Sparky didn't feel 'Blessed' in '84

The 1984 season is revered by Tigers fans, but for the skipper it was a year of torment.

They celebrated the heroes of ‘84 at Comerica Park on Saturday. Just like they did in 2004. And 2009. And 2014. And 2019.

That’s how it goes, when your last world championship was 40 years ago. Every five years, you bring the champs back for some cheers, some speeches and another reminder of how those really were the good old days.

Emphasis on old.

With each reunion, the hair gets greyer, the gait gets more crooked, the faces more wrinkled. And the survivors a little fewer. And one, Chet Lemon, is struggling mightily but made a courageous appearance at the ballpark.

Some are gone now.

We lost Bergie in 2015.

Dave Bergman, the steady-gloved 1st baseman, passed away from cancer and at the 30-year reunion in 2014, it was quite evident that Bergie didn’t have much time.

Yet Bergie was one of many who had his big night in 1984 in a season full of big nights. You know what I’m talking about.

Willie Hernandez is gone. He passed last November.

Aurelio Lopez, Senor Smoke, was killed in an automobile accident in 1992.

Backup catcher Dwight Lowry dropped dead of a heart attack in 1997.

And the skipper, Sparky Anderson, has been gone since 2010.

Of all involved in that magical summer, ironically it was the gregarious Sparky who had the least amount of fun.

While the national media feted the ‘84 Tigers, especially during their legendary 35-5 start, while the fans lost their ever-loving minds, Sparky brooded.

How could that be? The Tigers breezed through the regular season and plowed through the post-season at a 7-1 clip to win the World Series.

Ha!

In his book, They Call Me Sparky, Anderson devoted an entire chapter to how the 1984 season made him miserable.

Why?

In early-summer, after the 35-5 start and when the team dropped a few games (but was still in excellent shape), Sparky was holding court with some reporters before a game at Tiger Stadium.

“See that flagpole out there?” Sparky said, pointing to the iconic monument in deep center field. “That’s where the fans are going to hang me if we blow this thing.”

The Blue Jays were stubbornly on the Tigers’ heels for most of the summer, before finally fading in September. Even with his team playing near .700 ball, Sparky was concerned that the Tigers couldn’t shake the Jays, who in a normal year would have been comfortably in first place themselves.

All summer, Sparky fretted.

He’d never had a team, save maybe the 1975 Reds, that was so dominant. But even that Big Red Machine club didn’t pull away from the Dodgers until after the All-Star break. The ‘84 Tigers got off to such a swift start that Sparky didn’t trust it.

As fate would have it, the Tigers had to start both the ALCS and the WS on the road, despite being the better team by far in both series. And ‘84 was the last year of the best-of-five LCS format—so to play games 1 and 2 on the road was a little scary.

It ultimately didn’t matter, but no one was more relieved to lift the WS trophy than Sparky Anderson.

“I had no fun in 1984,” Sparky wrote. “We set ourselves up for disappointment with that hot start. I was scared to death that we were going to blow it.”

You might say, “Well that’s a fine attitude for a manager to have!”

But Sparky kept his feelings close to the vest, sharing them only with his coaches, Ernie Harwell and Dan Ewald, the Tigers’ PR guy.

With his players, Sparky was the epitome of optimism. With the press, he was the same old Sparky.

But inside, the pressure to not manage a bunch of choke artists, plus his unspoken fascination with winning a World Series in both leagues, gobbled him up all summer.

For pure, unadulterated fun, Sparky points to the 1987 Tigers.

That team wasn’t expected to do diddly-squat in the pre-season prognostications.

Then they started 11-19 and everyone had the Tigers buried.

Sparky went on channel 4’s pregame show in late-May, the team floundering, and told George Kell and Al Kaline that the skipper was feeling something positive brewing.

He was right.

GM Bill Lajoie picked up Bill Madlock off the Dodgers’ scrap heap in early-June and Mad Dog’s rebirth coincided with the Tigers’ rise from the ashes.

The Tigers went 87-45 the rest of the way and blew past the Blue Jays in a thrilling final week.

“That team gave me all that they could give me,” Sparky wrote about the 1-4 flameout in the ALCS against the Twins. “I couldn’t have been more proud of them.”

Sparky called 1987 his most satisfying season as a manager. Why? Because he guided a clear underdog to a division title. It was a sort of anti-1984 thing.

Sparky’s consternation about 1984 also had something to do with what he said in his opening presser in June 1979, when he was formally introduced as Tigers manager. He admitted as such in his book.

“I’ve promised (owner) John Fetzer and (GM) Jim Campbell that we will have a world’s champion here before I’m done,” Sparky told the media before taking the reigns later that night. “If I can’t make this ballclub a winner in five years, then I’ll walk away and say I failed. And I will have failed. But I don’t intend to fail.”

Some may have forgotten those 1979 words, but Sparky Anderson didn’t.

1984 represented Year 5 and “failure” in Sparky’s book if the Tigers didn’t win.

Turned out that Sparky didn’t have to worry. Actually, “Sparky” didn’t worry—but “George” did.

Sparky was Anderson’s strictly baseball persona. George was the person behind the baseball persona. Sparky didn’t have time for personal things like worries. But George did—the man that only his wife and inner circle saw during the season.

The ‘84-era Tigers (and Sparky himself) have, over the years, been criticized as having never won a second championship; that their talent level was too good to be one-hit wonders.

But for one year, they elicited words like this, from Padres catcher Terry Kennedy, who spoke glowingly of the team that beat them 4-1 in the ‘84 WS.

“They’re not flashy, just very professional,” Kennedy told the media from the losers’ clubhouse. “There’s no bullshit about them. They just go out and kick your ass. I like that. I like them.”