Few and Chosen Tigers: Defining Tigers Greatness Across the Eras

By Lance Parrish, Phil Pepe and Al Kaline

Former Detroit player Lance Parrish selects the top five Tigers of all time at each position and ranks them in this subjective compendium. Fans may disagree, but they are certain to find his choices interesting, his reasoning for the selections fascinating, and the anecdotes he draws from his years as a Tiger amusing and entertaining. Featured players include Ty Cobb, Harry Heilmann, Charlie Gehringer, Hank Greenberg, George Kell, Willie Horton, and Alan Trammel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triumph Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781617490811

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Introduction

The Tigers of Detroit almost died in infancy, but they survived a near-death experience to become one of the American League’s most formidable and stable (albeit conservative) franchises for more than a century, winning 10 pennants and four World Series and producing some of baseball’s most illustrious stars.

Through the years, Tigers players have won 22 batting titles, 11 home run crowns, 19 RBI titles, nine Most Valuable Player awards, three Cy Young Awards, four Rookie of the Year awards, and 37 Gold Gloves.

Tigers manager Bill Armour was the first to employ extensive use of platooning players, in 1906, but the Tigers were also the next-to-last team in Major League Baseball to install lights, in 1948, and the next-to-last to field a black player, in 1958, 11 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line.

Mention the Tigers, and the names Cobb, Heilmann, Gehringer, Cochrane, Greenberg, Newhouser, Kaline, Kell, Trammel, Horton, and Whitaker readily come to mind.

Although fans are justifiably proud of the rich tradition of their Tigers, at the same time they cannot help but lament what might have been. A team that can boast some of the greatest hitters baseball has known, unfortunately, due to bad judgment, rarely has been able to support those hitters with pitchers of comparable stature. Imagine how the baseball landscape might have changed had the Tigers not traded away such pitching luminaries as:

Eddie Cicotte: Signed by Detroit, he appeared in three games for the Tigers in 1905, winning one and losing one, and then was returned to the minor leagues. The Red Sox purchased him from Lincoln in the Western League for $2,500 before the 1908 season. He went on to win 208 games and lose 149 for the Red Sox and White Sox, including a phenomenal 29–7 in 1919, the year of the Black Sox scandal. A year later, Cicotte and seven of his White Sox teammates were banned from baseball for life for their part in throwing the World Series to Cincinnati.

Ironically, once out of baseball, he returned to Detroit to work for the Ford Motor Company and remained there until he died, 50 years after the Black Sox scandal.

Howard Ehmke: The submarine-baller won 75 games in six seasons with the Tigers and then was traded after the 1922 season to the Red Sox with three other players and $25,000 for infielder Del Pratt and pitcher Rip Collins. In the next seven seasons, he would win 91 more games for the Red Sox and Athletics, while Collins won 44 games in five seasons with the Tigers.

Carl Hubbell: He was purchased by the Tigers from Oklahoma City in 1925 and spent three mediocre years pitching in the Tigers’ farm system. The Tigers brought him to spring training in 1928, but manager Ty Cobb didn’t like what he saw in Hubbell and forbade him to throw his screwball. It would later become his signature pitch.

The Tigers outrighted Hubbell to Beaumont in the Texas League, where a scout for the New York Giants spotted him and urged Giants manager John McGraw to purchase him.

With the Giants, Hubbell won 253 games; won more than 20 games for five consecutive seasons; twice was voted National League MVP; earned everlasting fame by striking out in succession future Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin in the 1934 All-Star Game; and was elected to the Hall of Fame.

Billy Pierce: Signed as an amateur free agent in 1945, he pitched in 27 games for the Tigers and then was traded to the Chicago White Sox in 1948 with $10,000 for catcher Aaron Robinson, who played in 253 games for the Tigers over two and a half seasons. In 16 seasons with the White Sox and Giants, Pierce won 208 games.

John Smoltz: Selected in the 22nd round in the June 1985 free-agent draft, he never pitched for the Tigers. He was traded on August 12, 1987, to the Atlanta Braves for veteran Doyle Alexander.

Alexander was 9–0 for the Tigers down the stretch in 1987 and helped them win a division title, but three years later, he was out of baseball. Meanwhile, Smoltz completed his 21st major league season in 2009. Moving from a starting pitcher to a closer and back again, he had won 210 games, saved 154 games, and struck out more than 3,000 batters.

The Tigers were charter members of the American League in 1901, joining teams from Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland, and Milwaukee to form the junior circuit as a rival to the established National League. Managed by George Stallings, who would later gain fame as manager of the New York Highlanders and the 1914 Miracle Braves, Detroit played its first game on April 25, 1901, against Milwaukee. In a portent of the style of play that would become a franchise trademark, the Tigers entered the bottom of the ninth trailing 13–4 and staged an unlikely 10-run rally to pull out a stunning 14–13 victory that delighted the crowd of almost 12,000 in Detroit’s 6,000-seat Bennett