Torey Lovullo
Jose Bautista
Mick Kelleher almost ended his major league playing career
as a Tiger. He started his major league
career in 1972 with the Cardinals and was the stereotypical weak hitting
shortstop. In his first four seasons in
the majors he was a .160 hitter for the Cards and Houston Astros. He had a total of 4 doubles and 1 triple in
181 plate appearances with 5 RBI’s in that time frame. He was then traded to the Chicago Cubs where
for the next 5 seasons he had possibly his best time in the majors. He hit .226 and drove in 53 of his career 65
RBI’s. He was the Cubs starting
shortstop his first year and then was a utility infielder after that. The Tigers purchased Mick just prior to the
1981 season. The Tiger media guide
talked about how Mick had 4 hits in his first 5 games as a Tiger. That was considered a highlight. If you put that with the 16 plate appearances
you get a .267 batting average. Mick
played 61 games for the Tiges in 1981 and hit .221 with 4 doubles and 6 RBI’s. He returned to the Tigers for 1982 but only
appeared in 2 games before he was sold to the California Angels. In those two games he made 1 plate appearance
and did not get a hit. For his career he
was a .213 hitter with an above average glove and range. He never did hit a homer in 11 seasons in the
majors. In 2014 he is the Yankees infield
coach.
Fred Scherman came out of the
Ohio State University where the lefty spent one year before becoming a pro with
the Minnesota Twins organization in 1964.
But the Tigers claimed him less than a year later. He paid his dues in the minors until 1969 when
he got into a total of 4 games for the Tiges that were fairly spread out. In April he made his major league debut and
did well with one exception. He got his
first batter, Joe LaHoud to ground out.
Then he got Mike Andres to fly out.
Then he gave up a homer to Carl Yastrzemski. He did end the inning getting Tony Conigliaro
to fly out. He pitched one more innint
giving up a triple to Dalton Jones but he did not score and Fred Did get George
Scott to ground out and K’d Rico Petrocelli.
It was about two weeks later when he got in his next game. There he gave up another homer to Harmon
Killebrew in his only inning pitched. It
would be months before he got in another game and in that one he came in to
pitch the top of the 13th inning against the Oakland Athletics in a
3-3 tie with two outs. He faced Terry
Francona and got Francona to ground out to end the inning. In the Tiges half of the inning Jim Northrup
hit a homer with two outs to win the game and give Fred his first win in the
majors by facing only one batter. A
couple of weeks later Fred pitched his last game of season. 4 games, 4 innings pitched, a 6.75 ERA and 1
win. In 1970 Fred started to come into
his own. He appeared in 48 games and had
a 3.23 ERA as strictly a bull pen guy.
In 1971 Fred had a great season.
He was in 69 games and recorded 20 saves, third in the league. He was 11-6 and had his best ERA of
2.71. He even made one start and made it
count. In a game between the division
leading Baltimore Orioles and the second place Tigers he pitched a complete
game and beat the Orioles 5-3 on 6 hits.
He was voted King Tiger of the Year for the season. He came back in 1972 and was the lefty closer
with 12 saves for the Tigers pennant winning team along with the righty closer
Chuck Seelbach who had 14. Fred was 7-3
in with a 3.64 ERA in 57 games. The pair
accounted for over 200 innings pitched and 16 wins while also posting a
combined 26 saves. In 1973 John Hiller
came into his own and Fred only had 1 save.
Fred posted a 4.23 ERA where John Hiller had a phenomenal 1.44 ERA. During that season Fed was caught up in a
kind of bizarre situation. Tiger skipper
Billy Martin was complaining that opposing pitcher Gaylord Perry was throwing a
spit ball. The umps did not seem to care
about Billy’s complaints. So Billy
ordered Fred to throw a spit ball. As
Fred complied as he said “I didn't know how to throw a spitball so I just spit on it and
threw it.” Three days late Billy was fired and at the end
of the season the Tigers sent Fred to the Houston Astros with some cash for Jim
Ray and Gary Sutherland. Fred was an
average bull pen pitcher on an average Astros team which was 81-81. In 1975, after his ERA grew from 4.11 the
year before to 4.96 the Astros sold Fred to the Montreal Expos. He lasted one year and one month with the
Expos and was better than he had been at Houston. He was 6-5 with a 4.02 ERA and 1 save. But he was released half way through the 1976
season with Montreal.
Larry Sherry
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