Baseball History Podcast

Welcome to Baseball History Podcast, featuring baseball biographies.  I’m your announcer Bob Wright.

This is game 34 of the 2011 baseball season.

In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 4 week of August.

August 24

1976 At Tiger Stadium, Bill Freehan hits 200th and final home run in a 12-7 loss to the White Sox. The Detroit catcher will finish his career with 100 homers hit at home with the other dingers 100 hit on the road.

William Ashley Freehan was born November 29, 1941 in Detroit, MI.

Freehan played his entire Major League career for the Detroit Tigers and was widely regarded as one of the game’s best defensive catchers.  He was described as a fierce competitor and a committed leader on the diamond.

Sportswriter Arnold Hano described him as “a thinking man’s catcher” and said Freehan displayed “an unusual blend of brawn and brains.”

Always strong defensively, the sophomore catcher at the University of Michigan pounded Big Ten pitching, batting .585 in 1961 and drawing the attention of major league scouts.  Although he entertained offers from several teams, Freehan signed with the Detroit Tigers for a $125,000 bonus.  But, even as he was breaking into the big leagues, the Tigers’ bonus baby continued attending school part-time over the off-season, completing his bachelor’s degree in history with a 3.1 grade point average from Michigan in 1966.  Freehan explained, “My deal with my dad was, I didn’t see a dime of my bonus until I got my degree.”

For the 1961 season, the Tigers farmed him out to Duluth-Superior in the Class C Northern League, where Freehan hit .343 with seven home runs and 26 RBI in 30 games for manager Bill Swift before he was promptly promoted to Knoxville in the Sally League. There, he batted .289 in 47 games before

As a late-September call-up to Detroit in 1961, Freehan managed four singles in 10 at-bats.
Brought up to the Tigers again in 1963, Freehan got on base nine straight times, managing three home runs, one triple, three doubles, two singles, and three walks in 15 plate appearances.  Over the remainder of his rookie season, the 21-year-old catcher committed only two errors in 73 games behind the plate, although he hit only .243.

Freehan said. “I wanted to hit well.  I just never put that ahead of my primary responsibility. The catcher has to be the captain of the field.  I felt if I did my job behind the plate, I was contributing to the team in the best way I could.”

Always a perfectionist, one Tigers front-office man said, “Bill’s biggest trouble is that he thinks he never should have a bad day.”

The next year marked Freehan’s arrival as the dominant catcher in the American League.  A right-handed hitter who crowded the plate, Freehan became the first Detroit catcher to hit .300 since Mickey Cochrane batted .319 in 1935.  At the time of his first all-star selection in 1964, Freehan had caught fewer than 200 major league games, but over the course of the season he demonstrated that he deserved to be an all-star.  Freehan committed only seven errors in 141 games—catching the final 56 games of the season and logging a stretch of 517 consecutive innings behind the plate—with a .993 fielding percentage, and he belted 18 home runs with 80 Runs Batted In.

More importantly, during the 1964 campaign, Freehan became the team’s leader.  Manager Charlie Dressen remarked, “He suddenly grew up and his pitchers have confidence in him now.  So do the other players.  Quick-like, the Tigers had a leader.”  General Manager Jim Campbell said, “We put the full load on Freehan’s shoulders and he didn’t stumble.”

Although Freehan caught 129 games in 1965, he was frequently dinged up by injuries.  In spring training, Freehan suffered a severe muscle spasm in his lower back while rounding second base, the injury putting him on the bench for three weeks.  On May 29, a foul tip injured his throwing hand and, on June 25, a deflected pitch struck Freehan’s bare hand in the exact spot as the foul tip.  While he avoided the disabled list, Freehan only hit a meager .234 in both 1965 and 1966.

Still primarily known for his defensive prowess and his game-calling skills, Freehan won the first of five consecutive Gold Gloves in 1965.
At the beginning of the 1967 season, Freehan experimented with moving closer to the plate on the advice of new manager Mayo Smith and batting coach Wally Moses, and his hitting improved.  Although he was hit by pitches 20 times that year, he hit .282 with 20 home runs and 74 runs batted in.  It was an exceptional season, as Freehan caught 138 games with only six passed balls and eight errors, and he played in 155 games; no other catcher in the majors led his team in games played.  Moreover, much to the consternation of Smith and the Tigers, Freehan caught all 15 innings of the 1967 All-Star Game in Anaheim.

