George CantorCritiques

It was too much a straight news like account. There wasn't enough stories about behind the scenes, which is why I read these books.

The year 1968 was a turbulent one in the U.S. It was a year of assassination, a year of violent demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and yet another year of war in Vietnam. Yet it was also one of the best years of my life, the year I married my true love, the year I moved to a new town and started a new job where I would stay for the rest of my career and the year my team, the Detroit Tigers, won the World Series.

So there was no way, almost 49 years later, I was not going to enjoy reading "The Tigers of '68: Baseball's Last Real Champions" by George Cantor. What I didn't expect was how terrific this book, published in 1997 and reprinted in 2014, would be. In just 230 pages of brilliant prose, Cantor covers not just a great team but also those turbulent times in which the Tigers roared.

Race riots in Detroit in 1967 left the once-great city in ruins. Much of the white population fled to the suburbs. It has been said that the 1968 Tigers saved the city, but that is not quite true, for a half century later Detroit has still not recovered. But they certainly helped, uniting fans, both black and white, at least for those few months.

Cantor did not spend much of his journalistic career as a baseball writer, but he did cover the Tigers for the Detroit Free Press (after Brent Musberger declined the job) in 1968. But then a strike kept the Detroit papers closed for much of the summer, and it took awhile for enthusiasm for the team to build and attendance to pick up.

The author's coverage takes readers from spring training that year to the seventh game of the World Series, where Mickey Lolich bested Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals. Yet he also seeks out many of the players from that team, including Lolich, Earl Wilson, Willie Horton, Bill Freehan, Gates Brown, Al Kaline and John Hiller, many of whom in the mid-'90s still lived in the Detroit area, and asked them to reflect on that team and their lives after baseball. These interviews alone make the book worth reading.

So what is the meaning of Cantor's subtitle, "Baseball's Last Real Champions"? Mostly it is a commentary on the fact that Major League Baseball went to a playoff system in 1969, meaning that a team now doesn't necessarily have to have the best record in its league to get into the Series. Yet so much else has changed with baseball since 1968, including salaries, free agency, the designated hitter and the way pitchers are used. In 1968 Tiger pitchers had 59 complete games, including 28 by Denny McClain, who won a mind-boggling 31 games. Last year the pitching staff had just three complete games.

Furthermore, all the World Series games were still played during the day that year, and the seventh game took just two hours and seven minutes. Today Series games can take twice that long and are all played at night, meaning that many fans, especially children, never get to watch the ninth innings of most games.

To love this book, it helps to have been a Tiger fan in 1968, but it certainly isn't necessary.

This book belongs to a genre I call "sports nostalgia" (if there is not such a genre, there should be). Books in this genre turn the spotlight on important events or personalities in a bygone era, allowing the reader the enjoyment of learning about, or remembering, past glories and--if done well-sharing details about the events that might be new. I am a longtime Tigers fan and remember this World Series vividly, as well as the Detroit Riots and the atmosphere of that time. So I am in the audience most likely to enjoy this lively and informal retelling. However I think anyone interested in baseball would have a good time with this. The author packs the narrative with amusing anecdotes about the major personalities and brings us up to date on what they are doing now. Some of the book's appeal is the almost poignant contrast between major league baseball as it was then and as it is now. No stratospheric salaries, television had not yet completely taken over the game, the players' private lives were mostly private, and so on. One of baseball's enduring appeals is its emphasis on the history of the sport. This book is a great addition to that record.

Loved it! I was just a kid and didn't remember all the details or how the events played out. I remember listening to game 7 of the 1968 World Series on Armed Forces Radio in England and cheering wildly when the Tigers won. I do wish that the reprint had a where are they now chapter or an epilogue from 1996 to present day do tell us about the lives of those '68 Tigers.

I missed out on the 1968 team. I grew up with the Tigers teams of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The 1968 team was the benchmark for comparison. I knew most of the names prior to reading this book, but George Cantor made the personalities and season come alive. What an amazing season. I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to any sports fan.

Every time I fill out a scorecard at the ballpark, I am always transported to my youth, sitting next to my Dad in the upper deck bleachers of Tiger Stadium learning to keep score, getting sick on popcorn and hoping a ball might make its way to my little baseball glove. For years, I was convinced alkaline batteries were named after the great outfielder, Al Kaline. No question I had to get mitts on George Cantor's 1997 THE TIGERS OF '68 when it came out in reissue. It is quoted authoritatively in the SABRE biography project. For students of the game, Tiger fan or not, this a must have.

