Actually, this was a rare Saturday night home game that WDIV was televising. I remember it vividly because the game was played on my birthday. No more than ten Tiger home games per year were typically shown by WDIV in the 1980s (with most of them being shown on Sunday afternoons), so this was certainly a treat!
George Kell was one of the best announcers ever. He learned his trade from Ernie Harwell wehn Ernie was in Baltimore and Kell was winding down his career on the field. When Harwell came to Detroit in 1960, he asked for Kell to be his radio partner. Us oldsters will always remember that combination in the early 60s...what a great broadcast team! He could have been the Tiger Manager in 1967 after the 1966 deaths of manager Charlie Dressen and Bob Swift. He did not want to be away from his family and his thriving car dealership in Arkansas. RIP George and Al,,,we Tiger fans will always remember.
WOW...just hit me after 3 minutes into this video that I was at this game with my Dad- Walt Terrell threw a 2 hit shutout complete game. I remember watching him in warm ups thinking he had some extra pop to his fastball, oddly enough he struck nobody out. He was a great sinkerballer. I also remember a foul ball going 5 feet over our heads in the upper level behind 3rd base- Thanks for the memories!
I lived in Michigan as a kid in the 70s, and during the 80's I'd spend summers with my dad in Michigan. We always watched all the Tigers games on TV or listened on the radio. This brings back such great memories.
This was the year that Lou Whitaker was elected to the All Star team, and he forgot to bring his equipment and uniform with him to Minneapolis. He ended up having to buy a blank Tigers jersey and cap from a vendor at the Metrodome and having a #1 drawn on the back of the jersey.
I remember this game really well and I can't believe I landed on it here. I was only 9 years old so bedtime for me was around 9:30 or the end of the 6th inning....which ever came 1st back then. LOL All the windows in the house were open so since my bedroom was close to the room my Dad was watching this I could still hear it. Tom Brookens made the catch at 1:18:19 just about the time I laid down in bed and I'll never forget George Kell yelling out "OHHHHH! What a Play! I don't believe it!"
I loved this old ball park. A beautiful place with the smells of a hundred years of spilt beer and steamed hot dogs. You're so close to the players on the field you could talk to the guy in the on deck circle. The old parks had atmospheres you just can't replicate.
Amen. Great ballpark. Every bad seat created by the big posts were offset by the many thousands of great seats those posts' close decking created. And the velvet-deep shadows created by the decking made the action all the more vivid by contrast. Such a waste to have abandoned it....
At this time we thought the Tigers were still in the AL East race. There were a lot of good games between these teams in the 1980s. I was watching this one and had some recall with it. I'm 99.5% sure I saw this one live, back in the day. Of course, back then we watched all the live TV games.
This takes me right back to Michigan summers as a kid again. Making ice cream on the back porch, with the Tigers on the TV inside. I only wonder what we did when we had to choose between the Tigers and Hee Haw.
Thanks for posting this. I never got to see the game. I lived in Seattle and the only game of this series I got to see was the game the next day on "Blue Jays Baseball" which was on BCTV in Vancouver.
They sure had a lot of brilliant trivia experts send in cards to Al and George. I haven't seen one of these games where anyone got the answer and they aren't particularly tricky.
