His garage may be full of sneakers, but his head is full of memories.
Almost three decades have passed since sporting goods salesman Jon Warden threw the final pitch of his brief major league career. But the details are as vivid as last summer’s vacation. The sounds, the texture of his single season in the sun, come pouring into the house in suburban Cincinnati.
“I am a walking trivia answer,” he laughs as he picks his way through the stacked boxes of athletic shoes stored in the garage. No room for the cars. They’re out on the driveway. He is wearing a warm-up suit and baseball cap, which hides the few tufts that remain atop his head.
“Who was the only Tiger who didn’t get into the 1968 World Series?” Warden raises his hand and guffaws. “That’s who I am.”
“It all happened so fast. One day, no one knows who I am, fresh up from Double A, and I’m on the roster of the Detroit Tigers, and we’re fighting for a pennant. Next day my arm is gone, and my career is over. But I loved every minute of it. Even while it was happening I knew that it was an experience that would last me the rest of my life. To tell you the truth, I’m just grateful that I got to be a part of it.”
He was just twenty-one that spring, the last man to make the Tigers roster in Florida. A hard-throwing lefty out of Columbus, Ohio.
“I was hoping to get sent to Toledo, the Triple A team. That way my folks would have been able to drive up and see me play. The big team, I never thought there was any chance. I mean, they had just missed the pennant by a game. What did they want with some young kid who couldn’t find his butt with both hands? But they were looking for young arms, and I had one of them.
“They had to cut Hank Aguirre to keep me. Man, that could have been real rough. They could have treated me like dirt. Hank was one of the most popular guys on that team. Everybody loved him. Then one day he’s gone and here I am, fresh out of Rocky Mount, with all of two years of pro ball behind me. But you know what? No one ever said a word to me about that. These guys were so dedicated to winning that year that no matter what it took they would accept it. Animosity kind of fell by the wayside. As long as I could help ’em win the thing, I was welcome.
“Poor Hank. He never got to the series. He landed with the Cubs in 1969, and it looked like they were going to breeze in. But then they collapsed down the stretch, of course. The Mets caught ’em, and Hank never got in. For years afterwards, whenever there was a Tigers alumni meeting, he’d come running up to me, grab my hand, and say: ‘You sonofabitch, you’ve got my ring.’ He’d laugh about it, but I know sometimes it had to tear him up.”
Warden had one of the more remarkable debuts in baseball history. Three appearances, three and one-third innings pitched, three wins.
“Man, I thought this was the easiest game in the world,” he says. “Naw. Not really. My locker was right next to Lolich’s, and he’d keep telling me, ‘Your bubble will break, rookie.’ But it took a while, and I was on cloud nine.
“The first man I faced in the big leagues was Reggie Smith. My knees were shaking so hard I could barely stand up on the mound. But he sent a grounder right at Ray Oyler at short, and I took a big, deep breath. That was automatic. And then Oyler booted the ball, and I just about died. George Scott got a single and now I’ve got two men on, nobody out, in a tie game. But I got it together and got Joe Foy on a fly ball for the third out with the bases loaded.
“Then there’s two out in the ninth, and up comes Yastrzemski. Oh, man. I’m shaking all over again. I just turned that ball loose with everything I had, and I struck him out. My first major league strikeout, and it’s Yaz. I can’t believe it. I’m sitting on the bench, turning that over in my mind, and I look up and Gates Brown hits the ball out of the park. I’m the winning pitcher. This was crazy. Everything was happening at once.
“Three games later, Mayo brings me in again. It’s the tenth, and Cleveland has just gone ahead of us with one out. I get Jose Vidal on a fly ball and start thinking about Duke Sims when Jose Cardenal tries to steal second, and Freehan throws him out. So I’m out of that pretty easy. We come up, Horton busts a two-run homer, and I win again.
“All right, I’m really enjoying this. Now we’re in Chicago. We’ve got a 1-0 lead in the ninth, bases loaded, one out, and here comes the signal for me again. Wayne Causey is the hitter, and I couldn’t come anywhere near the plate. I walk him and force in a run, and now Chicago brings up Ken Boyer to bat. By this time he was near the end of his career. But, still. Ken Boyer! I’m waiting for Mayo to make the move and get me out of there. But he never leaves the dugout. I don’t know. We all know Mayo wasn’t some kind of managerial genius. Sometimes he did strange things. I guess this was just one of them.
“Boyer scorches one. I mean it’s a rocket. But it’s right at Don Wert. He stabs it, steps on third, double play, end of the inning. The guys score three times in the top of the tenth, and I win again.”
It didn’t end there. Not quite. Warden got into twenty-five more games for the Tigers. He won one, and he lost one. When it came time to pick the series roster it was between him and John Wyatt. Mayo, looking for another lefty, went with Warden, but never used him. He had pitched his last game for the Tigers and, as it turned out, in the majors.
“Kansas City picked me in the expansion draft that fall,” he says. “That was real funny. It was like a week after the series was over. One day I’m celebrating a world championship, and the next day I’m gone. I’m not a part of it anymore. It wasn’t unexpected but still I kept hoping they’d pick somebody else.
“It was a great opportunity, being on an expansion team. They told us the first day of spring training that every job was wide open. So I went right out and threw my arm out. Rotator cuff. Even now that’s a tough deal, but in 1969 it was a career-ender. I tried it in the minors for a while, and the Royals did bring me up to the big club at the end of the season. So technically I did get back to the majors, even though I was never in a game. But after the season, I got cut, and that was that.”
As he spoke, Warden had just returned from a big league alumni golf tournament in Florida. He is active in the group and seldom misses a chance to attend meetings in his area.
“The first thing we have to instill in the new members is that now it’s different,” he says. “Now we want you to sign autographs. You don’t give fans the brush-off. Man, some of the attitudes these guys have today. You got to give ’em a makeover.
“I look back on that season, and the thing I remember most is the other guys. Rooming with McLain. Now that was an experience. It was just me and an empty bed most of the time. But the rest of us, we’d be playing cards, talking, go out and have a few beers. I guess most of the guys playing ball today make so much money that they don’t have to have a roommate. They don’t know what they’re missing. Even all these years later, you see one of the guys you roomed with, and it’s, ‘How ya’ doin’, rooms?’ Like no time at all had passed. That was such a big part of the experience.
“Now that I’m in the alumni, I get to know the guys who were big stars. I remember going up to Ernie Banks the first time and telling him how much I admired him and him holding up my ring and saying, ‘Yeah, but you got one of these.’
“You know, it doesn’t seem to matter whether you made the Hall of Fame or whether you lasted one season, like me. Once a big leaguer, always a big leaguer. If you put the uniform on, it’s all the same now.”