August 25 was a milestone day for major league baseball, for both record-setting and sad reasons.
Tampa Bay Rays’ pitcher Jeremy Hellickson struck out four Tigers in one inning. In almost two hundred thousand games, four strikeouts in one inning had been accomplished only 59 times. The Tigers won, and increased their lead in the American League Central division to six games over the Cleveland Indians, who re-acquired fan favorite Jim Thome from the Minnesota Twins.
At Yankee Stadium, the Yankees became the first team in major league history to hit three grand slam home runs in one game, as they defeated the Oakland Athletics 22-9. A’s pitchers walked seven in the seventh inning. It’s hard to walk that many in a whole game.
The afternoon’s baseball fun, featuring strikeouts and slams in record-setting quantities, and Thome’s T-homecoming, was tempered with sadness; with the news that former Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Mike Flanagan had been found dead the day before at his Maryland home, and that his death had been ruled a suicide.
If you pitch for the Orioles and Jays long enough, your path and that of the Tigers will eventually cross, and theirs and Flanagan’s did on three occasions.
The game of Saturday, October 3, 1987, was the middle game in a season ending Tigers-Jays series at Tiger Stadium. The teams began the day tied for first in the American League Eastern Division race, with two games to play. Flanagan faced Tigers ace Jack Morris. Nine days earlier, Flanagan bested Morris at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto.
He and Morris matched each other through nine innings. Flanagan went eleven, was ready to pitch the twelfth, but came out with the score even at two. In the bottom of the twelfth, Alan Trammell singled in Jim Walewander with the winning run. The win set up Sunday’s Tiger clincher, the 1-0 Frank Tanana shutout / Larry Herndon homer game.
The Jays released Flanagan after the 1990 season. He reported to Orioles spring training camp in 1991 as a non-roster invitee. The sixteen year veteran, Cy Young Award winner, hero of the 1979 and 1983 World Series, who won 23 in ’79, made the team as a long reliever.
1991 was the last year the Orioles played in Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, and everyone associated with the O’s — including Flanagan — thought it would be nice if he could throw the last pitch in the historic stadium on East 33rd Street.
In the last game of 1991, the Orioles were up 7-1 over the Tigers after eight innings. With one out in the ninth, O’s skipper Johnny Oates pointed to the pen. Fifty thousand fans, already awash in nostalgia, roared when they saw number 46 trot across the outfield.
Flanagan struck out Dave Bergman and Travis Fryman to end the game.
Former Orioles players, in uniform, then appeared from under the stands and took their positions, creating a Field Of Dreams-like scene that became the standard for last-game ceremonies at baseball parks. No one had ever seen anything like it. Tigers radio announcer Paul Carey called the event a “happening.”
Mike Flanagan, both a current Oriole and part of the past, stayed on the mound. Rick Dempsey crouched behind the plate and put down a sign. Twenty-five pitchers, Flanagan noted, shook him off.
YouTube still has the video of Flanagan’s third memorable encounter with the Tigers, in 1980; Oriole manager Earl Weaver’s profane rant directed at first base umpire Bill Haller, who had called a balk on Flanagan.
As Weaver storms and points and rages, and while Tiger first base coach Dick Tracewski watches, Flanagan — number 46 — is easily spotted.
“They (hosed) you,” Weaver told his pitcher.
Flanagan’s assessment of the play: “I balked.”
Earl Weaver was obsessed with pitching, possibly because he couldn’t hit it well enough to play in the major leagues. Orioles’ TV analyst Jim Palmer remembered the day Weaver thought Flanagan needed work on holding runners close, and inserted himself into a workout at first base.
“There . . . I just stole second off you,” Weaver stated.
“Yes, but how did you ever get on?” asked Flanagan.
There exists a plethora of Flanagan material. He gave unconventional Oriole pitcher Don Stanhouse the nickname “Stan The Man Unusual.” Ruben Sierra in his prime with the Texas Rangers, was “Ruben Scare-Ya.” After winning the Cy Young Award in 1979, he separated the award into its components: Cy Present (Steve Stone, who would win in 1980), Cy Old (past winner Palmer), Cy Future (rookie Storm Davis), and Cy Yonara (what they tell you when you’re through).
Mike Flanagan’s death shook the baseball world. Its cause, and his day-to-day baseball role as Palmer’s and Gary Thorne’s colleague on Orioles TV, made it an event that stuns even the jaded fan, who re-reads the news because it’s too unbelievable the first time.
It moves the fan to find a spot on the front porch and gaze into the warm August night, and listen to crickets chirp and the woosh-click of lawn sprinklers, and think; about those Tigers/Flanagan games, the transitory existence of humans on earth, the attention given baseball stats and records — mere numbers in the long run — and what would compel someone as beloved in and out of baseball as Mike Flanagan to end his life.
He would have turned 60 in December, and wasn’t that much older than me. He grew up with baseball, and saw things happen at about the same ages I did. And he was blessed with a Far Side sense of humor. Anyone can be serious. Not everyone sees the funny side of baseball, and even fewer who do can effectively turn their thoughts into words.
The game needs more guys who can, and is a lesser thing now that one of the best who could is gone.