Tag: Darrell Evans

Talking with Johnny Grubb, Part II

JohnnyGrubb2.jpgThis is the second and final installment of my conversation with former Tigers outfielder and pinch-hitter extraordinaire, Johnny Grubb. You can find the first installment here.

Mike McClary: Heading into the 1984 season, was it a long off-season? It would seem like you would be chomping at the bit to get back on the field shortly after a little break. Was everyone coming into spring training raring to go?

Johnny Grubb: Yeah, I think so. I remember us getting Dave Bergman and Willie [Hernandez]. So they came over, and they fit right in with the team, too. I mean, we just had a good group of guys that got along, and Dave Bergman is a heck of a guy and so was Willie. So it worked out great.

MMc: Let’s talk about the ’84 season in general. Obviously, you got off to a great start, 9-0, and in the middle of that, Jack Morris throws a no-hitter. As you were getting older and becoming the seasoned veteran, were you really just enjoying about every moment of that season?

JG: Oh, gosh, yeah. It was fun to watch those guys play and every once in a while to jump in and do something myself. But it was a lot of fun watching Gibby and Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker and Darrell [Evans] — and Lance did a great job. And Howard Johnson had the great season for us. I thought he did a great job. And Larry Herndon and all those guys really did well in the pitching.

So really what I remember most about it is that I never really felt like we were out of any ballgame. Any lead a team could get, we felt like we could have a big inning and jump right back in the game. And we had real good pitching, so if we had the lead, we had Willie and [Aurelio] Lopez coming in to shut the door on them. The pitchers did their job, and the hitters did their job. And we just felt like we could win any game.

That 35-5 start really helped a lot, too. But I think that pretty much was an indicator of how strong we were because that’s pretty phenomenal when you think about a 35-5 start in the major leagues. That’s pretty good.

Continue reading “Talking with Johnny Grubb, Part II”

Happy Birthday, Darrell Evans


Happy 61st (?!) Birthday to ol’ #41 Darrell Evans.

Before Pudge Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez, the Tigers’ big splash in the free agent market came on Dec. 17, 1983, when they signed the 36-year-old slugger.

As most seasoned Tigers fans remember, the free agency was anathema to the club’s leadership. Former Tigers GM Jim Campbell hated paying for his own free agent players — and loved to trade them before their walk year. He certainly wasn’t going to dole out cash for someone else’s players.

I can distinctly remember the old “re-entry draft” which created a competitive auction market for the services of veteran players. The Detroit News and Free Press would list, usually in agate type, each team and the free agents it “drafted.” Year after fifth-place year I would read “Detroit: No selections made.”

That changed in 1983 when Evans chose a Detroit offer which was, of course, lower than those of the Yankees, Giants and other clubs that tried to sign, or in the case of San Francisco, re-sign him. The allure of joining a team poised to win now (or then, as it were) made Detroit the best choice.

In his first game as a Tiger, April 3, 1984, Evans homered of the Twins’ Keith Comstock — a three-run jack — and Detroit was off to the races. A week later, on Opening Day in Detroit, he homered in his first Tiger Stadium at bat, an upper-deck blast of the Rangers Dave Stewart. He’d hit only 14 more home runs that year, but quickly became a fan favorite.

In five seasons with the Tigers, Evans hit 141 of his career 414 home runs. In 1989, he finished his career where it began: with the Atlanta Braves.

Today’s Tigers fans may be used to their team being in the mix for big-name free agents. But it certainly wasn’t the case in the late 1970s and early ’80s. And what better guy to break that bad habit than with Darrell Evans?