Willie Horton, page 14
We had beaten Gibson in the clinching game. He had struck out 35 Tigers in 27 innings and posted a 1.67 ERA in that series. But when everything was at stake, found a way to beat him. It made the title sweeter that we beat Gibson to earn it.
“We’re champions of the world!” Earl Wilson kept saying over and over in the clubhouse. “We are champions of the world!”
It’s difficult to describe the feelings you have after winning a championship. We were like a family and we celebrated like a family. We were all thrilled for Kaline, who had played for the Tigers since 1953, and had finally won it all. Despite the criticism Mayo took for reconfiguring our regular lineup for Al, he hit .379 in the Series, with 11 hits in 29 at-bats, including two doubles and two home runs. He also had eight RBIs. Only Northrup matched Al’s RBIs.
Meanwhile, Stanley performed extremely well at shortstop—so well that people were saying he should be moved there permanently. He committed a couple of errors, but there wasn’t a moment when anyone on the team believed the move was risky. I was very proud that I batted .304 in the Series, with a double, triple, and home run, plus five walks. Through the years, I’d learned to take what the pitcher gave me. And Gator had taught me to respect those hitting behind me. Those walks seemed like base hits to me in the World Series.
And with an ERA of 1.67 and three victories against the Cardinals, Mickey Lolich deserved the MVP—and he got it.
The clubhouse was raucous as we celebrated the championship. Tigers owner John Fetzer, a buttoned-down executive, was in the room taking swigs out of Stanley’s bottle of champagne, like he was one of the players. McLain had stolen the microphone from NBC analyst Joe Garagiola and was trying to interview him. Broadcaster George Kell, an ex-Tiger himself, was celebrating so much you would’ve thought he was still with the team. Sportswriters say they don’t care which team wins, but we were with those guys every day and we could see on their faces that they cared. The late Detroit Free Press and Detroit News columnist Joe Falls certainly cared. He was Mickey Stanley’s neighbor and he congratulated everyone after the game. He told it “like it was” in his column every day, but he was a caring man. He interviewed me 30 to 40 minutes after the game, and my feet still weren’t back on the ground.
“I looked over at the top of the left-field wall in the seventh inning, and I saw Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” I said to Falls. “Christmas came early! Man, oh, man. I’ve never been this happy in my life. Never. Never. Never.”
That night, Tigers fans flocked to Detroit Metro Airport to greet us when we got home from St. Louis. But the authorities were so concerned about the security risk that we were re-routed to Willow Run Airport near Ypsilanti. Over the next few weeks, the city overflowed with love for the Tigers. Instead of killing each other like they’d done the previous summer in the riots, people were hugging each other. Black and White, blue-collar workers and white-collar workers—they all came together in one city-wide celebration. The newspapers reported that downtown Detroit had the feel of Mardi Gras when we won the championship.
In the Tiger Club at Comerica Park today there’s a quote of mine on the wall. It says, “I believe the ’68 Tigers were put here by God to heal this city.”
Though I said that 54 years ago, I still believe that passionately today. My spirituality just tells me that there was a connection. God knew the city of Detroit needed something to restore some harmony to our neighborhoods, and the 1968 Tigers did the work for Him.
Years later, 1968 Tigers relief pitcher Jon Warden was eating in a Cincinnati restaurant wearing a Detroit Tigers cap. He was approached by an elderly man who asked Jon if he was from Detroit. Jon’s wife coaxed him into telling the guy that he had actually pitched for the 1968 championship team.
The guy’s eyes lit up and he shook Jon’s hand. “Thanks for saving our city,” he told Jon. “Thanks for saving our city.”
12. Time to Take a Stand
I admired the Kennedys for their civil rights views, and I campaigned with presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey in 1968. I protested at the infamous Polk Theatre in Lakeland, Florida, because it refused to admit Black people. That actually amused me because when I first joined the Tigers, a young White man who worked around the clubhouse (coincidentally named “Gator”) once took me to the Polk after we’d gone fishing. No one said a word when I bought a ticket.
When Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, it certainly made every Black person in America realize that we hadn’t changed enough. And the shooting death of Robert Kennedy was another terrible reminder later that spring. In Detroit, we had gone through the riots in 1967 and the following year, the Tigers had helped heal the city by winning the World Series.
But by 1969, it started to bother me that I was the only starting Black position player on the team. Every other team in the American League had at least two minority starters—even the Red Sox, who were the last team to integrate. Reggie Smith was in the Boston outfield, and George Scott was at first base. The Baltimore Orioles had four Black players out of their starting eight. And the National League was even more integrated, with the Atlanta Braves using six or seven minority players in some games.
Gates Brown had only 14 at-bats in the first month of the ’69 season. And starting pitcher Earl Wilson was the only other Black player on the team.
My mother and father had taught me not to think in racial terms, to view people for what they stood for rather than for the color of their skin. But it began to gnaw at me that Detroit, a city with a large Black population, had only three Black players on the team. There were certainly Black players in the organization—particularly Les Cain, Wayne Redmond, and Ike Brown—who were capable of playing in the big leagues.
Redmond was a talented player with some pop in his bat. He’d hit 26 home runs for Montgomery in the Class AA Southern League in 1968, and showed plenty of promise. I never thought he received a true opportunity to make the big leagues. Redmond was a minister, and back then I remember it was suggested that his religion held him back. But would they have said that if he were White?
Just the mere fact that we have to wonder whether race held him back says to me that even by 1969 we hadn’t come far enough yet.
To be honest, I never felt a hint of racism with my Tigers teammates. We were a family, and I believed that most of those guys would’ve done anything for me, and I would have done anything for them. Gates Brown, Earl Wilson, and I were in the middle of every social event, and none of us ever felt out of place for a minute in our clubhouse or when we were with the guys. General manager Jim Campbell was like a second father to me, and I certainly didn’t view him as a racist. But certainly there was a sentiment in baseball, specifically among the Black players, that in some organizations a Black player had to be much better than a White player to make the team. Ties always went to the White player.
Back when I joined The Tigers, there was an outfielder in our system named Jesse Queen. He was the best hitter I’d ever seen. He was a few years older than I was, and I thought he was a better ballplayer than I was. I never understood why he didn’t make it to the big leagues.
“You just pay attention to what you’re doing,” my dad told me, “and never mind him. There must be a reason why he hasn’t made it.”
Was it the color of his skin? I didn’t know. Just like I didn’t know why the Tigers still didn’t have many Black players. Near the one-year anniversary of Dr. King’s death in April of 1969, those discrimination issues began to dance in my mind. Just six months before this, African Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos won the gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the 200-meter run at the Mexico City Olympics. At the awards ceremony, they bowed their heads and gave the Black Power salute during the national anthem, raising their fists in the air to protest racism in America. Black athletes all over were feeling that more needed to be done. I know I began to feel that way.
By mid-May 1969, I was in a 2-for-24 slump and fans were booing me. All my thoughts, issues, frustrations, and convictions boiled over on May 15, 1969, when I walked out on the Tigers in the middle of a game against the Chicago White Sox at Tiger Stadium. Apparently, in the sixth inning, after left-handed sinkerball specialist Tommy John struck me out for the second time, I dropped my bat in the middle of the infield and walked slowly to my position in left field.
When the White Sox had been retired, I went through the dugout straight to the clubhouse, showered, and left the ballpark. Reportedly, Norm Cash and Gates Brown tried to convince me to stay, but I wasn’t listening to whatever they had to say.
The reason I say “apparently” is because I really don’t remember doing any of that. In fact, a day after it happened, I still didn’t remember doing it. It was front-page news in Detroit when I also didn’t show up for the team flight to Minneapolis the next day. Manager Mayo Smith suspended me $340 per day, based on my salary of $60,000.
