Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1226: Straight from the Fireman’s Mouth

Episode Date: June 6, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the improving defense of Mike Trout and Matt Kemp, two minor observations prompted by amateur draft coverage, and a confusing quirk in the standings, then time travel back to a dramatically different era in bullpen usage by bringing in the most valuable reliever of the 1970s: Detroit Tigers […]

I heard the man, without a plan, to shake it up, and set it down, again. A boat to be walking on, my daughter on the block, a 17 to walk, sees all the lights got to go out. I'm messing around, I don't want to stop, without a sound. I'm clean, I take a seat, I heard the message now now the message is mine who can write the most about Mike Trout being the best and being on pace for the best season of all time. Sam got there first. I did my little micro-analyses. Sam wrote recently about how he's on pace for the best season ever. And then you wrote how he has improved his defense.

Talk about that. Yeah, I wonder if you added up all of the thousands of words that each of us has written about Mike Trout. I think I joked once that you and I and Sam and Grant, we should just like put our collected Mike Trout works into a book or something at some point, the book of Trout. But yeah, I think I wanted to focus on his defense because, well, I already wrote about his offense and I can't keep writing about exactly the same thing over and over and again. But the real reason I would say that he is on pace for his best season and perhaps the best season of all time, yes, he's better on offense am convinced that he is genuinely better at defense. And range was not his strong suit between to the Angels outfield coach. And at the conclusion

of all this inquiry, I found that Mike Trout is better at defense basically because Mike Trout wanted to be better at defense. And he just showed up this year and he asked, what can I be better at? And he saw the stats were not that great. And he said, okay, I want to be better at that. And now he's better at that. And basically he is just running faster in the outfield. He is getting better jumps. He is just kind of going all out instead of kind of coasting on his still elite speed. And he's just been fantastic.

So that's the thing. Babe Ruth's best of all time season was not his best of all time offensive season. It was his best of all time defensive season. It was his best of all time defensive season. And when you're looking at a stat like war that values all around contributions, that's really going to help. So if Trout gets there, it will be as much as anything because his defense is better and his defense is better because he wanted it to be. And by the way, as long as we're talking about defense, defense can be the theme of this intro. I just wrote a thing that surprised

me when I found it. You know who's been not bad at defense this year matt kemp matt yeah leads the los angeles dodgers in wins above replacement he's been a very good hitter we've seen that before he was a very good hitter the first two months of last season but his defense now he's not good i want to make that clear he's 30 he's almost 34 years old he's not a good defender but he's been fine he's been fined by defensive run saved he's been fined by ultimate zone writing. He's been fine by stat casts outs above average. He's been fine across the board. You'd have to dig pretty deep to find evidence that he hasn't been average. And for the previous four seasons, he was like the worst defender that played regularly. He was spectacularly bad because he couldn't really move around. So for all, the Dodgers didn't even want

him. They got him because of his contract. They were playing accounting games. They were just trying to dump him all offseason. They kept him. I know I didn't believe that they were actually going to give him a job. I thought all that talk in spring training was just propaganda. I don't know where you came down on that, but neither one of us, I think, really expected much out of Matt Kemp in Los Angeles,

because why would you? He was not good previous to Los Angeles. He's fine. He's fine now. he's actually good he's a huge reason why the Dodgers are competitive ordinarily when the Dodgers have a player come out of nowhere it's like oh look what the front office figured out nope big old wet fart front office gets no credit for this one they didn't want Matt Kemp and he's been the best player on the team it is hilarious so what is it is it just that he's in better shape and is he running better I mean why is he better at defense i couldn't figure out anything with

the with the positioning uh his depth seems and angles seems to be the same as they were before yeah same with trout yep you uh you go back to spring training and the report was that he showed up like 40 pounds lighter which is that's a lot of pounds uh yes it hurts to try to lift 40 pounds with one arm because i am an at-home baseball blogger so and uh looking at statcasts you know sprint speed which they have matt kemp's speed it has the third greatest increase relative to last season in baseball is around like matt olsen is one of the other ones and somebody oh mike mustakis who also made a point of getting into better shape as you wrote about sprint speed doesn't capture everything there's also like how quickly you

start i didn't research that because i write things a lot faster than you do so i didn't try i didn't send out any feelers so matt camp is running better he hasn't been hurt this year and uh i i would imagine i found some similar looking plays that this year he got in range and he was willing to dive. Last year he didn't do that. And I'm going to guess there's an element of confidence here. He just feels more athletic. So he's willing to try to be more athletic.

