In the streets of Chicago, the nation seemed to be fighting for its sanity. The Democratic Convention had gathered for the business of nominating Hubert H. Humphrey for president. Antiwar demonstrators, infuriated by what they perceived to be nothing more than a continuation of American policy in Vietnam, turned the city into a gypsy camp and then into a battleground. For three days, city cops were pelted with words, garbage, and abuse. Then, with the blessing of Mayor Richard Daley, police struck back. Young demonstrators were clubbed, gassed, pursued into hotels, and beaten. Senator Abraham Ribicoff stood on the convention podium and berated Daley. The mayor cursed him right back, and it seemed that democracy itself was going to split wide open in a free-for-all.
The Tigers saw very little of that from the bus. Although Comiskey Park was just a few miles from the site of the convention, it all could have been happening in Prague—where Soviet troops were on the march, stamping out the last faint embers of Czech democracy.
Never was the distance between the drumbeat of reality and the unchanging rhythm of baseball wider than in these last days of August. The Tigers were too occupied with trying to put their world back together to notice the planet coming apart. They were facing their own private upheaval after the fiasco in New York. As during the riot that took place behind the left-field wall in Detroit one year ago, they could smell the smoke. But the fire never touched them.
The first game with the White Sox had been switched from Chicago to Milwaukee. The Democrats had booked all the hotel rooms in the Chicago area, and the White Sox had also agreed to play nine home games in the nearby city. Milwaukee had lost its Braves to Atlanta after the 1965 season, and there was some speculation that the Sox would move to the Wisconsin city. At the very least, they were keeping it warm until another ball club arrived. The Detroit game drew almost 43,000 people, the largest Milwaukee crowd of the year.
The team plane had arrived from New York after midnight, and the Tigers disembarked in relief. The temperature was twenty degrees cooler, the humidity was down. Earl Wilson, scheduled to pitch that night, decided to “do things right” and never went to bed. Then he went out and pitched a six-hit shutout and drove in the first two runs of the 3-0 win. Even though Detroit lost the next night in Chicago, there was a strong feeling among the Tigers that the worst was behind them. They had been through the fire and survived. McAuliffe would be back in the lineup when they got home. McLain would open the series against California, trying once more for victory number twenty-six. Everyone was certain that he would not fail a third time.
But the operative word was “home.” The 1968 Tigers were Michigan’s team in every sense. Four of their regulars had come out of the state, giving the team an unusually strong identification with its home base. The Yankee dynasty had been over for just four years. It crumbled for many reasons. But one of the most basic was the initiation of the player draft. Teams could no longer sign and stockpile the best talent for any price they chose to pay. The day of the “bonus baby” and the deep farm system stocked with a decade’s worth of talent were over. Now there was equity. Since the collapse of the Yankees, three different teams had won a pennant, and the Tigers would soon make it four. The last time that had happened in the American League was 1943-46, and it took a world war to bring it about. Prior to that you had to go back to 1918-21, at the very dawn of the Yankee era, to find a similar balance.
But something had also been lost. The draft made it almost impossible for a team to sign the top local players. The era in which players actually had a hometown bond with the area in which they performed had ended. Even the lordly Yankees always seemed to have a Lou Gehrig and a Waite Hoyt, a Phil Rizzuto and a Whitey Ford—kids who had learned the game on the streets of the big city. Now the players came from anywhere.
But this Detroit team was a vestige of earlier times. Willie Horton, from the city’s sandlots. Bill Freehan, from the suburbs and the University of Michigan. Jim Northrup, from Alma College. Mickey Stanley, from the state’s second city, Grand Rapids. It seemed that everyone in Michigan knew someone who knew them personally. There was an identification with them throughout the state as “our team,” and that would never be duplicated in the future.
