Baseball History Podcast

William James Brown, nicknamed “Gates,” was born May 2, 1939 in Crestline, Ohio.

In his first Major League at bat, he hit a pinch homer, a fitting beginning for one of baseball’s most successful pinch hitters.  The popular Brown had limited defensive skills and couldn’t break into the regular Tiger outfield, but he collected 107 career pinch hits and 16 pinch homers.

Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities.  I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.

This is game 33 of the 2009 baseball season

In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 2 week of August.

August 11

1968 As a pinch hitter, Gates Brown has two walk-off hits in Detroit’s twin bill sweep of the Red Sox at Tiger Stadium. His pinch home run off Lee Stange in the 14th inning ends the opener, 5-4, and the nightcap is decided as he comes of the bench in the ninth and singles to right off Sparky Lyle scoring Mickey Stanley giving the team from the Motor City a 6-5 victory.

William James Brown, nicknamed “Gates,” was born May 2, 1939 in Crestline, Ohio.

In his first Major League at bat, he hit a pinch homer, a fitting beginning for one of baseball’s most successful pinch hitters.  The popular Brown had limited defensive skills and couldn’t break into the regular Tiger outfield, but he collected 107 career pinch hits and 16 pinch homers.

He was nicknamed “Gates” by his mother when he was just a toddler-although, to this day, he has never figured out why his mother chose it.  Gates had this to say of his nickname, “My mother started calling me Gates when I was small, I still don’t know where she got it.  But the name stuck.”

Even though he was a standout football star in high school, Gates got into more than his fair share of trouble growing up. When he turned 18, he was arrested for breaking and entering and was sent to the Mansfield State Reformatory in nearby Mansfield, Ohio. The same prison used in the film The Shawshank Redemption.

Even though he had played some baseball in high school, it was in the Mansfield prison where Brown’s true talents as a ballplayer were developed.  At 5-foot-11 and 200-plus pounds of pure muscle, a prison guard who coached the pen’s baseball team encouraged Brown to try out at catcher.  In awe of his raw ability with the bat-and encouraged that baseball might lead Brown out of a life of crime-the coach wrote letters to several major league teams, including the Detroit Tigers.

In fall 1959, Detroit sent scouts to the prison to see Brown. Impressed, after Brown belted a daunting home run in the scout’s presence, the Tigers decided to help him get paroled a year early.  Gates was signed to a $7,000 bonus pact almost immediately upon his release.
After showing continued success at the minor league level it was clear that Brown was on the fast track to join the big club.  And with the Tigers’ lack of early-season success in 1963, Brown was called up from Triple A Syracuse June 17-one day before Charlie Dressen was named the team’s new manager.  It would be Dressen who would call on Gates to take his first major league hacks.

Brown officially debuted for the Tigers against the Boston Red Sox on June 19, 1963 at Fenway Park. With Boston up 4-1 in the fifth inning, Brown entered the game as-what else-a pinch-hitter.

He hit a booming 400-foot home run, becoming only the third Tiger in history to homer in their first at-bat.

Brown remained with the club for the rest of the season, primarily as a pinch-hitter.  Detroit rebounded with him on the team and had a winning record for the rest of the year.  Overall, Brown hit .268 with two home runs in his rookie season.

He stuck on the parent club for 1964, used primarily as the starting left fielder.  Brown hit .272 with 15 home runs and was second on the team with 11 stolen bases.

Despite his solid 1964 season however, Brown lost his starting job in the outfield in 1965 to a young power hitter named Willie Horton.  And even though he was disappointed in returning to his role as a pinch-hitter and reserve outfielder, Gates would never let his personal frustration get in the way of the team.  He slugged 10 home runs that season in barely half the at-bats he had in 1964.  And despite his stocky 225-pound frame, Brown also managed to steal another six bases and was regarded unofficially as the fastest Tiger on the team.  He didn’t know it then, but Brown was on his way to becoming the most successful pinch-hitter in American League history.

Brown returned in 1966 and had similar success in the same role-hitting .325 as a pinch-hitter.  Overall he hit .266 with seven home runs in only 169 at-bats.  Although he remained quietly disappointed with his role, it was clear that Brown was the Tigers’ best offensive option off the bench.

Brown struggled with injuries in 1967 before finally being shelved with a dislocated wrist.  As a pinch-hitter, he hit only .154.  However, that Tigers team nearly made the World Series before they were beat out by the Red Sox on the final day of the season.
Discouraged by his poor season in 1967, Brown came to spring training on a mission in 1968.  He was no longer upset about a lack of playing time, he just wanted to contribute.  The Tigers, however, weary of Brown’s poor and injury-filled campaign in 1967, decided to bring back Eddie Mathews as the team’s primary left-handed pinch-hitter.  General Manager Jim Campbell and Manager Mayo Smith even said that they thought about trading Brown, but couldn’t come close to pulling a trade because Gates had packed on a few pounds while waiting for his wrist to heal, a turnoff for prospective trading partners.

Brown got his chance to prove them wrong, however, on the second day of the season; when Smith, having already used Mathews earlier in the game, called on Brown to pinch-hit in the ninth inning in a tie game. Brown grabbed a bat and hit a game-winning home run.
He hammered six hits in his first 10 pinch-hit at-bats on his way to an American League-record 18 pinch hits that season.  Tigers fans soon became accustomed to watching the Gator come off the bench and deliver over and over in key situations.  But none was more key than during a Sunday doubleheader August 11 against the defending American League champs, the Boston Red Sox.

