Mickey Lolich, a hard-throwing left-hander whose three complete-game victories over the St. Louis Cardinals propelled the Detroit Tigers to the 1968 World Series championship, earning him honors as the Series’ most valuable player, died on Wednesday in Sterling Heights, Mich. He was 85.
His death, in an assisted living facility, was confirmed by his wife, Joyce Lolich.
Pitching in the major leagues for 16 seasons, mostly with the Tigers, Lolich won 217 games and struck out 2,832 batters, posting more than 200 strikeouts in a single season seven times.
He hardly evoked the ideal athletic frame: He was 6-foot-1 and about 220 pounds, by his own account. But his durable left arm was of far more consequence than his paunch.
The Tigers finished 12 games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles as they won the 1968 American League pennant, led by the right-hander Denny McLain, who won 31 games and lost only 6 in becoming the first pitcher to reach the 30-game milestone in 34 years, a feat that hasn’t been matched since. Lolich, meanwhile, compiled a laudable 17-9 record.
McClain was bested by the future Hall of Famer Bob Gibson in the World Series opener, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Despite battling a groin infection that had developed overnight, Lolich pitched the Tigers to an 8-1 victory in Game 2 and hit the only home run of his career, a drive down the left-field line off the Cardinal starter, Nelson Briles.
The Tigers lost the next two games at home and were facing elimination when Lolich took the mound again, once more against Briles, but this time at Tiger Stadium. Lolich yielded three runs in the first inning, but the Tigers managed to rally for a 5-3 victory.
They won again in Game 6, in St. Louis, behind solid pitching by McLain and a 10-run third inning.
The durable Lolich was called on again for Game 7, when he faced Gibson.
With the game scoreless in the seventh inning, the Tiger outfielder Jim Northrup connected on a liner over the head of Curt Flood, the Cardinals’ center fielder, for a two-run, two-out triple. Detroit went on to a 4-1 victory, giving the Tigers their first World Series championship since they defeated the Chicago Cubs in seven games in 1945.
Fifty years later, Lolich told The Portland Tribune in Oregon that he had felt “slightly tired” going into Game 7, “but when my arm was tired, my sinking fastball sank more than it normally did.”
With that final out — a foul pop-up by Tim McCarver of the Cardinals that spurred Tiger catcher Bill Freehan to leap into Lolich’s arms — Lolich became the only left-handed pitcher in American League history to win three complete games in a World Series.
Winning the M.V.P. award was particularly sweet for him, after seeing his 17-win regular season overshadowed by an even more dazzling one by McLain, that year’s Cy Young Award winner and the American League’s Most Valuable Player.
“It was always somebody else,” Lolich told The Detroit Free Press in 2018, “but my day had finally come.”
Michael Stephen Lolich was born on Sept. 12, 1940, in Portland, Ore., to Steve and Margarite (Greblo) Lolich. His father worked for the city’s parks department.
When he was 10, his father “volunteered me to play right field to fill out a game with kids 13 to 15, and the pitcher was getting bombed,” Lolich told The New York Times in December 1975, soon after the Tigers traded him to the Mets.
“I told somebody, ‘I could do as good as that,’” he added, “and the coach overheard me and put me out there to shut me up. Except that I blew the ball right by them. That’s when I knew I had a good arm.”
Lolich was signed by the Tigers to pitch in their minor league system in 1958, having been a star for his high school team. In 1962, when the Tigers lent him to the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League, he was tutored by Gerry Staley, the team’s pitching coach and a longtime major league pitcher.
“He asked if I’d give him 10 days to let him try and turn me into a pitcher,” Lolich told Tim Wendel for his 2012 book “Summer of ’68.” “All I was then was a thrower, really. I’d stand out there and throw it as hard as I could.”
Staley taught Lolich how to get his fastball to sink and to concentrate on control, keeping the ball low and on the outside corner rather than simply trying to blow every pitch past the batter.
“Gerry Staley changed my whole life,” Lolich recalled. “It’s as simple as that.”
Lolich debuted for the Tigers in 1963 and established himself as a frontline starter in 1964 when he won 18 games and lost 9.
In the summer of 1967, Detroit was rocked by one of the worst urban riots of the decade. Lolich, a sergeant in the Michigan Air National Guard, missed about two weeks of the season when the Guard was activated to help restore order.
But he finished the season with a 14-13 record, joining Earl Wilson, who won 22 games, McLain and Joe Sparma in a rotation that kept the Tigers in pennant contention until the season’s last day, when they finished in a tie with the Minnesota Twins for second place, one game behind the Boston Red Sox.
Lolich went 25-14 in 1971, when he threw 29 complete games and struck out 308 batters, and he was 22-14 in 1972. He threw more than 300 innings every season from 1971 to 1974. Although most pitchers used ice on their pitching arm to ward off soreness, Lolich applied extremely hot water and worked hard at stretching.
He was dealt to the Mets after the 1975 season in a multiplayer deal that brought Rusty Staub to Detroit. He was 8-13 with the Mets in 1976 and briefly retired after that season, but he returned to pitch for the San Diego Padres in 1978 and 1979.
He finished his career with a record of 217-191 and was a three-time All-Star.
Lolich is survived by his wife; three daughters, Kimberly Stout, Stacy Lolich-Ellenbrook and Jody Lolich; and three grandchildren.
Lolich and his wife owned and operated a doughnut and pastry shop in Lake Orion, Mich., near Detroit, for many years, a challenging profession for a less-than-form-fitting sort like him.
But he defended himself in the face of wisecracks about his weight.
“Throughout my 16 years in the major leagues, whenever things weren’t going right, people always looked for reasons,” he told The Times in 1989. “For some, it was ‘Maybe they’re staying out too late at night,’ ‘Maybe too many outside interests,’ ‘Maybe their head’s not screwed on right.’ For me, it was ‘He’s too fat.’
“But when I was pitching good,” he added, “they’d say, ‘He’s strong as a bull.’”
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
The post Mickey Lolich, Hero of the 1968 World Series, Dies at 85 appeared first on New York Times.
