the horses” to compete in the American League East.

Long-time first-base coach Dick Tracewski managed the Tigers for a few days until Sparky would arrive. Through some twist of fate I can’t recall, I ended up attending Sparky’s first game with the Tigers — sitting in the deepest part of the upper deck in right field. When Sparky ran out with the lineup card he received a standing ovation.

For the first few games in a Tigers uniform, he wore number seven but soon changed it to 11 because he said that seven was Mickey Mantle‘s number and added, “I ain’t no Mickey Mantle.”

(To this day it’s a crime that the Tigers haven’t retired his number. But Ian makes this case better than I.)

The 1984 season will always be remembered as Sparky’s enduring gift to Detroit and to Tigers fans everywhere. But for me, the 1987 season was just as thrilling in many ways. After 30 games the club was just 11-19 and looked tired. Then they woke up and hung around the top of the A.L. East before sweeping the Blue Jays during the final weekend of the season to win the division.

A few years later I sneaked into the Tigers’ Winter Caravan in Kalamazoo and asked Sparky about that ’87 team. “Of all the teams I’ve managed, that’s the one I’m most proud of,” he said. “No one gave us a chance and we shocked them all.”

People say that by winning the World Series in ’84 Sparky got a lifetime pass in Detroit. There’s probably some truth to that. After all, the Tigers’ record from 1985-95 was just 852-864 — not dazzling but not enough to get Sparky Anderson fired. That just wasn’t going to happen in Detroit.

When he left Detroit, I suspected Sparky would have one more managerial job. I thought maybe the Dodgers or Angels or Padres would call at some point. They didn’t and as a result he enjoyed his retirement in Thousand Oaks, Calif., playing golf and, as he always said, being in his pajamas by 7 p.m.

Since he was hired in 1979, Detroit has had many star coaches — Chuck Daly, Scotty Bowman, Steve Mariucci, Larry Brown, Jacques Demers — but none were brighter nor beloved more than the first.

October Surprise: Tigers and Jays Battle for ’87 Division Title

ViewFromOutfieldXSmall.jpgOver the next week, we’ll watch the Tigers and Twins play head-to-head to decide the American League Central.

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.

“I’m telling you, everything is going to come down to our seven games with Toronto.” — Tigers Manager Sparky Anderson, Sept. 21, 1987

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).

Continue reading “October Surprise: Tigers and Jays Battle for ’87 Division Title” →

Remembering Dwight Lowry

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_DwightLowry, an 11th-round pick in 1980, emerged from nowhere in Spring Training 1984 jumping from Double-A Birmingham to the 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.

Talking with Johnny Grubb, Part II

JohnnyGrubb2.jpgThis 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 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.

Continue reading “Talking with Johnny Grubb, Part II” →