[Nick Soulis]

Series #263

1937 Detroit Tigers vs 1981 San Diego Padres



1937 Detroit Tigers (89-65)



The 1937 Detroit Tigers arrived at Navin Field as one of the most fearsome offensive clubs in American League history, finishing the season at 89 wins and 65 losses and placing second in a competitive league. They were managed by Mickey Cochrane — the Hall of Fame catcher who had led Detroit to back to back pennants in 1934 and 1935 — with Del Baker taking over the managerial duties when Cochrane was struck in the head by a pitched ball in May and never played again. The offense was historically loaded. First baseman Hank Greenberg put together one of the great individual seasons in baseball history — 40 home runs, 184 runs batted in and a .337 batting average — finishing third in MVP voting behind Joe DiMaggio. Second baseman Charlie Gehringer was even better by WAR, hitting .371 with 96 RBI and winning the American League MVP award in what many consider the finest season of his Hall of Fame career. The outfield was equally formidable with Gee Walker hitting .335 with 18 home runs and 113 RBI and Pete Fox contributing .331 with 82 RBI. Young catcher Rudy York added 35 home runs and 101 RBI in just 104 games. This was a lineup that scored 935 runs — a number that announced its intentions before the first pitch was ever thrown.
The pitching staff was serviceable rather than spectacular, built around three workhorses who together started nearly every game on the schedule. Elden Auker led the rotation at 17 wins and 9 losses with a 3.88 ERA across 252 innings, relying on a distinctive submarine delivery that baffled right-handed hitters and produced ground ball after ground ball. Tommy Bridges posted 15 wins with a 4.07 ERA and 138 strikeouts — easily the staff's most electric arm — while Roxie Lawson went 18 and 7 despite a 5.26 ERA that suggested his win total owed more than a little to the run support provided by Greenberg, Gehringer and company. The bullpen was thin and the staff as a whole surrendered 841 runs across the season, which meant the Tigers needed their offense to carry them most nights. In this particular tournament, against most opponents, it was more than capable of doing exactly that.

1981 San Diego Padres (41-69)



The 1981 San Diego Padres were a young and struggling franchise playing through a strike-shortened season that produced just 110 games and a final record of 41 wins and 69 losses — good for sixth place in the National League West and a reflection of a ball club still searching for its identity. Manager Frank Howard — the former slugger whose enormous frame had once terrified American League pitchers — presided over a roster built on defense, speed and pitching rather than power, a necessity given that the Padres hit just 32 home runs as a team across the entire season. The offense was led by catcher Terry Kennedy who hit .301 with solid contact skills, Luis Salazar at third base who batted .303, and left fielder Gene Richards who contributed a .288 average with 20 stolen bases and genuine on-base ability. Most notably this roster featured a 26 year old Ozzie Smith at shortstop — already an All-Star and Gold Glove defender of the highest order — whose .222 batting average did nothing to diminish his reputation as perhaps the finest defensive player in the National League. The lineup was not built to overpower anyone. It was built to manufacture runs through speed, contact and situational execution.
The pitching staff was the genuine strength of this San Diego club and the reason it remained competitive despite its modest offensive production. Closer Gary Lucas was outstanding — posting a 2.00 ERA across 90 innings with 13 saves and an effectiveness that made him one of the better relievers in the National League that season. The rotation featured Juan Eichelberger at 8 wins and 8 losses with a 3.50 ERA, Chris Welsh with a solid 3.78 ERA, and Rick Wise providing veteran innings at 3.77. The team ERA of 3.73 was genuinely respectable and significantly better than the offensive numbers might suggest a 41-69 team capable of producing. Against the 1937 Tigers and their historically potent lineup the Padres pitching staff faced a challenge unlike any it encountered during the regular season — but Frank Howard's club was not without weapons and not without the kind of professional pride that makes undermanned teams dangerous in short series.
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GEHRINGER, GREENBERG AND THE TIGERS' THUNDER PREPARE TO MEET THE PADRES' PLUCK ON THE FIELD OF DREAMS
Detroit's Murderers Row of 1937 Faces San Diego's Scrappy Young Nine in a Battle That Pits Brute Force Against Craft and Guile

By Grantland Rice — Special Correspondent to the Field of Dreams Tournament

DETROIT, October 1937 — There are matchups in this great tournament that arrive wrapped in the comfortable certainty of foregone conclusions and there are matchups that arrive wearing the quiet and dangerous smile of the unknown. The meeting between the 1937 Detroit Tigers and the 1981 San Diego Padres belongs to the second category far more than the first, though a casual examination of the numbers might suggest otherwise.

