The players started drifting into Lakeland in mid-February. The central Florida town had been the Tigers’ spring base since 1934 (aside from a three-year break because of World War II travel restrictions), the longest continuous association between any big league team and its Florida training site. Detroit had won its first pennant in twenty-five years immediately upon moving there and thus saw no good reason ever to move again.
After the war, the Tigers purchased a tract of land that had been used as a base to train British naval pilots. The team converted the land into Tigertown, a complex of diamonds and dormitories where every player in the entire minor league system was trained and domiciled. It was the first such operation in baseball. The Tigers felt it created an organizational unity. Detroit believed in its farm system with an almost religious fervor. It was convinced that a core of players, all indoctrinated in the same basic approach and techniques, was essential in building a winner. Of the twenty-five men who eventually formed the roster of the 1968 Tigers, fifteen had come through the Tigertown complex. About half of them arrived in the majors within a year or two of each other in the mid-60s. They were called “the Boys from Syracuse,” which was then the system’s top AAA affiliate.
“It was like family,” Jim Northrup says of that group. “We barbecued together with our wives and kids. We partied together. When we had problems we talked to each other. Hell, we even loaned each other money when things got tight—although we’d try and run the other way when McLain came along. He was constantly looking for a few bucks ‘to get something for Sharyn.’ It wasn’t a loan with Denny. It was more like a gift. But by the time we reached the bigs we had known each other for years. It was a closeness I don’t believe can exist anywhere in professional sports anymore.”
Lakeland in 1968 was not the Florida of the travel posters. After Walt Disney World opened in the ’70s a few miles east on Interstate 4, Lakeland joined the rest of Florida. Condominiums, malls, traffic, and high growth have transformed the place. But in the spring of 1968 it was still part of the Deep South in its drowsy ambience, racial attitudes, and sense of itself. There were two movie theaters in town, not counting the drive-in, which primarily showed films that bore titles like Preacher Man Meets Widder Woman. The nearest ABC television affiliate came in as a ghostly flicker on most sets. Finding an out-of-town newspaper or a corned beef sandwich could involve a trek that lasted for miles. Lakeland was in another dimension from the glitzy Gold Coast resorts or even from the beachfront towns on the gulf. This was citrus country, the top orange-producing county in America, with a little phosphate mining thrown in. Still, there was a certain charm about the town and the string of small lakes around which it had grown. Spring training was a soothing, unvarying cycle of golf at the country club, dinners at the yacht club, black bean soup at the Cuban restaurants in nearby Tampa, and the annual chamber of commerce steak-and-shrimp cookout in a hangar at the old air base. For the Tigers and their general manager, Jim Campbell, who prided himself on running a conservative organization both fiscally and socially, it was bliss.
The Holiday Inn, where team officials, rookies, and media stayed, had been open for just three years and was regarded as the height of luxury—which it was when compared with the former team hotel, with its front porch full of rocking chairs that appeared to have been broken in by Stonewall Jackson’s troops. This was also the third season of operation for Joker Marchant Stadium, home field for Tigers spring games. Its odd name was a tribute to Lakeland’s director of parks and recreation, a man who favored cowboy boots and Stetson hats and looked as if he knew some really great stories, if he ever chose to tell them. He never quite got around to that, though. It seemed that the funniest thing he ever saw was when a young journalist, trying to file a story at the Western Union office, absent mindedly walked into the appliance store next door. “Son, were you going to send that story over a washing machine?” Joker would ask whenever he saw the young man for years afterward, almost howling in glee. “Were you fixin’ to give it to a refrigerator?”
Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had legally ended segregation, Lakeland remained a town fixed in its racial attitudes. There was a black part of town, and there was a white one. There was no overlap. The team’s black players found it difficult to find acceptable accommodations for their families, so they lived at the Holiday Inn. The Tigers ran a bus service for them to the black neighborhood in the evening. Most white veterans lived with their families in a motel on the Old Tampa Road. It was far from luxurious, but it was the best of its kind in Lakeland.
