History doesn't repeat

The Tigers lost the World Series to the underdog Cardinals tonight; as their great manager, Jim 'Classy' Leyland said afterwards after first congratulating the Cardinals, the young Tigers made too many mistakes to win a series, let alone the World Series.

Congrats St. Louis, well-known for having the best fans in baseball (they cheer even cheer good plays by the visiting team). Detroit will be back!

In the meantime, courtesy of Sports Illustrated, selected excerpts from their republished look at the last time the Cardinals and Tigers met in the World Series, in 1968.

It's amazing how different the game and sports writing, not to mention the country, was back then....

The Tigers See Too Much Red

Game 1

[Bob] Gibson's performance was magnificent, considering the muggy day in St. Louis and the fact that he had to use 144 pitches. Remarkably, he was strong at the end. He took care of Al Kaline, Norm Cash, Jim Northrup, Horton and Freehan 12 times, and when he got Horton to end the game the crowd stood and roared its approval, almost as much at the excellence he had somehow sustained through the season as at the new record. There must be something about Gibson's habits that differs from those of mere mortal pitchers.

Q. What did you eat for breakfast?

A. I didn't want to eat. I drove to the park and had coffee and doughnuts. During the game I ate a few candy bars.

Q. Did you get extra sleep?

A. No. I woke up seven or eight times during the night.

Q. What time did you go to bed?

A. About midnight. My 11-year-old daughter came in from Omaha to see the game and we talked.

Q. Was she excited about the game, interested in it?

A. She seemed mostly interested in her dress.


Game 2

As Albert William Kaline, for 16 years a great and injury-prone player for the Detroit Tigers, reached the dugout before taking batting practice for the first game of the Series, he looked out at the red, white and blue bunting and the schools of newsmen darting around the batting cage. Long ago Kaline, now 33, had promised himself that he would never go to a World Series game until he played in one. He sat on the dugout bench and again and again adjusted the stirrups on his socks and the flaps on his spiked shoes that identify him in black ink not by name but simply by the number "Six."

Whenever some Tiger players talked of him they would say, "Six had a real good night," or, "You should have seen the play Six made in Fenway." (In the opening game of the Series, Kaline doubled in four tries against Gibson but freely admitted that on his first time at bat he was extremely nervous. Even during batting practice before that game the Tigers were overswinging. They knocked very few balls into home run areas in Busch Stadium.) Kaline had been the reason why Tiger Manager Mayo Smith made the "great experiment" of moving Mickey Stanley, a fine centerfielder, to shortstop, though Stanley had played only six games at the position. By hitting hard and often late in the season after earlier injuries, Kaline had forced his way back into the lineup, and somehow a Tiger team in a World Series without Kaline would be no Tiger team at all. Realistically, though, the decision was based to a great extent on sentiment.

After the first game Kaline and his longtime friend Norm Cash concluded that the Tigers were swinging too hard and that the Detroit team had enough power to generate home runs merely by swinging naturally. Prior to the start of Game Two they moved among the players, telling them to swing as they had during the regular season and to forget trying to hit everything over St. Louis' Gateway Arch.

With Gibson's excellent performance behind them and some ragged play by the Tigers still in their minds, the Cardinals started off as though they intended to end the Series in four straight. But with two on and one out in the first inning, Cepeda hit a high foul toward the seats deep in right field. Everyone assumed that it would drop among the customers. Not Six, however. He was off when he saw the ball come away from Cepeda's bat and he kept racing on recklessly, heading right at a wire gate in foul territory. At the last instant he caught the ball, plunged through the gate, which for some reason had been left unlocked, then spun and threw to third. Javier, rightfully respecting Kaline's arm, stayed put at second.

Game 3

At the end of the third game one amazing statistic stood out: the first three hitters in the Cardinal lineup had been on base 21 times in 39 at bats.

Joe Hoerner came in for Washburn in the sixth inning and got the Cardinals out of a jam, giving up only a single and a walk to the next 13 batters he faced. Hoerner, a 31 year old relief man, had appeared in three Series games before this one and had been bad in each. Back in 1958 he had a heart attack. Because one of the muscles around his heart was weak, he was told he could never pitch overhand again. In consequence, Hoerner developed his curious style of throwing somewhere between sidearmed and underhanded. "It's about time," said Hoerner, "that I did something in a Series besides hit fungoes and give up a lot of runs."