And he's making some diving catches. And he's made some pretty good plays. He hasn't been challenged that much, which is a number we can look at in terms of his expected catch rate. It's quite a bit higher than it was either of the previous two seasons. the dodgers also haven't let kemp finish half the games he started they've taken him out because you know they want to arrest him and also you don't want to be overexposed because matt kemp is playing the outfield but it doesn't really matter in the end we're in more than two months into the season matt kemp fine defender incredible yeah yeah that's the thing with trout his base running sprint speed is the

same. So he's not necessarily faster as a human being, but he is faster as an outfielder. He has just made a conscious effort to always be very engaged in the game and to be taking that first step, even if the ball isn't hit to him. And so his outfield sprint speed, which is not a public statistic, but does exist. He's better at that now. So I think the most encouraging thing there is that not only is he perhaps on pace for the best season of all time because of this, but I think it improves his outlook for the rest of his career, because you could have looked at Mike Trout's range stats the last couple of years, certainly last year, and thought, okay, he's a few years away from having to move to a corner potentially. And obviously Mike Trout, if he kept hitting like Mike Trout would still be a superstar

in a corner. But if you want him to turn out to be the best player of all time, he's going to have a better chance of that if he ends up playing center until he's 40, like Willie Mays and being a passable defender. And now it seems more likely at least that he could do that. He's kind of reset the clock on his aging curve. And, you know, for all his achievements, Mike Trout has never won a gold glove. He said at the beginning of the season he wanted to win a gold glove, and he currently has the best defensive stats of any AL center fielder. So maybe he will win a gold glove. So less surprising, perhaps, that Trout has done that than Matt Kemp, but both surprising in their own way. So one other thing I want to mention here, I know it's draft week and everyone's interested in the draft. You and I have very little draft expertise, so we will be talking on our next episode to someone who does

have draft expertise and will be educating you and us at the same time. But Rob Manfred needs to be educated about something, as we learned in the draft. Someone reported this to us on Twitter. Yeah, so somebody tweeted at both of us the other day. Mike Thompson said, Manfred said Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim when announcing their pick. Even he didn't know.

So I'm doing a little bit of research. You go to the Angels Wikipedia page, and it says that they were the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim until 2015. Since then, they've been the Los Angeles Angels. You look at their baseball reference page, it says the same thing. Los Angeles Angels starting in 2016. No of Anaheim. Rob Manfred doesn't know. Seems like, at least based on the one paragraph of Wikipedia that I've read, it's a little more complicated than that you can go make yourself some tea because i'm going to read a paragraph out loud word for word starting right now in 2005 new owner arturo moreno just call him arty added los angeles to the team's

name in compliance with the terms of its lease with the city of anaheim which required anaheim to be a part of the team's name the team was renamed the los angeles angels of anaheim fans residents and the municipal government of both anaheim and Los Angeles all objected to the change. But the city of Anaheim pursuing litigation, semicolon, nevertheless, the change was eventually upheld in court and the city dropped its lawsuit in 2009. We've been over this. The team usually refers to itself as the Angels or Angels Baseball in its home media market. And the words Los Angeles and LAA do not appear in the stadium, on the Angels' uniforms, or on official team merchandise.

Local media in Southern California tend to omit a geographic identifier at all and refer to the team as the Angels or as the Halos. The Associated Press, the most prominent news service in the United States, refers to the team as the Los Angeles Angels, the Angels, or Los Angeles. The team refers to itself as the Los Angeles Angels on its social media accounts, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. In 2013, the team was to officially drop of Anaheim from its name as part of a new Angel Stadium lease negotiated with the Anaheim City government.

The deal was never finalized, though as of 2017, most official sources omit the of Anaheim suffix and the official MLB style guide has referred to the team as simply the Los Angeles Angels since the 2016 season. So style guide, Los Angeles Angels. Officially still of Anaheim, I guess. If the deal was never finalized, there's a bunch of footnotes here that I haven't clicked because I don't really want to get in the weeds here. But if Rob Manfred doesn't even know what

to call him, then I think we're all in the clear. Yeah. I think the bigger problem, as John Wiseman noted on Twitter, was that on the big board behind Manfred where it said MLB draft 18, the apostrophe before the 18 was facing the wrong way. It was a backwards apostrophe. That, I think, is the more serious mistake. It angered my inner copy editor. So I also want to mention something that fortunately is no longer plaguing us, which is that the standings in the AL East were extremely confusing as of the beginning of this week because the Red Sox had played six more games than the Yankees had, which sounds impossible. But of course, there were a record number of

rainouts this April and lots of teams were off. The Yankees barely played at all one week. And so you had this very strange situation where the Yankees had a higher winning percentage than the Red Sox, but were technically one game behind the Red Sox. And so they were listed on the MLB standings page as being one game back, even though they had the higher winning percentage. And lots of people were very confused about this. I know that it broke some websites. I believe Sean Dolinar of Fangraphs said that it broke the Fangraphs standings page.

And we were getting questions about this from listeners, Anthony, Tyler, Travis. So I asked Dan Hirsch of the Baseball Gauge to look into this and find out when the last time this happened. And he was able to find that this was somewhat more common way back at the dawn of baseball when teams would play sort of irregular schedules, and it would be more common for one team to have played many more games than another team. And so if you go back to like the 1890s, you could find times when this happened in September. But in modern baseball, the last time this happened this late in the season was the same date, June 4th on 1964. Chicago trailed Baltimore by one game, But those two teams had identical

winning percentages at that point. If you want to go back to when one team had an outright lead in winning percentage in its league or division that late in the year while being a game behind another team, you have to go all the way back to 1919. So it was 99 years between instances of this happening this late in the year. Before that, it was 1901. This was really confusing, and I know it was breaking people's brains. And fortunately, the Yankees played a doubleheader on Monday and split that doubleheader. And so now this is, for the moment, no longer a problem, which comes as a great relief to all of us. I agree with Twitter user Dan, who said, this is the most boring tweet I have ever read. Yes. I retweeted that because I appreciated it. So as I mentioned, we'll be talking to someone

about the draft next time, but we also have a guest today. And our guest is the most valuable relief pitcher of the 1970s. And when I say that, maybe some names come to your mind. Maybe you're thinking, oh, it's Goose Gossage, who would probably not at all enjoy being on this podcast. Maybe it's Sparky Lyle. Maybe it's Raleigh Fingers. Maybe it's Mike Marshall. Maybe it's Bruce Suter.

