Spring training ground to its tedious conclusion. By the first week in April, everyone was thoroughly sick of Lakeland, eager for real competition. All the good stories had been told several times. The brew had gone flat. Routines settled into stagnation. The only thing to look forward to was the bus ride to the Tampa airport and the flight home to Detroit.
The Tigers managed to win about as often as they lost that spring, finishing one game under .500. That’s what a manager looks for from a contender in the exhibitions. Too many wins is the mark of mediocrity, matching regulars against the other teams’ farmhands and building up an air of false confidence. Too many losses, on the other hand, is the mark of indifference. The last two games of this spring, however, quickened more than the usual interest. The Tigers would play a home-and-home series against the world champions, the St. Louis Cardinals. In these last days of spring training, regulars would fill both lineups. Each side intended to start top pitchers—Bob Gibson and Nelly Briles against Wilson and McLain. It wasn’t quite the real thing but close enough to taste.
On the evening before the first of these games, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis.
The Tigers were among the last major league teams to integrate. Along with the Red Sox and Yankees, Detroit was known as a franchise that didn’t especially welcome the coming of black ballplayers. The first one hadn’t reached Tiger Stadium until 1958, more than a decade after Jackie Robinson first stepped on the field wearing a Dodgers uniform. Even then, the move won no cheers from the city’s large black community. The player who integrated the Tigers was Ozzie Virgil, who came from the Dominican Republic. It was, black fans pointed out, not quite the same thing.
Within three years, however, the Tigers had traded for Milwaukee’s star center fielder, Billy Bruton, and had brought up rookie second baseman Jake Wood. They hit one-two in Detroit’s 1961 lineup and added some speed to a team that was notoriously slow. Bruton and Wood set the table for the sluggers hitting behind them. The fans were delighted, urging them raucously to run each time they got on base. They combined for fifty-two steals, almost as many as the entire team had managed the previous year.
By 1968, there were three African-Americans on the team. Horton had come off the streets of Detroit, a local legend even as a high school star because of his long home runs. Gates Brown had been scouted behind the walls of the Ohio State Penitentiary. His story of personal redemption also made him a popular figure in Detroit. The third man was Earl Wilson. He was obtained from Boston midway through the 1966 season and turned into the team’s most effective pitcher, going 35-17 since the trade.
To all appearances, there was no racial divide on the Tigers. Gates was a regular in endless games of tonk (which vaguely resembled gin rummy) and pinochle. The games were played on airplanes and in hotel rooms, with a core of Brown, McLain, John Hiller, Pat Dobson, and an ever-changing cast of others. McLain was especially welcomed. He played cards so poorly that Jake Wood nicknamed him “Dolphin,” because he was regarded as a fish on the hook. Racial bantering in the card games and in the clubhouse was low key and went both ways. Gates was often quoted as saying that his friend, Horton, had had a schedule in high school that had included “taking math, history, and overcoats.” A few seasons before, Horton had been accidentally cut on the hand while Gates was cleaning his spikes with a knife. There was a racist edge to the whispers about that because both men were competing for the starting job in left field. In reality, the two were close friends, and Gates was mortified by the accident.
Wilson was a bit more aloof. He was a tall, almost regal man. Gates referred to him as the “Duke of Earl,” a tribute to his extensive wardrobe and the elegant style with which he wore it. Some of the older Tigers felt that it was “too flashy, Hollywood stuff.” But even in those years, when most teams, including the Tigers, required their players to wear coats and ties on the road, Wilson’s attire was impressive if not somewhat conservative with a decided emphasis on double-breasted suits and striped ties.
Still, the Tigers franchise remained ambivalent about minorities. Many in the organization felt that three was just about the right number of black players (although a fourth would be added later in the season with relief pitcher John Wyatt). Some executives spoke privately about how Hispanic players wilted under pressure. They made sure that there was no chance of that happening with the Tigers. The only Hispanic on the ball club was Julio Moreno, a sad-visaged Cuban who had pitched briefly with Washington in the early ’50s. He pitched batting practice, a very low-pressure position.
When Charlie Dressen managed the team he regularly reminded his players that the National League was far tougher. He attributed that to the greater number of blacks in that circuit. Dressen felt they played the game to the hilt and made it faster and meaner. He imported several players from the Dodgers during his tenure in Detroit in an effort to “toughen up” the Tigers. None of them, however, were black.
The Cardinals, on the other hand, fielded a lineup that was predominantly black and Hispanic on the days when Gibson pitched. The Dodgers had also won championships with teams with a large number of minorities. But baseball overall did not regard the career of Dr. King as having any special resonance. The game, after all, had removed its racial bar twenty-־two years ago, long before King’s entry into the civil rights movement. Black stars were now firmly established. Segregated facilities were a thing of the past. The game had desegregated outposts in Houston and Atlanta. Many baseball men understood the injustice of Jim Crow and King’s campaign against it. Some may have even supported it. It just didn’t seem to have much to do with them.
On the day after the assassination, Coretta Scott King took her slain husband’s place at the head of a Memphis march. It had been scheduled as a show of support for striking garbage workers, but the assassination turned it into a tribute to King. Following the assassination, riots had broken out in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and one hundred other cities. Detroit, still exhausted from the previous summer’s violence, remained quiet. In Florida, there had been some disturbances a few miles from Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg. But it was decided that the final exhibition games of the spring would go on as scheduled.
The Cards won the first one, 3-2. Gibson pitched four innings, gave up a run, retired the last eight men in a row, and struck out three. The next day the Tigers won, 4-2. McLain looked unimpressive in three innings. But two rookies, Daryl Patterson and Jon Warden, shut down the St. Louis lineup without a hit for the last three. It was generally supposed that these two teams had a rendezvous in six months to open the World Series at Busch Stadium. So when Kaline crashed a two-run homer in the seventh to win the second game, there was a little bit more enthusiasm in the Detroit dugout than was the standard for a mere exhibition.
Mayo Smith liked what he saw in Patterson and Warden. He sat down to make his final cuts of the spring that night, and the two rookies were kept on the team. He also did a strange thing in the last exhibition game. He brought in Stanley to play a few innings at third base. The center fielder was regarded as the most talented athlete on the team and frequently took a turn fielding grounders during infield drill. Still, actually playing him in the infield seemed like an odd move. It was simply noted as a curiosity, however, and passed over.
As the Tigers flew back to Detroit to start the season, President Johnson proclaimed a national day of mourning for King. All openers scheduled for April 9 were postponed in deferenee to the funeral service, which was led by King’s father at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. A mourning nation watched on television as King’s coffin, pulled on a wagon by two Georgia mules, was carried to its resting place. Schools shut down. The New York Stock Exchange closed. The Academy Award presentations were rescheduled.
The Tigers, however, were unable to watch the service. Although the opener had been cancelled, the ball club scheduled a team practice for that morning. Wilson was furious. He showed up for the mandatory practice but merely went through the motions. Afterward, he angrily berated team management for what he said was a blatant disregard of the mood of its black players. For once, the world outside seemed to have punctured baseball’s cocoon.