Clay Rapada played most of his years with the Tigers. He signed as a free agent with the Chicago
Cubs out of Virginia State University in 2002.
He worked his way up the minors including a season and a half with the
Lansing Lugnuts where he made his last professional start in 2003. In 2004 he was a full time reliever for
Lansing. It was a success for him. His ERA dropped about 3 points from a 5.31 to
2.33. IN 2007 the Cubs called up Clay in
June. He was called on in the top of the
8th against the Seattle to face Raul Ibanez with the score 4-3 Cubs,
runners on first and second and 1 out.
He got Raul to line out to right.
Clay never pitched again for the Cubs.
At te end of August he was traded to the Tigers for Craig Monroe. He got in 4 games and the lefty pitched 2 and
a third innings. He did not record a
decision and had an 11.57 ERA. He spent
half of 2008 with the Tiges and got in 25 games. In
his second game of the season he faced the Twins in Detroit. With the Twinkies leading 4-3 in the 8th
Clay was called in and got out Mauer and Morneau to send the inning. The Tigers rallied in the bottom of the 8th
for 3 runs and the lead. Clay got his
first major league win. He got 2 more
wins for the season and was 3-0 with a 4.22 ERA. In 2009 he spent most of the season in Toledo
where he was 4-2 with a 2.76 ERA. He did
get in 3 games for the Tiges but did not record a decision and had a 5.40
ERA. After the season the Tiges sold
Clay to the Texas Rangers. He had spent
three seasons in Detroit and was 3-0 with an even 5.00 ERA. Clay played for the Rangers, Baltimore
Orioles, New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians before his career ended in
2013.
CJ Nitkowski played two stints with the Tigers. He was drafted by the Reds in 1994 out of St.
Johns University in New York. In 1995
the lefty was called up to the Reds and pitched in 9 games starting 7. He was 1-3 with a 6.12 ERA. In July of that same year Randy Smith traded
David Wells for CJ and a player to be named later. The player to be named later was minor
leaguer Dave Tuttle. CJ went into the
Tigers starting rotation as David Wells had been our only lefty starter. CJ started 11 games and was 1-4 with a 7.09
ERA. He started 1996 in Toledo and was
4-6 with a 4.46 ERA. He was up with the
Tigers for the second half of the season and was in the starting rotation going
2-3 with a 8.08 ERA. 1996 was also the
beginning of the Randy Smith era in Detroit.
This was when we traded for catchers all the time with San Diego and
Houston. CJ was one of the guys who
went back and forth with Houston and a catcher.
FCJ was first traded after the 1996 season when we sent him to Houston
with catcher Brad Ausmus, Jose Lima, Trever Miller and Daryle Ward for Doug
Brocail, Todd Jones, Brian Hunter Orlando Miller and cash. Three
years later Randy Smith made a another large multi player deal which included
us sending catcher Paul Bako, Dean Crow,
Brian Powell and minor leaguers Mark Persails and Carlos Billalobos to Houston and getting back catcher Brad
Ausmus and CJ. CJ pitched almost another
3 years for the Tigers before he was traded to the Mets in 2001 with cash for
Kyle Kessel who would never play in the majors.
In all, CJ played 5 seasons with Tiges and was 11-24 with a 5.68 ERA. After the Mets CJ signed multiple times with
multiple teams like back to Houston then St. Louis, Texas, Atlanta, the
Yankees, the Twinkies. He actually came
back to Detroit in 2005 but did not get in a game. He ended his major league career with the
Nats in 2005. In 2007 he was pitching in
Japan and become the first player to achieve the fete of pitching only one
pitch and getting a double play in both the Majors and in Nippon Pro
Baseball. He had done it with Washington
in 2005. CJ was also in the movie “42”
about Jackie Robinson where he plays Dutch Leonard. Today he works for Fox Sports.
Jim Landis was a replacement for Al Kaline when he was a
Tiger. He started his major league
career with the Chicago White Sox in 1957.
He was a great defensive outfielder but an average hitter. He was the starting center fielder for the
1959 Go-Go Sox who won the AL pennant and finished 7th in MVP voting
that season. He won his first Gold Glove
in 1960 and would win five ina row for Chicago and make an All-Star game roster
in 1962. However, 1962 also saw his
batting average drop to .228. It
continued to drop over the next couple of seasons until after hitting .208 in
1964 for Chicago he was traded to the Kansas City Athletics. He played one season there before heading to
Cleveland for 1966. In 1967 he started
with the Houston Astros and was hitting .252.
In late June Al Kaline broke his finger jamming a bat into the bat
rack. While Kaline healed the Tigers
then went out and picked up Jim Landis from Houston in exchange for Larry
Sherry for the 1967 pennant race against the Twins, White Sox and Red Sox. Jim got in 25 games for the Tigers and while
he hit only .208 he was solid on defense.
