Detroit — Mickey Lolich, who had three complete-game wins detroit tigers The last Major League Baseball pitcher to accomplish the incredible feat in the 1968 World Series died Wednesday. He was 85 years old.
The Tigers said Lolich’s wife told them he died after a short stay in hospice care. The exact cause of death was not given.
Denny McClain was the star of Detroit’s pitching staff in 1968, which won 31 regular season games. But Lolich was the Most Valuable Player of the series with an ERA of 1.67 and a Game 7 road win over Bob Gibson. St. Louis Cardinals.
Bill Freehan took off his catcher’s mask and caught Tim McCarver’s errant popup for the final out. Lolich jumped into Freehan’s arms – an iconic image from Detroit’s championship season.
“It was always someone else,” Lolich told the Detroit Free Press in 2018, “but my day finally came.”
According to Baseball-Reference.com, he is 23rd in career strikeouts with 2,832, ahead of several others who, unlike Lolich, are in the Hall of Fame, and fifth among all lefties.
Lolich was an unlikely hero in 1968. During the World Series team reunion, he recalled how manager Mayo Smith sent him to the bullpen for most of August. He returned to the Tigers’ starting lineup and was 6–1 in the final weeks.
Frustrated with the bullpen move, Lolich said, “I was having some problems, but I’ve been a starting pitcher since 1964.” “I remember telling him, ‘If we win this thing this year it’s going to be because of me.’ But I was only talking about the season. I wasn’t talking about the World Series.
“I got my revenge back in the World Series,” he said.
Lolich played in Game 7 after only two days’ rest. He thought he would get a Corvette from General Motors for becoming series MVP, but he had to settle for the Dodge Charger GT because Chrysler was the sponsor in 1968.
“Nothing against the Chargers, absolutely nothing,” Lolich said in his book “Joy in Tigertown.” “It’s just that there were already two of them in my way.”
Since Lolich, only Arizona’s Randy Johnson in 2001 has won three games in the World Series, although Johnson pitched about 10 innings less and in Game 7 he was a relief pitcher, not a starter.
The Tigers expressed their “heartfelt condolences” to Lolich’s family and loved ones. post on xWhile his former teammate – Willie Horton – described him as a “great pitcher, teammate and champion” in a statement released through the Tigers on social media.
Lolich had a record of 220–192 over a 16-year career, including the postseason, all but three with Detroit. He left baseball after playing for New York Mets in 1976 but returned with San Diego In 1978-79.
The left-hander went 25-14 in 1971, struck out 308 batters in 376 innings, and finished second in the AL Cy Young Award voting. He followed that up with a 22-14 record and 250 strikeouts in 1972.
After his baseball career, Lolich, a native of Portland, Oregon, was in the donut business in suburban Detroit, making and selling them for 18 years.
He wrote in his book, “I doubt that any other ballplayer has ever made this transition from diamonds to donuts. But I did.”