Sparma, Brown, Warden, McLain, Oyler, Lasher, Hiller—all of them came from neighboring states in the same part of the country (or, in Hiller’s case, the adjacent corner of Canada). Tracewski, Matchick, and Price grew up in Pennsylvania industrial towns that weren’t all that different. This geographic coherence produced a profound similarity of outlook, an innate understanding of who each other was. It was a strong unifying influence. Players shared a view of the world and how to have fun in it.
Maybe the most notorious shared caper of this team was the Plane in the Pool. It has passed into team legend as the epitome of what hard work, teamplay, and a certain degree of strong waters can achieve.
The Tigers had first seen the wooden replica of an antique air-craft in the lobby of their hotel in Anaheim as they checked in for the start of the series. A convention of aviation enthusiasts was also booked into the hotel. The players always had time on their hands in Anaheim. The hotel was right across the road from Disneyland, but that paled after the first few visits. There was no shopping or movies nearby. Not a lot to do but watch TV, play cards, and think deep thoughts. It turned out that the plane was on a lot of the Tigers’ minds.
After night games in Anaheim most of the players would repair to the nightclub on the top floor of the hotel. It was a favorite hangout. The team had welcomed the start of the 1967 season with a gala party there. Oyler had become so gala at this party that he had to be carried out feet first on the eve of his debut as Detroit’s regular shortstop. In spite of this, he still managed to go hitless. The celebration on this occasion was a bit less jolly, and some of the players were looking for a way to liven up things. That’s when the idea of removing the plane from the lobby and taking it to the hotel’s outdoor swimming pool first was suggested.
An advance scouting party reported back that there were a few problems. The plane was too big to fit through the door to the pool. It would have to be disassembled. Moreover, it was situated uncomfortably close to the front desk. The night clerk couldn’t see it, but he might be able to hear. Precautions would have to be taken. Moreover, this was especially risky business because Campbell was on this road trip. Usually, when reports of misbehavior trickled back to him a few days after the fact, he would angrily erupt, but time and distance usually eased his displeasure. With him right on the scene, there was an added element of danger.
“I still don’t know where they came up with the tools,” says Lolich, fondly recalling the event like a general of a great war. “But we had some very resourceful guys on that team. When I saw the tools I knew it could be done. I always loved to tinker with stuff when I was a kid, taking things apart and putting them back together. The plane would be a cinch. So we sent Hiller out to the lobby as a diversionary tactic. He got the desk clerk, who was half asleep anyhow, into a conversation about baseball. Hiller was told to talk loud so the rest of us could get to work on the plane.”
Within twenty minutes, these highly skilled athletes had taken the plane apart and noiselessly transported it to the pool area, where it was reassembled. Then the players gathered to admire their night’s work. But something was missing, the finishing touch that would elevate this escapade above the routine. No one will take credit for what happened next. All those named as the culpable party are no longer living. But someone decided that the next logical step was to put the plane into the pool.
“It surprised us how easily it went in,” says Lolich. “We slid it to the side, but then it got a little tricky, because we didn’t want it to make too big a splash when it hit the water. So we kind of lowered it and then just let go.”
Unfortunately, the Tigers had forgotten their basic Archimedean physics. When the plane went into the pool, an equal weight of water had to come out. “One minute we were standing there,” says Lolich, “admiring the plane in the pool, and the next we were caught in a flood. The whole pool area went underwater. We had to turn around and run like hell.”
One of their rooms overlooked the pool, and the Tigers scurried up there to see the total effect of what they had done. The plane, which had settled to the pool floor, presented a lovely spectacle in the moonlight. To Lolich it was one of the transcendental moments of his life with the Tigers.
“The hotel knew who had done it right away,” he says. “They had to. We were all waiting the next day for the explosion from Campbell. But it never came. We found out later that he had just settled privately with the hotel and paid for the damage. He never said a word.”
Maybe that was because the general manager had been in the U.S. Naval Air Corps in World War II and the incident brought back fond memories. More likely, Cambell just wanted to keep the whole thing hushed up and out of the newspapers, where it would have landed in big print if he had handed out fines.
But now it was time for the Tigers to have the last laugh.