The organization had not been idle after the crushing failure of 1967. Mostly, it had been occupied attempting to trade McLain. There was a strong suspicion that the twenty-game season of 1966 was an aberration and that the 17-16 season of the next year was a closer measure of his real ability. More than that, there was the unmistakable perception that he was just not Tiger material. He was way too cocky, far too independent and outspoken. Moreover, he had failed the team down the stretch. He hadn’t backed up the brag. But no trade was made. Warning flags about McLain were up all over the game, and no franchise was willing to make a commitment to him. Campbell had to settle for picking up Dennis Ribant, a pitcher who had impressed very few at Pittsburgh the previous year.
The entire pitching staff had been overhauled. Only five men remained from those who had left Florida with the team the previous spring. Campbell and Mayo Smith were convinced that the bull pen blew the pennant, and they were looking hard for strong, young arms. Otherwise, the team was unchanged from the one that had ended the 1967 season. McAuliffe was set at second, Wert at third, and Freehan behind the plate. There would be a four-man outfield rotation with Kaline, Horton, Northrup, and Stanley. Mayo wasn’t quite sure how he would work that out. But both Kaline and Horton seemed to be injury prone, and he was sure that the rotation would take care of itself. At first base, there were Cash and Mathews. Cash was thirty-three and Mathews thirty-six, but both men lived hard off the field and appeared much older. The joke was that Mayo would throw the glove out at first base and see which one would pick it up—unless, of course, they couldn’t straighten up again. Shortstop was troublesome. Ray Oyler was the designated starter and an excellent defensive player. But he was helpless as a hitter. Dick Tracewski was not quite as good on defense and hit somewhat better. Tom Matchick had shown some potential as a minor league hitter, but there were severe questions about his defense. That was where the Tigers needed help, and to fill that position they had shopped McLain. But they would have to make do with what they had.
Earl Wilson had won twenty-two games as a starter and appeared firm as the staff leader. Behind him would be Lolich, who had finished the 1967 season with an encouraging rush, and Sparma, coming off his best year at 16-9. And, of course, McLain.
McLain had arrived in Lakeland with orange hair (“I’ve been out in the sun a lot,” he explained) and contact lenses to replace his thick spectacles. The cap was worn at a rakish angle, bill shading his eyes. He seemed unconcerned with the events of the previous season and reports of his impending departure. To all appearances, he was the same old Denny, sizing up the world with a knowing eye and finding it choice and fat.
But McLain, like every other veteran of 1967, had changed. Beneath the clubhouse laughter there was a new seriousness of intent. This was a team who had been through the grinder. The pain would never go away. But it had made them harder, tougher.
There were still the timeless, numbing spring routines to endure. But Mayo did not run a tight camp. Conditioning drills were minimal. Strength coaches were unknown then. Mike Marshall was a great believer in building up durability by lifting weights. But the twenty-five-year-old pitcher, who was working toward a Ph.D. at Michigan State University, was regarded as a moon man. The other players called him “Professor” and exchanged amused glances when he started talking about his theories of pitching, about using alternate sets of muscles on alternate days. In six more seasons, putting his theories into practice, he would break every record for appearances and innings pitched by a reliever. But that would be with the Dodgers. The Tigers could hardly wait to get rid of this crackpot.
Pitching coach Johnny Sain was not a believer in running. He believed that games were won with attitude and mental toughness. Although strong legs and healthy bodies were nice, they would not be the critical component when the game was on the line. So aside from a few serious athletes—Freehan, Stanley—it was not a camp that went in for serious athleticism.
The biggest event of the spring, as always, was introducing rookies to The Mongoose. This mysterious creature was kept in a large box, guarded by the assistant clubhouse attendant, a local lad named Gator. Newcomers to the team were told of this wonder in hushed tones and asked if they wanted to see it. Gator was then dispatched to get The Mongoose. He made a big show of struggling with the container and the creature thrashing around inside. A new player was told to look through a small peephole to see The Mongoose. When he did, Gator would release a spring, and a racoon tail would suddenly come flying out of a hole at the top of the box. The unsuspecting viewer’s scream and wild leap, some of them attaining impressive measures in height and length, were always a highlight of the Lakeland experience and an initiation rite of the Tigers.
But something else was stirring, something much more powerful than The Mongoose. The Tigers had been installed as preseason favorites to win the pennant. No one in Lakeland disagreed. But they now knew something else, too. They knew what it would take to be the team left standing in October.