We saw it then, many of us. We still see it.
Bill Freehan, flipping his mask, slowly stalking Tim McCarver’s pop-up between home plate and the first-base-side seats, smothering the ball in his fat mitt — and sending all of Detroit into ecstasy following that magical, marvelous, nearly miraculous world-championship season of 1968 when the Tigers seemed to be Providentially possessed.
Or, perhaps what we yet see is that moment from two games previous, in Detroit, after Willie Horton heaved a throw home from left field that Freehan caught, and Lou Brock to his shock became a tag-out as Freehan guarded the plate and, in an instant, turned around a World Series the Cardinals seemed ready to wrap up.
They are but two moments from a 15-season career in Detroit that were so consistent, so concretely formed within a catcher’s all-around skills, it was sometimes easy to overlook the incessant quality Bill Freehan was delivering in the name of baseball in Detroit and a big-league game at-large.
“I lost one of my best friends — a baseball friend I was closer to than anyone else on the team,” said Mickey Lolich, who teamed with Freehan for 13 seasons, including that ’68 dream season when Lolich won three of the seven games, including a complete-game virtuoso in Game 7.
“I don’t know how to explain this to people,” Lolich said Thursday, “but it was just amazing how close we were, mentally, when it was time for pitching and catching.
“I was always a pitcher who called my own game. I always felt that a certain pitch was the pitch to throw at a certain time. Well, after a while, Freehan eventually got on the same page with me.
“I would want to throw a fastball inside, and I’d look in, and he’d have finger No. 1 down, wiggling it either way for a pitch in or out on the plate, and I’d say, OK, because that’s exactly what I wanted to throw.
“This became a habit for us and it was unbelievable. It was like two minds working together between the mound and home plate. And we never had a disagreement where he got mad at me because I did something out there, and I never got mad at him. We were just super-friends between the lines.”
Mickey Stanley, the Tigers center fielder and World Series shortstop in ’68, whose Tigers years paralleled Freehan’s, hadn’t yet heard of Freehan’s passing when he was contacted Thursday.
“He was a bulldog — and he was the most honest guy I ever played with,” Stanley said. “We hunted together, bought hunting property together. We snowmobiled together. He was just a great guy.
“And Pat was a saint.”
Stanley spoke directly there to the agonizing vigil that Alzheimer’s brought about. Freehan’s wife of 58 years, Pat, was with him at the disease’s onset, and then through the tortured years as memory and a dynamic man’s ability to interact ebbed.
Stanley and his wife, Ellen, had a last visit with Bill and Pat a few years ago at the Freehans’ home on Walloon Lake.
“I remember that last time,” Stanley said Thursday as he prepared to have lunch with another Tigers mate from yesteryear, reliever Tom Timmerman. “It was not a real conversation we were able to have with Bill. He was just sitting there in his chair, pretty much sitting with his head down, with Patty and my wife.
“And I said to Patty: ‘Did Bill ever catch Mark Fidrych?’ And she said, ’No, I don’t think Bill ever caught him.’
“Bill sat up and said: ‘I most certainly did!’
“And I’ll never forget those words the rest of my life.”
It is getting to be too frequent, these goodbyes to the Tigers’ truly great stars from the 1960s and ’70s. This farewell to Freehan comes 16 months after Al Kaline’s death, a loss Tigers World is still processing. It’s also essential to know why a town, a team, and its galaxy of followers takes these passings so personally.
It was because extraordinary men forged a phenomenally substantive, and even personal, relationship with those who followed them.
Another of the Tigers cadre who made that ’68 a dream for Detroit, and a 15-year era unqiue in terms of the stars the Tigers flaunted, was Horton.
They had gotten to know each other on the Detroit sandlots when Horton, too, was a catcher. But knowing Freehan’s grace behind the plate, Horton and the Tigers, after both players signed with Detroit, decided a move to left field would best help the Tigers divide and conquer at two positions.