Although Detroit had talented sportswriters, no one was able to dig up the true story of my departure because I didn’t tell anyone. Everyone focused on my slump, or whether the boos had simply overwhelmed me. Reporters talked to Cash about how he had handled the boos over the years. Some suggested that I was “oversensitive.”
Channel 4 reporter Al Ackerman had reported that I was unhappy with Tigers management and that I wanted to be traded. When I heard that, tears welled up in my eyes, because I never wanted to be traded—never even thought about being traded. This was my city, and I came up with most of the guys on that team. They were like family to me, and I didn’t want to leave them.
Maybe the boos stunned me a bit because we had just won the World Series seven months before. And clearly I was disappointed in my performance because I wanted to help the team more than I was. I hit .285 in 1968, and when I left the team in May of ’69, my average was .213.
My buddy Gates Brown was quoted as saying, “I don’t think any of us really knew what was going on inside Willie. He seems like a mild, easygoing person, but he keeps things bottled up.”
An article in the Detroit Free Press did suggest there were racial issues bubbling beneath the surface. Managing editor Frank Angelo wrote:
“There is one aspect to this attempt to understand the Horton incident which none of his friends wanted to discuss, but which cannot be overlooked. Willie is a Negro. He’s fully aware of the civil rights fight.
“He is the only Negro who is a Tiger regular outside the pitching staff and being as sensitive as he is, it is also certain that he feels there is even greater pressure on him to succeed.
“The fact that living arrangements at Lakeland were not the best as far as he and other Negroes on the team were concerned undoubtedly triggered other thoughts about his role as an athlete and a Negro.
“Put those personal concerns together with a horrendous batting slump, a desperate desire to win, and general overall sensitiveness, and you have the makings for this phase of the Willie Horton story.”
The mere fact that the story still referred to Blacks as “Negroes” should illustrate that the civil rights fight was still ongoing in 1969.
Although Angelo’s story had the element of truth, he didn’t have the whole story. What Angelo didn’t know was that when I had walked away from the team, I had asked for a meeting with owner John Fetzer and GM Jim Campbell to discuss why there weren’t more Black players on the Tigers’ roster.
The two of them listened and acknowledged my point. No promises were made. “You can’t change things overnight, Willie,” Campbell said. “It takes time.”
I was away from the team for four days. When I returned, I told reporters that there were no racial issues. The Free Press quoted me as saying, “I don’t want any trouble to come out of this.… I believe every man is a man and we can live together. It doesn’t have anything to do with racial issues.”
It was necessary to say that because I’d received some nasty telegrams. This was nothing new to me. Since I arrived in the major leagues, I heard racial slurs raining down from the outfield stands. I had received hate mail and even death threats. One man was actually arrested for making threats against my family. I never wanted it publicized because I was afraid it would just fuel even more trouble. You didn’t want to admit to the hate-mongers that they could get to you, because that would only encourage them.
That’s why I had to say that there weren’t any racial issues connected to my departure in 1969. Some of the mail was so hateful that my first wife, Patricia, fainted because of all of the stress. My son, Darryl, found her lying on the floor one day when he got up to go to school.
When I returned to the lineup in Detroit for the first time, 25,990 fans cheered loudly when I was introduced. I received more applause when I singled in my first at-bat. Mickey Lolich fanned 16 batters to break Paul Foytack’s 13-year-old strikeout record, and we beat California 6–3. Soon the focus was back on the pennant race and not on me.
After talking to Campbell, I felt as if a weight had been removed from my shoulders.
A month later, without any fanfare, a 27-year-old Black infielder named Ike Brown was promoted to the Tigers, and he ended up playing parts of six major league seasons. Before his promotion, Ike had never been given an opportunity to play in the majors, even though he played seven years in the Tigers’ minor league organization.