For some, this will be evocative of old time baseball's last hurrah -- the last year before expansion, the last year of true pennant races before division playoffs took over, World Series games played in early October and early enough for children to watch, pitchers pitching complete games and games completed in about two hours. Days before bloated salaries, bloated egos and bloated game times. Days when you could head up to the Lindell AC after a game and swig beers with Norm Cash and Willie Horton. In clear economical prose, Cantor recounts the Detroit Tigers' trek to the World Series, taking on defending champs, the St. Louis Cardinals. Interspersed throughout are where-are-they-now (1997-style) character sketches of the greats: Lolich, Kaline, Wilson, McLain, Freehan, Stanley, Northrup, Horton and others.

I loved all the chatty insider talk. Like when Jim Northrup nearly killed Denny McLain after catching him cheating at cards. Mickey Lolich serving in the National Guard during the riots in the city. Bob Gibson's take on McLain tossing a gimme pitch to Mantle to boost his career HR totals. Who did (and didn't) attend Jim Campbell's funeral. Or Norm Cash, on second base at the start of a rain delay, taking third base when play resumed:

"What are you doing over there?" he was asked by the umpire.
"I stole third," he replied.
"When did that happen?" asked the ump, earnestly puzzled.
"During the rain."

A fun read especially over a Memorial Day weekend with the game on the radio in the background.½

The true joy of "the Tigers of ‘68” is not in reliving a memorable World Series against a Cardinals team loaded with future hall-of-famers, but on what the 1968 team meant to a city recovering from the divisive and devastating riots of the year before. Cantor doesn’t just provide a journalistic recounting of the 1968 series. Yes, the history and baseball-discussions are there, but the real heart of the book is when Cantor dives into the on-field and off-field lives of the Tigers players. This approach saves the book from being just another nostalgic re-hashing of a championship team – it brings America in the 1960’s to life and allows the reader to know the players and coaches real, three-dimensional people.

“Tigers” is not only a must-read for baseball fans (especially Tigers fans), but also a funny and stirring story for readers who enjoy history, well-developed characters, and funny stories. Highly recommended for those readers who enjoyed "The Blind Side" and similar stories.½

This is a riveting, totally enjoyable book from start to finish. Anyone who only knows the baseball of today may be amazed that there was a time when, on one of the best teams in baseball, one of their star pitchers had to miss two weeks of the season for National Guard Duty. Or that when he retired, he ran a donut shop. But that is the story of Mickey Lolich, who after an inconsistent season that saw him relegated to the bullpen for a spell, became the hero of the World Series, winning 3 games, the last against the immortal and seemingly unbeatable Bob Gibson. Gibson had led the universe in ERA that year, 1.12! And he had beaten the Tigers twice in the Series already, breaking the World Series strikeout record in Game 1. By the 7th game, he was riding a 7 game World Series winning streak--but it was Lolich who emerged as the Series Most Valuable Player in a 4-1 Tigers victory, only the third time in Series history a team down 3 games to 1 had come back to win. (Lolich also hit his only career home run in the Series and started the Tigers game-winning 7th inning rally in Game 5 with a single.)

The other players are just as interesting, and author Cantor does a magnificent job of weaving in their up-to-date life stories (as of 1997, when this book was published) with their magic year of 1968. He also provides the setting--Detroit, a city trying to recover from the riots of a year before in which over 40 people died and whole blocks were burned. For a moment, the Tigers united the troubled town, but it was a very temporary respite, as Cantor acknowledges. In 1997, perhaps he couldn't have imagined that things could get even worse for Detroit.

Things would get even worse than that for Denny McLain, the Major Leagues' last 30 game winner, who went 31-6 for the Tigers that year, winning the first of two consecutive Cy Young Awards. McLain, who combined pitching with organ playing (good enough to have a Las Vegas act), flying (i.e., in a plane), would end up traded to the hopeless Washington Senators, lose 22 games in a season, retire shortly thereafter, and end up in prison more than once.

I could go on, but Cantor tells these stories better than I do, and his book deserves your full attention. It is one of the best sports books I have ever read--exhilarating, but like most nostalgia, a bit sad as well. Don't miss it.

The year was 1968 and it had been 23 seasons since the Detroit Tigers had won a World Series championship. Just the year before, with their city permenantly scarred by riots and racial unrest, the team crumbled in the final days of the pennant race. Now, with a roster comprised of soon-to-be household names like McLain, Lolich, Freehan, Brown, Horton, and Stanley, the Tigers emerged from spring training primed to take what should have been theirs in 1967 - the American League Pennant. In a tumultuous year that found the nation reeling from assassinations, racial tension, political turmoil, and an unpopular foreign war, many Americans turned to the comforting constant of baseball. The Tigers, while perhaps not consciously aware of how much their fans depended upon them for distraction, performed incredible feats of gamesmanship and tenacity to earn their way to a 1968 World Series match-up with the defending champions - the St. Louis Cardinals.

