How the Tigers Saved Detroit in ’68

message board post informed me that July 8 was Be a Kid Again Day and asked readers to imagine being 10 years old again.

“What were you likely doing on that date when you were 10?” the message board asked.

Oh, they didn’t even make it tough on me.

I may have trouble remembering what I had for lunch, but the summer of 1968 is indelibly branded on my psyche.

It wasn’t just the fun stuff — although there was plenty of that.

Running through the sprinklers.

Listening for the sound of the ice cream truck, then begging Mom for a dime to buy a 7 Up popsicle.

Lying on the floor in front of the oscillating fan, reading books, newspapers, and the Seventeen magazines I swiped from my sister’s room.

Waiting for the neighborhood kids to finish dinner so we could play Tag, Red Light/Green Light, or Mother May I.

Crossing my fingers that the girl who lived on the corner would invite us to swim in her built-in pool.

But mostly, it was sitting on the back porch drinking lemonade while listening to legendary Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell announce a Detroit Tigers baseball game on WJR-AM; if not from Tiger Stadium, then from some distant, exotic land such as Cleveland, Baltimore, or Boston.

As much as my family enjoyed listening to those games, actual attendance was out of the question. We’d been to a Tiger game a few years before, thanks to an invitation from my dad’s co-worker, but Tiger Stadium’s location at Michigan and Trumbull was well outside Dad’s comfort zone.

By 1968, a trip into the heart of Detroit was inconceivable.

The year before, the city had been torn apart by rioting. Overcrowded conditions, poor relations with the police, and the economic effects of “white flight” (the sudden exodus of white Americans from the cities to the suburbs) created a toxic stew of discontent. That stew finally boiled over one unbearably sticky summer night during an unsolicited police raid at an unlicensed after-hours bar, known as a blind pig — then spilled across the city.

Once some semblance of order was finally restored five long days later, 43 people had died, nearly 1400 buildings were destroyed, and the city’s sense of spirit was crushed. The Detroit Riot was among the deadliest and most destructive in American history.

To the nine-year-old I was at the time, the riots were incomprehensible and frightening. Based on what I heard from the adults around me, it seemed rioters would arrive at my home any second.

Though never in any real danger, my childhood sense of security gave way to an early understanding of adult realities.

By the summer of ’68, the people of Detroit and pundits alike sensed that the city was primed for a repeat. Embers of racial tension, still smoldering beneath the riot’s wreckage, were stoked by April’s assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Bobby Kennedy was then killed in June.

It seemed like it would take a miracle to keep the city from reigniting into what promised to be an even larger, longer conflagration.

Enter the Detroit Tigers.

The scarred city populace took solace in the Tigers’ winning ways as they advanced toward the American League pennant that summer — on their way to an improbable come-from-behind World Series victory against Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals to claim Detroit’s first World Series title since 1945.

Even now, I remember their names so clearly…Al Kaline, Mickey Lolich, Bill Freehan, and, of course, pitching phenom Denny McLain, who won the Cy Young that year with an unheard of 31–6 record.

My sister, a full-fledged teen with all the hormones and enthusiasms that implies, teased me about having a crush on this or that player. What she couldn’t understand was that my crush was on the entire team.

Kaline may have been the only player who would eventually land in the Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame, but to me, every single Tiger was a superstar (although admittedly, outfielder Jim Northrup, with his lanky build and aw-shucks charm, was kind of cute).

The neighborhood gang gathered daily to discuss the latest contests. Tiger talk bridged the gap between boys and girls — even between generations.

Fathers who had once seemed intimidating would now engage us in conversation — should McLain or Mickey Lolich get the starting assignment for the upcoming game against the New York Yankees?

Amazingly, these grown men even seemed to value my opinion.

When Bernie, the newspaper boy, tossed our afternoon copy of The Detroit News on our sidewalk, I couldn’t grab it fast enough. Sure, there were the latest stories of the teams’ exploits to pour over in detail.

But far more importantly, the News ran a feature, a full-page photo and biography of a different player each day, that I avidly cut out for study and safekeeping.

One day, a group of boys I didn’t know showed up at our house, asking for back copies of the paper so they could cut out those precious pages. When informed I was also collecting what they coveted, an argument ensued.

“A girl?” they snorted in disbelief. “You’re not a real fan, you don’t even play baseball. C’mon, hand ’em over.”

“No way, boys!” I yelled, slamming the door. “Off my porch!”

Fortunately in my house, it was perfectly acceptable for females to be fans; I came by it honestly. My mom’s parents had to remove and hide the tubes from their radio in the ’30s to prevent her from listening to what they deemed too many Tiger games.

When they left the house, she risked grave punishment by finding those tubes and then tuning in — nothing could keep her from the exploits of her beloved Hall of Fame second baseman Charlie Gehringer.

As summer wore on, windows and doors throughout Detroit that had been boarded up in the aftermath of the riots sported banners and signs in support of the Tigers.

Even my dad, with his strict policy against defacing any surface in the house with evidence that children lived within, allowed the display of a Tiger pennant in our living room window. I risked heat stroke by drinking hot chocolate from my newly acquired “Sock It To ’Em, Tigers” mug, a worthwhile sacrifice to prove my team loyalty.

Of course, the success of the Tigers could not compensate for the riot’s damage or solve the plethora of problems that had caused it in the first place. But it did provide a balm for the soul of a shattered city, a first glimmer of shared hope for the future.

Instead of dialogue centered non-stop around the monumental task of moving forward, talk of the Tigers supplied common ground for conversation and civic pride.
Detroit Skyline featuring the Renaissance Center.
The Renaissance Center takes pride of place in the Detroit skyline. Photo by William Duggan on Unsplash

There would be many more sticky summers to navigate post-1968 for both me and the city of Detroit. Life has a way of presenting problems that can’t be solved by popsicles, lemonade, or even a winning baseball team.

Every decade since the ’60s has seen efforts to bring life back into the once-scarred city, starting with Henry Ford’s Renaissance Center project in the 1970s — transforming the Detroit skyline if not the economy.

By 2013 the city filed for bankruptcy; that low point marked a turnaround that now has many observers cautiously optimistic that this time, renaissance is not just a concept in name only.

Today’s Detroit Tigers, forty years out from their last World Series win in 1984, need a rebuilding project of their own. Hopefully, the team and the city will work their way back to a solid, symbiotic future.

Immersing myself at age 10 in the excitement of the Tigers’ summer of ’68 success was a first and lasting lesson in the ways that even seemingly trivial sporting glory can mean something oh-so-much more — not just to a kid, but to an entire city.

I relocated to the Oakland area years ago, a city with a similar trajectory to Detroit. Like the Tigers, the Oakland A’s days of glory have faded just like that old cocoa mug of mine.

The A’s, regrettably, have opted to turn tail and will soon flee to presumably more lucrative pastures in Las Vegas.

In 2000, the Tigers moved, too — one mile down the road to a new stadium, Comerica Park, reaffirming their commitment to their fans and their city.

I’ll be at the ballpark to bid the A’s farewell from the Oakland Coliseum in September — when they play host to the Detroit Tigers.

I’ll be watching the game, but I’ll also be thinking about those newspaper clippings, pennants in windows, and one summer that meant the world to a 10-year-old kid.

Thank you for reading my story!