He could play several different positions, and he was one of the strongest men I’d ever known. You wanted him on your side in a team fight.
“But when we get into a fight,” I told Ike, “keep your glasses on because you can’t see shit without them.”
Ike could talk some trash. He would let the other team know that we came to the field whether it was in a fight or a ball game. He kept everyone on their toes.
I can’t say for sure whether my discussion with Fetzer and Mr. Campbell played a role in the decision to promote Ike. But I certainly know that I made Mr. Campbell think about the situation. It didn’t change overnight, but I could feel a difference.
In August 1970, infielder Kevin Collins joined the team, and he started rooming with the Gator. I think that was the first instance of a Black Tiger and a White Tiger rooming together on the road. In 1972, I started to room with Frank Howard. By then I don’t think anyone gave it a second thought. “Big Daddy” and I were great friends, and he used to help me organize our barbecues in spring training.
As close as we were on that 1968 Tigers team, maybe I should have roomed with Mickey Stanley or Wayne Comer or Jon Warden or one of the other White players. I’m sure it would’ve been accepted, but it never occurred to me that I needed to do that. By 1969, I had started to think it was important that we push away the last traces of racism in the sport.
In my basement at home today is a montage of newspaper stories and pictures about Hank Aaron and his chase of Babe Ruth’s record of 714 home runs. When Aaron was in the midst of that chase in 1973 and 1974, I carried those clippings on every road trip. Everyone in baseball knew what Aaron was going through. The threats he received were undoubtedly scary for his family. But I was proud of Hank, and it made me feel strong to carry those stories.
The Black men who played in the major leagues in the 1950s and early 1960s were pioneers in the truest sense of the word. They blazed trails, cut through barricades, and cleared away debris to make a clear path for Black players who followed them. Maybe they weren’t all great ballplayers, but they were all exceptional men, rich in fortitude and strong of spirit. They had pride in the face of prejudice. And they had the mental toughness and survival skills necessary to play at a time when owners demanded that both uniforms and players be all White. In that era, Black players endured taunts, threats, and isolation, just to be part of a group that acted as if it didn’t want them. They did it because they loved the game—and because they knew that a Black man should have the same right to live his dream as a White man has. These were indeed exceptional men.
By my last full season in Detroit in 1976, there were three Black players getting regular playing time—Ron LeFlore, my good friend Alex Johnson, and me—plus three other minority players in the starting lineup—Panamanian Ben Oglivie, Mexican Aurelio Rodríguez, and Puerto Rican Pedro García.
To this day, I’m glad I made a stand in 1969. It was payment for the debt I owed to Robinson, Doby, Bruton, Wood, and all of the other Black players who put up with the abuse to allow me to wear a major league uniform.
The strength that I received from those Black players wasn’t mine to keep. It was a gift I had to share with others. And after I met with Fetzer and Campbell in May 1969, I felt as if I’d done my part.
13. Beanballs and Billy
For years, left-handed pitcher Rich Hinton assumed I was angry with him for drilling me in the eye socket with a fastball. But despite the beaning, I believed that Hinton actually saved my life.
Hinton was a rookie making his first major league start for the Chicago White Sox on Friday, August 27, 1971, when a heater sailed on him in the bottom of the third inning. He clearly knew he’d uncorked a wild one because he sounded an alarm the instant he released the pitch.
“It got away from me!” he screamed.
It was a night game, but as I stepped into the batter’s box to face Hinton, a bit of twilight still peeked into the ballpark. I never saw the ball clearly, but I recall hearing Hinton’s warning yelp, and I reacted by dipping and turning my head to the left. Had I not reacted to Hinton’s warning, the 85 to 88 mph pitch could’ve struck me right on the temple. When you don’t pick up the ball right away, you’re in serious trouble. Usually I would’ve turned away to the right and fallen back at the same time. That movement also might’ve put the ball on a direct path to my temple. For some reason, I turned left and it struck me in the right eye.