The late George Cantor, a Detroit sportswriting legend in his own right, was a young reporter for the Detroit Free Press during that magical season and recounts his inside knowledge of the team and events in "The Tigers of '68: Baseball's Last Real Champions". Cantor augments the expected stats and on-field recaps with behind-the-scenes anecdotes and player interviews for an edge-of-the-seat journey from spring training to the final out of Game 7 in St. Louis. Clubhouse personalities, tense moments on and off the field, and the revered status fans have bestowed upon the Boys from Syracuse come to life through Cantor's words.

More than just a recap of a championship season, Cantor's work is an essential read for Tigers fans both old enough to remember the magic of '68 first-hand and young enough to know the all of the details from their father's and grandfather's stories. Originally published in 1997, the player interviews and Cantor's musing on the state of baseball are noticeably dated but fail to detract from an outstanding story of an improbable season.

Reading a book about major league baseball shouldn't be this much FUN, but it was, hence the five gleaming stars awarded here. George Cantor was for decades something of a sports writing legend in Detroit, an extremely talented writer, and this heartfelt telling of the story of THE TIGERS OF '68 shows you why.

The book was first published in 1997. I'm not sure why it was just reprinted, perhaps to cash in on the Detroit Tigers' recent resurgence in Major League Baseball. But Cantor's story is about a very different, almost magical time in baseball - a time when a too-modest Al Kaline turned down a $100,000 salary, saying it was too much. Today, in light of the multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts being paid to sports superstars (and Kaline WAS a superstar), this is simply unthinkable. Cantor himself points out that by the 1980s "individual players were making more money than the entire payroll of the American League in the 1960s." Indeed.
Because in the 60s, the main thing was team loyalty and love of the game, and guys like Al Kaline and Mickey Mantle embodied that principle.

I will be honest and tell you that I was not a rabid sports fan as a kid, but baseball in the summer was a must, whether you were good at it or not. So yeah, I played, but not all that well. But growing up in rural Michigan in the 50s, Tiger Baseball games were as much a part of summer as haying and picking pickles. You could walk for blocks on a summer afternoon and never miss an inning, because Van Patrick's (later Ernie Harwell's) play-by-play radio commentary came wafting out of every open window. And Al Kaline was ... well, he was special. So reading about him and his Tiger teammates the year they won it all, in 1968, was just so damn much fun, and so fascinating. Five stars - hell, TEN!

Remembering and reading about that long ago June day in Cleveland when Northrup hit two grand slams in the same game (and then another one five days later) just gave me goose bumps. I hadn't known, or remembered, that Northrup grew up in little St. Louis, Michigan, or that he attended Alma college. And details like this made the book even better. Another moving moment was pitcher Earl Wilson, years later, talking about that season -

"But almost every day someone comes up to me and wants to talk about that season ... I get grown men who come up to me with a baseball or a scorecard I had signed for them back then, and they tell me how much it meant to them. It's like I'm revered. Man, I get chills. What did I do? All I did was play a game."

All the principle players are in here: Cash, Freehan, Stanley, McAuliffe, Lolich, Kaline, and of course, Denny McLain. Who most fans realized was an egotistical jerk (his teammates didn't even like him), but he did have that magical 31-win season, something that's never been replicated. And it was in a time when pitchers usually finished their own games - arms of iron. And pitchers took their own at-bats too, no designated hitters. So reading about clutch hits and even home runs by guys like Earl Wilson (a good hitter) and Mickey Lolich (NOT) made this tale just that much more magical.

Sadly, George Cantor died in 2010, but this book remains, a major part of his legacy. I don't know who decided to reprint THE TIGERS OF '68 this year, but I, for one, am grateful it happened, since I missed the book its first time around. Thank you to Taylor Trade Publishing. And thank you, George Cantor. Highly recommended, especially if you are a Detroit Tigers fan. (Go, TIGERS!)

The Tigers of '68 was entertaining and informative. It followed the individual players both in their pre-Tigers career and in their post-Tigers lives. It related the events of many of the games played that year and it talked about the changes that have happened to baseball, Detroit and the nation since '68.

For '68 was the end of an era, call it 'real baseball' if you wish. It was the time before divisional playoffs, huge salaries, the designated hitter and television.

George Cantor was a baseball reporter for the Detroit Free Press in 1968 and he says of the moment when the Tigers won the World Series, "...it took all the journalistic restraint I had in my body to keep from jumping up and screaming...". The book is written with that journalistic restraint and you feel slightly removed from the emotion of it all.½