Category: Fungoes

From Baseball Reference: 1984 — The Detroit Tigers suffer their first loss of the season after nine consecutive wins. The Tigers fall to the Kansas City Royals and rookie Bret Saberhagen, who earns his first major league victory. Final score: Royals 5 – Tigers 2. Interesting that Dan Petry gave up five runs and Sparky…

My two years of living in Houston collided with Jose Lima‘s years with the Astros. Imagine my surprise when I saw Lima Time on TV promoting a local Mexican restaurant. Thanks yet again to the wonder of YouTube, we can watch them again. Still hard to believe he passed away so young.

Tooling around YouTube I got sucked into a Sparky Anderson search-fest. Here’s his Hall of Fame induction speech from 2000.

This is right after Sparky came back from his leave of absence. Interesting, he makes no bones about the Tigers not developing young players — not since Kirk Gibson. Of course that’s why Sparky was saddled with such mediocre teams for his last seven years in Detroit.

From Baseball Reference: The Special Veterans Committee announces the election of Walter Alston and George Kell to the Hall of Fame. Alston managed the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles to four World Series championships, while always working under one-year contracts. Kell, a standout third baseman primarily for the Detroit Tigers, batted over .300 nine…

From Baseball-Reference.com: 1940 – The Detroit Tigers’ roster lists Hank Greenberg as an OF. The willingness of the team’s leading power hitter to switch, at a contract boost, from 1B allows manager Del Baker to find a position for Rudy York. Also on the list are Dick Bartell, picked up from the Chicago Cubs for…

I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was that Kirk Gibson left the Tigers for the Dodgers as a free agent in 1988. Not only had there been rumors of a one-for-one trade in place for L.A.’s slugging first baseman Pedro Guererro, Lance Parrish also left as a free-agent, about a year before. Yeah, but still. The…

I’m going to do a deep-dive in the Internet to locate photos proving they wore these respective numbers.  

Digging around in my Tigers Yearbook archive I found this entry from the ’77 edition about catcher Bob Adams, who turns 64 today. Adams appeared in 15 games for the ’77 Tigers, hitting .250 with a pair of homers and RBI, and .792 OPS. (If that matters to a guy with 24 plate appearances.) Happy Birthday, Bob.

Tito Fuentes Born: January 4, 1944 in Havana, Cuba. Acquired: Signed as a free agent on Feb. 23, 1977 Height: 5′ 11″ Weight: 175 lb. Seasons in Detroit: 1 (1977) Uniform Number: 3, 44 Stats: .309 avg., 5 HR, 51 RBI, .745 OPS When the Tigers sought a player to oversee second base until Lou…