Kaline came back towards the end of the season and Jim was
released. He was then signed by the Red
Sox just four days later and again was solid on defense making some fantastic
plays that Red Sox fans still remember.
But he only 1 for 7 at the plate, granted it was a homer. But only 6 days after he signed with the Red
Sox the Sox picked up Ken Harrelson from Kansas City. Athletics owner Charlie Finley had a bad
relationship with Harrelson and released him.
The Sox signed Harrelson and released Jim. Jim never played pro ball again.
Ron Kline was a year and a half as a Tiger. He started with the lowly Pirates of
1952. He then went into the military for
two seasons before rejoining the Pirates in 1955. The Pirates were terrible for most of the
1950’s while Ron was not bad. Ron was
53-83 with a 3.92 ERA. But the Pirates
traded him to St. Louis. He was there
for one year before St. Louis sold him to the Angels for 1961. He was 3-6 as a righty with a 4.90 ERA. But the Angels waived him and the Tiges
claimed him. The change was great for
Ron as he went 5-3 with a 2.72 ERA for the rest of 1961. He was with the Tigers again in 1952 and was
was 3-6 with a 4.31 ERA pitching mainly in relief. Before the 1963 season Detroit sold him to
Washington. He went on to the Twinkies,
back to the Pirates, San Fran, Boston and finally Atlanta. He was a career 8-9 with Detroit with 2
saves. It was with Washington that he
had his best seasons. Gil Hodges, the
Senators manager made Ron into a closer and he led the league in saves in 1965
with 29. He followed that up by being
second in saves in 1966 with 23 before being traded to the Twinkies who
promptly stopped using him as a closer.
Don’t ask me why, clearly Gil Hodges knew what he was doing with Ron.
Hugh Wise as a player was a career Tiger. Hugh is an amazing story to me. He went to Purdue before starting his career
in baseball in 1928. He was a catcher at
Beaumont in 1930 and hit .300 for the Tiger farm team. He was a late September call up in 1930. In his first game against the White Sox in
Chicago he went 1-2 against Hall of Famer Ted Lyons. He caught a Hall of Famer, Waite Hoyt that
day as well. Not a bad day to remember
as your major league debut. The next day
he caught the second game of a double header against the Sox again. This time he went 1-4 against Hall of Famer
Red Faber. On that mound that day was
Mark Koenig. You may recall Koenig as
the shortstop of the 1927 Yankees. He
was the guy responsible for Babe Ruth’s “called shot” in the 1932 World
Series. As a Cub Koenig was voted half
a share of the World Series and thus started all the bench jockeying that led
to Babe’s “called shot”. In the game
that Hugh caught Koenig went 7 innings as a pitcher rather than his normal
shortstop and gave up 10 runs. After the
game Hugh was done as a major leaguer having faced only Hall of Fame pitching
and batting over .300 against it. Hugh
played in the minors until 1946 having missed 42 thru 45 during the war. Hugh went on to be a scout for the Boston
Braves and an alternative history has the Braves still in Boston if not for
Hugh. Hugh had been sent down to see a
young player on the Birmingham Black Barons but saw the under aged player go 1
for 8 in a double header. Hugh said he
had seen enough and did not recommend that the Braves sign the young player. Had the Braves signed the young Willie Mays
they could have had an outfield of Mays and Aaron and with that outfield in the
early 1950’s they might still be in Boston.
Hugh’s son, Casey, would later play for the Tigers in 1960 as well as
the Braves. Hugh’s other son, Hugh Jr.
would also play minor league ball in the Braves organization.
Claude “Lefty” Williams started his major league career as a
Tiger. Not that his name doesn’t give it
away, Claude was a lefty pitcher. He
played semi-pro until joining the Appalachian League team in Morristown in
1912. He was 18-11. He joined the Nashville Volunteers in 1913
and was 18-12. The Tigers purchased him
from Nashville towards the end of the season.
He got in 5 games and started 4 of them with 3 being complete
games. He was 1-3 with a 4.97 ERA for
Tiger skipper Hughie Jennings. Lefty
would get in one more game for the Tiges in 1914 early in the season in
May. He faced the Philadelphia
Athletics in Shibe Park. He gave up 5
runs on 3 hits and 2 walks in the first inning and was pulled. He took the loss and never played for the
Tigers again. It is after leaving
Detroit that Lefty got his fame or maybe infamy. He was a solid pitcher for the Chicago White
Sox starting in 1916 when he was 13-7.
He peaked in 1919 when he was 23-11.
In the World Series that year he went 0-3 against the Reds as the Sox
lost the series. That is a record to
this day. The following year Lefty again
was fantastic going 22-14. But it came
out that Lefty and several of his other Sox teammates threw the World
Series. They were labeled the Black Sox
and were banned from baseball for life. He
was a career 82-48 with a 3.13 ERA but was just 1-4 with a 4.80 ERA as a Tiger.
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