Much of the joy seemed to go out of the city of Detroit after the third game, but the next day McLain would be meeting Gibson again.

Game 4

This one must have been invented for people who had never been to the Twilight Zone. All morning menacing clouds hung over Tiger Stadium, and more than an hour before gametime heavy rains started, keeping some people pent up in their automobiles in the $8 parking lots nearby while others hung papers over their heads, lifted umbrellas and marched into the 57-year-old ballpark to gather in restless clumps under the stands. Tiger fans realized that, with their team down two games to one, McLain would have to be at his very best because the man he was facing, Gibson, is the finest pressure pitcher in baseball today. But the second Gibson-McLain duel turned out to be another mismatch. ...

Then McLain himself failed to hold a throw at first base on a tough-hop bouncer by Mans, who went on to score on successive singles by McCarver and Shannon. Two runs for Gibson seem like six for almost anybody else. Through most of this year the Cardinals had not scored for him, a fact that bothered them almost as much as it did him. Although he won 22 games and lost only nine, during those nine losses his team scored a mere 12 runs. Once, needling the Cardinals, he said, "I might just as well go out there alone, because you guys make me feel that way anyway." ...

But now St. Louis got Gibson two more runs in the top of the third when Flood singled, McCarver hit a ball into the gap in left center and Horton, the Tiger leftfielder, played it off the wall like a bear handling a ginger snap. Shannon doubled, and everything was over except for the business of the rain. It was still driving straight down, and Tiger fans in the centerfield bleachers, hoping for a postponement, began to chant, "Rain, rain, rain." The umpires, confirmed by baseball Commissioner William Eckert, halted the game with the Cardinals still threatening. The tarp went down over the infield, and everybody settled down to wait. The Tigers, equipped with a weather forecast predicting that a heavy rainstorm was on its way, hoped the wait would be till Monday: The Cardinals, with Gibson in front 4-0, were looking for a legal (five inning) conclusion. After a holdup of one hour and 14 minutes, the teams came back on the field and prepared to resume play.

During the delay McLain asked not to pitch again because he could not raise his arm above his head.

Game 5

In the seventh, when it did come, it happened in the strangest way with a one out bloop hit by Lolich, who in this Series suddenly found a batting eye. Hoerner, who had stopped the Tigers so successfully in the third game, was summoned to relieve Briles. The Tigers tore Hoerner apart. McAuliffe singled sharply past first and Stanley, walked. The scene was set for Kaline. The big crowd stood when he entered the batter's box. "I was looking for a fastball," said Kaline, "because that's the way Hoerner pitched me before." Kaline got his fastball and hit it into short center field to bring home the tying and eventual winning runs. Cash's second hit brought home the fifth run.

The crowd stood again as Kaline took his place in right field at the end of the inning. He tipped his cap. "Somehow," said Kaline, "I enjoy hitting with men on base. I just, don't seem to get the same incentive when they're not there. When I saw all those people standing I got goose bumps. It's hard to describe the way you feel. You try to pay them back because they've been good fans and I wanted so much to have them see us win one game here after the way they had treated us all season."

No Game 6 recap

Game 7

"I heard Norm Cash and Dick McAuliffe both yelling to me at the same time," Lolich said. "I didn't know whether they were telling me to 'step off' or 'throw over,' but I decided I'd better throw over to first." When Lolich made his move Brock bolted for second base, a play he had worked successfully against Lolich in the second game. However, Cash relayed the ball to shortstop Mickey Stanley, covering second, and Brock was out just barely. Then, a few minutes later, Lolich picked Curt Flood off first base and the Cardinals began to die. "I can't remember picking off two men in one game, let alone one inning," Lolich said later.

In the seventh game came Brock's second -- and probably most costly -- stumble. There still was no score when Brock started the Cardinal sixth with a single to left field. In the second game of the Series he had stolen second twice on Lolich. Now he took an enormous lead -- at least 20 feet. "Before a game I always make an indention someplace -- in the dirt, in the grass -- that automatically tells me how far I can lead away and not worry about getting picked off," he had said earlier in the week. This time he exceeded his own safety limits.

AP photo of MVP David Eckstein leaping into the arms of Scott Spiezio after Game 5 by Charles Krupa via Yahoo News.

Uncredited 1968 photo of World Series MVP Mickey Lolich leaping into the arms of catcher Bill Freehan after Game 7 found online.