“He didn’t come to the ballpark to get ready — he was ready when he came here,” Horton said Thursday of Freehan. “He was in the running for MVP for so many years, and for even more years he was MVP on our teams.
“He was a leader. And how he handled that pitching staff — from spring training on. He was in control.”
Horton recalled Thursday how he and Freehan had teamed up for the famous throw-out of Brock. How, just as they had rehearsed and executed so many times during the season, Horton aimed directly at the nose of cutoff man Don Wert, the Tigers’ third baseman. Brock headed for home plate from second base, on a fifth-inning single by Julian Javier, with the Cardinals ahead, 3-2, and St. Louis ahead, three games to one.
“I think Billy and I both knew we had a chance,” Horton said. “Lou kind of drifted around third and then I lined up Coyote (Wert’s nickname) and fired it home. And it became one of those greatest-plays moments.
“But I’ll tell you, as a human being Bill Freehan was as good of a person as he was a player. And that goes back to our days playing baseball games as kids.”
Freehan’s seasons in Detroit began in 1961, shortly after the Tigers had handed him a then-mighty check of $100,000 to sign with Detroit (baseball’s pre-draft era) and forgo his remaining time as a catcher and promising football tight end at the University of Michigan.
An athlete, for sure, was Freehan. He unveiled that cavalcade of skills every time he suited up for one of the 1,774 big-league games he played for the Tigers from 1961 until he finished in 1976.
He is yet talked about as a Hall of Fame catcher — or, more specifically, why he isn’t in baseball’s shrine at Cooperstown, New York. In fact, his credentials are compelling. His career Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which is the most direct measure of his imprint, is 44.8. Ted Simmons, the Southfield prodigy, was elected last year by Cooperstown’s review committee, had a 50.3 WAR, which hints at how close Freehan could yet be to getting Cooperstown consideration as exceptional past stars continually are appraised and reviewed.
His career highlights remain brilliant 45 years after he retired after his 1976 stint with the Tigers, a year that had given Detroit a phenomenon known as Mark (The Bird) Fidrych:
►An 11-time choice for the American League All-Star team.
►Three times he finished in the top five on balloting for American League Most Valuable Player. He was a runner-up to Denny McLain in the 1968 voting for MVP.
►Five times he won a Gold Glove as the American League’s premier defensive catcher.
►His career numbers: .262 batting average, 200 home runs, .762 OPS.
It was his ability to play baseball’s most difficult position with such steadiness, such daily aplomb, that so affected and inspired teammates like Horton and Stanley.
“He used to get on me once in a while about concentration,” Stanley said Thursday. “‘You’ve got to concentrate,’ he’d say.
“And he was right,” Stanley acknowledged. “He was such a gamer. And just a tough guy, but not a mean bone in his body. He’s been on my mind almost every day. I just feel for Patty.”
Freehan’s career, even 50 and more years later, has left its mark on those who study baseball history, including another one-time, big-league catcher, AJ Hinch, who now is Tigers manager.
“He was arguably the best catcher in the history of the organization, with deep Michigan roots,” Hinch said Thursday ahead of the Tigers series finale against the Angels at Comerica Park.
“I had a chance to meet him. Chris Fetter (Tigers pitching coach) coached his grandson at the University of Michigan. Anyone who has been around the organization for a long time — Al (Avila, Tigers general manager) and the group upstairs — everyone has a heavy heart today.”
Freehan following his playing days had a reunion with his alma mater as Michigan baseball’s head coach. He also was a coach in the Tigers minor-league chain, all before Alzheimer’s invaded and made baseball untenable.
“As I get older, my teammates are passing, and I understand,” Lolich said. “But this one here might be the hardest one.”
“I just feel so badly,” Horton said Thursday. “You’re never ready for things like this.
“I’m just fortunate the good lord let us cross paths for so many years.”
Lynn Henning is a retired Detroit News sportswriter and a freelance writer.