I bought a pair of tickets for a Detroit-Baltimore day-night doubleheader to be to be played at Detroit on August 15, 1961. The friend who had planned to go with me dropped out. I asked my father if he’d like to go and he snapped up the invitation.
Before I tell you about the games, I must set the stage.
Tiger Stadium, formerly Navin Field and Briggs Stadium, was a gem of a ballpark. It was double-decked all the way around and roofed all the way around, except for the bleachers in deep center field. The playing field was maintained meticulously and sparkled in the bright lights when the Tigers played night games.
Here’s a daytime photo of Tiger Stadium from 1961 (Tony Spina, Detroit Free Press.)
The best seats were in the upper deck. They were the best seats because the upper deck was stacked above the lower deck (not set back as in modern ballparks), affording fans who wisely opted for the upper deck a bird’s eye view of the action on the field and a clear view of the trajectory of high fly balls. On August 15, 1961, my father and I were seated in the upper deck behind third base (and in front of the columns that supported the roof).
The 1961 Tigers were making their best run at an American League pennant since the 1950 team finished 3 games behind the hated Yankees. The Tigers had led the league as recently as July 24. Going into the doubleheader, the Tigers were only 3-1/2 games behind the Yankees.
The 1961 team featured future Hall-of-Famer Al Kaline, who was enjoying another outstanding year in right field. He was joined in the outfield by wide-ranging center-fielder Bill Bruton and slugging left-fielder Rocky Colavito. (Kaline and Colavito both possessed powerful throwing arms.) Colavito’s home-run output (45 in 1961) was supplemented by the first-baseman Norm Cash a slick fielder with power (41 home runs in 1961) whose once-in-a-career batting average (.361) won him the AL batting title and helped to keep the Tigers in contention.
What made the doubleheader so memorable for me — aside from being with my father in a beautiful “green cathedral” — was the excitement of the two games. The Tigers won the first one 2-0, on 7th inning 2-run homer by Cash (with Colavito on first with a single). The Tigers came back to win the second game 3-2; Kaline singled to drive in the winning run in the bottom of the 9th. They double-header sweep narrowed left the Tigers only 2 games behind the Yankees. (They stayed close for another few weeks, and were only 1-1/2 games behind on September 1. They then faded and finished in second place by 8 games.)
The double victory was made all the more enjoyable by the swiftness of the games: the first one was clocked at 2:15; the second one at 2:25. Now, 62 years later, major-league baseball is striving to match such celerity by resorting to the artifice of the pitch clock. (The application of the rule book would do the trick.)
But that’s not the end of the story. Baseball games of that day were for real fans; they weren’t substitutes for trips to Disney World. To be sure, there were groups of Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, etc., but those groups were confined to distant outfield seats. For most fans, the aisles were devoid of children running up and down and being escorted endlessly to rest rooms (as they were in my later visits to ball parks). And the ear-splitting music of today and recent decades was blissfully absent; between-inning music, when there was any, was supplied by a rather tame electronic organ.
The good old days of baseball (and much else) really were good.