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Mickey Lolich, the last Major League Baseball pitcher to post the remarkable feat of hitting three complete game victories for the Detroit Tigers in the 1968 World Series, died Wednesday. He was 85.
The Tigers said Lolich’s wife died after a short stay in hospice care. The exact cause of death has not been revealed.
Denny McClain He was the star of Detroit’s pitching staff in 1968, winning 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 and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Bill Freehan took off the catcher’s mask and caught a foul popup by Tim McCarver for the final out. Lolich jumped into Freehan’s arms — an iconic image of Detroit’s championship season.
Lolich told the Detroit Free Press in 2018, “It was always somebody else, but my day finally came.
He ranks 23rd in career strikeouts with 2,832, ahead of most other Hall of Famers, unlike Lolich, and fifth among all lefties, according to baseball-reference.com.
Lolich He was an unlikely hero in 1968. When the World Series team met again, manager Mayo Smith recalled how he sent him to the bullpen for much of August. He returned to the Tigers in the first round and was 6-1 in the final weeks.
“I’ve had a few problems, but I’ve been a rookie since 1964,” said Lolich, who was frustrated by the bullpen movement. I remember saying, “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’m back in the World Series with a vengeance,” he said.
Lolich pitched a Game 7 after two days off. As series MVP, he thought he would get a Corvette from General Motors, but had to settle for the Dodge Charger GT because Chrysler had a 2016 model year. He was a sponsor in 1968.
“Nothing against the Chargers, nothing,” Lolich said in his book, “Joy in Tigertown.” “Because I already had two in the driveway.”
Since Lolich, only Arizona’s Randy Johnson has won three games in the World Series in 2001, though Johnson pitched about 10 innings and in Game 7 was a reliever, not a starter.
Lolich had a 220-192 record in a 16-year career with Detroit, including all but three postseason appearances. In the year After playing for the New York Mets in 1976, he left baseball and returned with San Diego in 1978-79.
The left-hander was 25-14 in 1971, striking out 308 batters over 376 innings and finishing second in AL Cy Young Award voting. In 1972, he posted a 22-14 record and 250 strikeouts.
In a statement, the Tigers expressed their condolences to the Lolich family and said his legacy will be “forever cherished.”
After his baseball career, Lolich, a native of Portland, Oregon, operated a donut business in suburban Detroit for 18 years.
“I doubt there’s another ballplayer who could go from a diamond to a doughnut. But I did,” he wrote in his book.