On September 10, Freehan was hit by a pitch in the third inning of the first game of a doubleheader, spoiling Joel Horlen’s otherwise-perfect game.  At the end of the season, on September 26, Freehan was ejected from a game for the first time in his career, slamming his mask into the dirt after the Yankees’ Horace Clarke stole second base.  Freehan later explained, “I wasn’t arguing about the stolen base.  The pitch was a strike.…[Umpire Hank] Soar called it a ball.  I couldn’t believe it.”  His next ejection would occur nearly eight years later, on August 12, 1975, when he argued over a ball-four call to the Texas Rangers’ Mike Hargrove.

During the Tigers’ 1968 championship season, Freehan caught 155 regular-season games and all seven World Series games.  In the regular season, he set career-high marks with 25 home runs, 73 runs scored, and 84 Runs Batted In, and he was hit by pitches 24 times.  Bothered that he was hitless in the first five games of the World Series, Freehan shrugged, “You’ve got to understand that you’re facing Bob Gibson in three of those games.  That’s not a joy for anybody.”  In the first five games of the World Series, the Cardinals tested Freehan’s arm, stealing 11 bases in 16 attempts, but he managed to corral the running game in Games 6 and 7.

Freehan’s role in one of the most controversial plays in World Series history is familiar to most Tigers fans.  The Cardinals led 3–2 when speedster Lou Brock tried to score from second on Julian Javier’s single to left field.  Freehan caught Willie Horton’s perfect one-hop throw and blocked the plate, and Brock, who decided not to slide, was tagged out.  “I’ve got to thank [University of Michigan football coach] Bump Elliott if I block the plate well,” Freehan said.

Writing about the play, the Los Angeles Herald’s Milton Richman said, “What makes [Freehan] so extraordinary is that he plants his two big feet firmly in the ground, doesn’t bother giving the base runner barreling down on him from third base so much as a sidelong glance and plain refuses to budge even when said base runner hits him at midship like a torpedo.  For that he has the respect of ballplayers everywhere.  They know they don’t make catchers like Freehan anymore.”

White Sox manager Eddie Stanky added, “On any close play at the plate, it’s like running into a freight train.”

Freehan also caught Tim McCarver’s foul popup near the first-base dugout to secure the final out in Game 7.  The sight of Mickey Lolich leaping into Freehan’s arms will always be an iconic image in Detroit baseball lore.  Freehan said, “When Lolich jumps on you, well, he’s not a small man, but it was a great feeling!”  Finishing the World Series 2-for-24 with a double, Freehan observed, “I know I wasn’t very successful in hitting, but I’ve got the same World Series ring as everybody else.”

In 1969, the Tigers finished in second place, a distant 19 games behind Baltimore, and Freehan batted a respectable .262 with 16 home runs in 143 games.  Throughout the 1969 season, the catcher kept a clubhouse diary, which would be published the next year as Behind the Mask: An Inside Baseball Diary.  Published a decade after Jim Brosnan’s The Long Season and the same year as Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, Freehan’s Behind the Mask did not display the literary insights of Brosnan’s book or the scandalous revelations of Bouton’s.  For the most part, the book was, as Freehan explained, “a story about a ballclub.  A catcher, a manager, and the pitcher.”

Unfortunately, as the 1970 season opened, pitcher Denny McLain was in the headlines again, serving a suspension related to a gambling investigation, so when Sports Illustrated published excerpts from Freehan’s diary, it was no surprise to anyone that the McLain passages were featured in the magazine.  At the center of the controversy was Freehan’s accusation that McLain was often allowed to break club rules and that the coaching staff was powerless to stop him. Freehan wrote about McLain that he is, “the best pitcher in the American League but it’s an individual thing vs. a team thing.”

Ironically, after these excerpts were published, the same Tigers who resented McLain’s special treatment felt Freehan had violated the sanctity of the clubhouse.  Freehan explained, “My book is about what it’s like to be a catcher and go through a season but what appeared in the magazine was not an accurate representation.”