In the opening game that day, the Tigers were in an extra-inning struggle with the Red Sox until Brown got a chance to come into the game in the bottom of the 14th inning.  Tiger Stadium erupted when he was announced.  But their cheers were nothing compared to when Brown smacked the game-winning home run a minute later.

Then in the second game, Brown strode to the plate in a tie game in the bottom of the ninth.  With Mickey Stanley creeping off of third, Gates singled to right to drive in the winning run, giving him two game-ending hits in the same day.
In fact, Brown hit so unbelievably well in 1968 that Smith even started him in 16 games.  Not bad for a guy who was trade bait when the season began.  In the end, Brown hit an astounding .370 in 1968-more than over 100 points higher than his career average.  He was the only full-season Tiger to hit above .300 that season.  He also averaged an extra-base hit every six at-bats-a remarkable stat.

Brown remained popular with the Detroit writers that season.  When asked about his remarkable success in the clutch, Gates always told them:  “I’m square as an ice cube, and I’m twice as cool”.  Detroit media couldn’t get enough of Gates.

Neither could Tigers fans.  When the World Series rolled around and the Tigers lost Game 1 to St. Louis’ Bob Gibson, Mayo Smith was bombarded by letters to put Brown into the starting line-up.
However, Brown only had one appearance during the World Series: a pinch-hit fly out to left off Gibson in Game 1.  But for anyone who remembers how untouchable Gibson was that October day, it’s a miracle any man could come off the bench and even touch the ball.

Throughout the rest of his career, Brown enjoyed continued success as a pinch-hitter-including a .346 pinch-hitting campaign in 1971-but nothing quite like the 1968 season.  Gates did enjoy more time in the baseball spotlight by becoming Detroit’s first-ever designated hitter in 1973, a position tailor-made for Gates Brown.

Moreover, Brown became so beloved that some sportswriters who were adamantly against the Designated Hitter when it was first implemented later said it didn’t bother them as much as they thought it would.  One of the reasons: it was great for Tigers fans to see Brown at the plate every day.

The whole country got a chance to see Brown a year later when Joe Garagiola, host of NBC’s pregame show, Baseball World of Joe Garagiola, did an unusual two-part story on Gates.  Garagiola rarely devoted his weekly show to anyone for two separate shows, but did so for Brown.  The shows featured Brown and Garagiola back in Gates’s old stomping grounds at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield.  The program consisted of an interview in Brown’s former prison cell, as well as several sessions with current inmates.

Brown said he agreed to the interview inside the prison itself in hopes that it might prevent “even more youngsters” from making the mistake of a lifetime.  But he also mentioned that even if you did make the mistake of breaking the law, incarceration didn’t mean the end.  “It’s what you do when you get out that counts,” Gates told the inmates.

After suffering through a 102-loss season in 1975, Brown decided to retire at age 36.  He became a scout for the club less than three weeks after the season ended.  Almost immediately, Brown went from sitting in a major league dugout to scouting teams in Florida; assisting in the free agent draft; instructing the Tigers’ rookie league team; and visiting various colleges nationwide to find new talent.

Brown continued his work as a scout until 1978, when he returned to the Tigers to become the new hitting coach under manager Ralph Houk.  The Tigers’ team batting average rose from eighth in the American League in 1977 to second overall in Gates’s first season.  That year the Tigers also enjoyed their first winning season in five years.

When Sparky Anderson arrived in Detroit in 1979, he kept Brown on.  Gates helped bring along the hitting talents of Kirk Gibson, Alan Trammell, and Lou Whitaker.  Brown remained with the Tigers through their world championship in 1984.  Gates wanted to continue coaching the Tigers beyond 1984, but couldn’t agree on a contract extension with the front office.
Brown has always liked to reflect upon that magical season of ’68.  He had reached the pinnacle of his profession.  He was a World Series champion.  His climb from a prison cell to shaking hands with the likes of Bob Hope and Ed Sullivan is truly a great comeback story.  But if you asked Gates, his contribution to the 1968 season was for his parents.

“I can never make up for all the grief I gave them in my life.  I can never make up for all the humiliation they suffered, all the torture, when I spent time in [Mansfield],” Brown said. “But I promised them, when I got out of there I would never go back.  If I didn’t make it in life, it would not be because I didn’t try.  You know, you can do bad things in a big city and nobody ever knows about them.  But do something wrong in small town and everybody knows.  That’s why I was so happy we won it all.  I could finally give them something else to talk about.”

In his 13 years as a player with Detroit, Brown was a part of nine winning ball clubs.  He also was a part of seven more as a coach.  His .370 average in ’68 was the eighth-best season ever for a pinch-hitter.  He had 107 pinch hits in his career, the most ever in.  He also still holds the American League records for pinch-hit at-bats, with 414 and home runs (16).

It wasn’t just with his bat, but with his attitude, that Brown became so successful in baseball.  He was everyone’s favorite teammate.  He was a huge crowd favorite.  He was Gates Brown, the underdog who went from prisoner to champion.

A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by Dave Gagnon.  It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org

In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary

Under the letter: B

bat-around The occasion when all nine bat­ters in a team’s lineup come to the plate in an in­ning. 1st Use. 1880. (Chicago Inter-Ocean, May 19; Edward J. Nichols).

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Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast.  I’ll see you later at the ballpark.