Consider what Detroit brings to this contest. Hank Greenberg — that magnificent and powerful first baseman who drove in one hundred and eighty four runs in the season just completed, a figure so extraordinary that a man reads it twice to confirm his eyes have not deceived him. Charlie Gehringer — the Mechanical Man of second base, a fellow so quietly and devastatingly efficient at every aspect of the game that his own teammates occasionally forgot to marvel at him simply because excellence was his permanent condition. Gee Walker in the outfield swinging a bat that produced a hundred and thirteen runs batted in while hitting .335 with the casual authority of a man who finds the entire exercise rather straightforward. Pete Fox alongside him at .331. Rudy York — twenty three years old and already capable of hitting thirty five home runs in a partial season — lurking in the lineup like a storm front gathering on the western horizon.

This Detroit offense scored nine hundred and thirty five runs across the regular season. Nine hundred and thirty five. In a full season of baseball against the finest competition the American League had to offer these Tigers scored runs the way lesser men breathe — constantly, automatically and without apparent effort. To stand on a pitcher's mound and face this lineup from first batter to last is to understand in the most immediate and personal terms what the phrase "earning your pay" truly signifies.

And yet.

Frank Howard's San Diego Padres of 1981 are not a club that arrived at this tournament apologizing for themselves. They bring a pitching staff that held the National League to a team ERA of three and seventy three across a strike-shortened season — a number that speaks to genuine professional competence regardless of the won-loss record it accompanied. Gary Lucas closed games with a two-dollar ERA and the cool efficiency of a man who has made his peace with high-leverage situations. Juan Eichelberger started and competed. Chris Welsh gave them innings of quality. Against most opponents in most series this pitching staff is more than adequate.

There is also the matter of a young man playing shortstop in San Diego by the name of Ozzie Smith. He hit two twenty two this season and nobody who watched him play noticed particularly because what Ozzie Smith does at shortstop cannot be measured in batting averages or slugging percentages or any of the other numerical languages that baseball has developed to describe itself. He covers ground that other shortstops surrender. He makes throws that other shortstops cannot attempt. He transforms outs from possibilities into certainties with a combination of instinct and athleticism that the English language has not yet developed adequate vocabulary to describe. In a short series defense matters and Ozzie Smith at shortstop is as fine a defensive player as this tournament has yet produced.

The Padres will need every bit of his brilliance and then some. Because the arithmetic of this matchup is brutally simple — San Diego must keep the baseball away from Greenberg and Gehringer and Walker and York, and keeping the baseball away from that collection of gentlemen is an ambition that has confounded considerably better pitching staffs than Frank Howard's. Elden Auker will take the ball for Detroit in Game 1 and whatever the Padres answer with they will need to be sharp from the first pitch because this Detroit lineup does not wait politely for its opportunities. It creates them with a force and immediacy that leaves opposing pitchers with very little margin for the kind of mistakes that are inevitable across the course of a baseball game.

And yet this tournament has taught us — if it has taught us nothing else across two hundred and sixty two completed series — that the numbers on paper and the numbers on the scoreboard are related only distantly and unreliably. The 1981 San Diego Padres are forty one and sixty nine. They are outgunned in virtually every offensive category by margins that would be comical if they were not also slightly terrifying. They are playing against a Detroit lineup that hit more home runs in a single season than San Diego's entire roster managed across a hundred and ten games.
None of that will matter if Gary Lucas can keep the ball down and Ozzie Smith can make the plays in the gap and the Padres can scratch and manufacture just enough runs to give their pitchers something to work with. Baseball has always been the sport of the improbable and this tournament has been its finest stage. Somewhere in San Diego a young and undermanned ball club is lacing up its spikes with the particular quiet determination of a team that has nothing to lose and everything to prove.
Hank Greenberg is loading his bat.

Ozzie Smith is tying his shoes.

The Field of Dreams rolls on.

Play ball.