Thus, 1970 was a rough year for Freehan.  While his defense behind the plate was still impeccable, his batting average dropped to .241, and the team fell to fourth place.  Still bothered by the 1965 spring training base-running injury, Freehan consented to spinal surgery to prolong his career as an everyday catcher. Freehan recalled, “Some days were good and some days were bad.  It got so my legs would be numb on certain days when I stepped out of my car at the ball park.”  On September 2, 1970, Freehan had bone graft surgery on the fifth vertebra of his lower back.  As always, the durable catcher recovered quickly.

Although fans booed Freehan after the publication of Behind the Mask, all was forgotten when the catcher made a strong comeback from the surgery in 1971.  Under Billy Martin, the Tigers bounced back into second place, and Freehan topped American League catchers with a .277 batting average, 21 home runs, and 71 Runs Batted In, while he caught 144 games, more than anyone else in the league.

With a healthy back and the acquisition of new backup catcher Tom Haller, Freehan anticipated another good season behind the plate in 1972.  Freehan caught 105 games that season, batting .262, hitting 10 home runs and driving in 56 Runs Batted In, but he fractured his right thumb late in the season when tagging out Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski on a play at the plate.  The Tigers finished first in American League East, but they were defeated by Oakland in the American League Championship Series.  Freehan hit better in this postseason than he did in 1968, securing a .250 average and a home run in Detroit’s Game 3 victory, but the Athletics stole seven bases thanks in part to Freehan’s sore thumb.

Freehan believed, “Defense…isn’t just talent, that’s concentration and work.  I always called my games.  Sure, I always had eye contact with my manager, but I was the one calling the pitches.”

The next year, when Billy Martin platooned him at catcher and questioned his game-calling skills, the proud Freehan resented his manager.  Feeling that he was not given sufficient opportunity to prove himself, Freehan struggled with a lowly .234 average and 29 Runs Batted In, playing in only 110 games (his lowest total in 10 years).  “I was never platooned before, not even part-time.  I wouldn’t have minded if the figures showed I couldn’t hit right-handers.  But they don’t.  I wouldn’t mind losing my job if I was doing a lousy job.”  What bothered Freehan more than his poor performance at the plate was that Martin also second-guessed the pitches Freehan called, even publicly questioning some pitches that were ordered from the bench.

Freehan returned in 1974 prepared to prove himself, splitting time at catcher and first base under new manager Ralph Houk.  With his poor showing the previous season and with the rise of Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk as the league’s premier catchers, Freehan felt he had to reestablish himself, but only two months into the season, the American League’s all-star catcher for the past 10 years was shifted to first base.

He hit .297 with 18 home runs and 60 Runs Batted In in 1974 and although his offensive production improved from the previous year, Freehan was the cornerstone of a December deal that would have sent him with Mickey Stanley to the Philadelphia Phillies for catcher Bob Boone.  As Freehan was preparing his family for the move to Philadelphia, the deal was nixed by the Phillies at the last minute.

Nevertheless, after the trade failed, Freehan could see the writing on the wall.  Going into spring training in 1975, Houk tabbed Freehan as the Tigers’ starting catcher, unless “one of these other guys proves he’s better than Bill is.”

At age 34, Freehan caught 113 games, hitting .246 with 14 home runs and 47 Runs Batted In, and he returned to the All-Star Game for the eleventh time.  But over the winter, the Tigers traded for Milt May, putting Freehan in a reserve role for the first time in his career.  May caught only six games before being sidelined for the season with a broken ankle.  Freehan, as part of a backstop trio, caught 61 games in 1976 and on December 12, 1976, the Tigers gave Freehan his unconditional release.

Although he still believed he could contribute on the diamond, he realized how fortunate he was to have played on his hometown team for his entire 15-year major league career.  Still, when the

After retiring he served as a color analyst for Seattle Mariners broadcasts in 1979-80, and for Tigers television broadcasts in 1984-85.

In 1989, disturbed by an NCAA investigation that revealed illegal payments to players, Freehan called University of Michigan athletic director Bo Schembechler to ask about the once-successful baseball program.  Two weeks later, he took over as the Wolverines’ head baseball coach.

Weathering two years’ probation, Freehan coached Michigan baseball until 1995, reestablishing the integrity of the program.  He left coaching to devote more attention to business interests, but  he was lured back to serve as Detroit’s organizational catching instructor from 2002 to 2005.

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

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