October 20, 2006

Tigers & Cardinals: 1968 Memories

The strongest memory I have of the 1968 World Series is my parents loading up the kids to greet the Tigers at the airport on their return from St. Louis.
I remember there was a great deal of confusion about where the Tigers' plane was going to land. As I recall, it was first to land at Metro, then it was announced they were going to land at Willow Run.
As we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic trying to get to Metro, I remember my dad, hearing of the Willow Run report, pulled a u-turn to join the traffic jam going the other direction.
We never did make it to either location as my parents became so frustrated after several hours of having the same idea as most of the population of metro Detroit.

Anyone else remember meeting the team?

1968 World Series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"The 1968 World Series featured the defending champion St. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers, with the Tigers winning in 7 games for their first championship since 1945, and the third in their history. The Tigers came back from a 3-1 deficit to win three in a row. In Game 5, their hopes for the title would have been very much in jeopardy had Bill Freehan not tagged out Lou Brock in a home plate collision.

The narrow win for the Tigers was due, in small part, to a bold gamble by Manager Mayo Smith. Smith benched no-hit defensive whiz shortstop Ray Oyler in favor of converted center fielder Mickey Stanley. As the Tigers took the lead, Oyler was returned to the lineup as a defensive replacement, Stanley moved back into the outfield and good-hitting poor-fielding outfielder Willie Horton went to the bench. Oyler finished each of the four games won by the Tigers, three of them with MVP Mickey Lolich on the pitcher's mound."

1 Comments:

Blogger Mike Barer said...

The 1968 series mirrored the 1967 series except that the Cardinals lost game 7, where they had won it the year before.

October 21, 2006  

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