All those guys were valuable relievers in the 1970s. They made the Hall of Fame. They won Cy Young Awards. But that's not who we're talking to. We are talking to John Hiller, who you may or may not know, but you should know, because he was worth about 28 war, according to baseball reference, in the 1970s, which was way more than any other reliever. And he was really kind of a trailblazer. A couple of years ago, during the height of Andrew Miller mania, Joe Posnanski wrote an

article for NBC where he called Hiller the first fireman and he said that Hiller was really doing something that no one had ever done before. I'm quoting from his story now. Yes, there had been relief pitchers who were used in many different situations, Hoyt Wilhelm, Dick Raddatz, Tug McGraw, Mike Marshall, among others, and were extremely valuable. But no reliever, not even Mike Marshall, And I think you can quibble with that. You can argue about whether he was something revolutionary or just kind of an incremental change. Certainly there were guys going back to, I don't know, Joe Page in the 40s who were doing this sort of thing. But John Hiller's 1973 season, if you're not aware of it, just go back and look because this was, according to baseball reference, worth eight wins above replacement. That was, to that point, the most valuable relief season ever. He had 38 saves, which was also the most

ever to that point. He pitched in 65 games and through 125 and a third innings, he finished 60 of the 65 games that he pitched in. So he would just come in all over the place, fifth inning, sixth inning, seventh inning, and he'd finish the game. He only had six low leverage appearances in his 65, so he was almost always coming in at a really important time. The average leverage index when he entered games that year was 2.3, so the average situation in a game is 1, so if you start getting up into 2, that's a high leverage situation. He was at 2.3 on average when he entered games. No one to that point had ever had an average leverage index when they entered the game that high in that many innings,

thanks to Hans Van Sluyten at Baseball Reference for helping me out with that stat. So no one had ever had a season quite like John Hiller's. There were a number of copycats, but not many people have exactly replicated what he did that year. And this is, to this day, really, if not the most valuable relief season ever, it's second behind the one that Gossage had a couple years after that. So he was just really something new. And I think with all the focus this year on Josh Hader, for instance, who is doing a version of that for the Brewers, and we've all written our Josh Hader articles. I wrote mine last week. And what he's doing is, of course, phenomenal and impressive. But John Hiller got there 45 years ago.

And oh, by the way, he also had serious heart attacks like right before that. And he came back to do that. So he's one of the first, one of the only players to come back from having a heart attack mid-career. And of course, he is now 75. He is still around all these years later. So he managed to beat that. And he played for the Tigers his whole career, 15 years from 1965 to 1980. He is also the second most valuable Canadian-born pitcher of all time behind Fergie Jenkins. So really kind of a fascinating career. Yeah. And for the record, I know this doesn't really have to do with the guest, but it was back in back in april that josh hater struck out 63 percent of his opponents which was just something unbelievable because we've seen what craig

kimbrell and aroldis chapman are the only people who've finished above 50 in the season and and since then predictably josh hater has slowed down all the way to striking out 50 of his opponents he's allowed a batting average of 113. He has remained ever so fantastic. So yes, it is fun to look at what's going on now and then examine the precedent from 40 years ago. Yeah, exactly. Right. So, you know, Hiller obviously was not recording the strikeout numbers that Hader is today, but relative to his time in his league, he was quite a good strikeout pitcher. In fact, earlier this year, when Hader became the first pitcher in Major League history to strike out eight guys in two and two thirds innings, it was noted in a number of news reports that there had been six relievers in the three innings pitched eight strikeouts club.

And one of those was John Hiller in 1977. Just imagine Hader, but he pitches even more often and goes even longer when he does. even more often and goes even longer when he does. And that year, Hiller ended up with a 144 ERA, and that's a 283 ERA+. He finished fourth in Cy Young Award voting and MVP voting. And I don't know why it is. He's just, it seems like not that well known today. Of course, he only had one all-star appearance in two years, 73 and 74, when he was in the MVP voting and the Cy Young voting. But he continued to be a really excellent pitcher, the only reliever who's ever been worth more over a three-year span than Hiller was from 73 to 75, when he totaled more than

15 war, was Dick Raddatz in the early 60s. He had a good year in 76, even though, as you'll hear, he thinks he didn't, and continued to be good in 77 even. And he was just racking up innings and almost always pitching in high leverage, and Billy Martin was his manager. So he was really just pushing the envelope. And so we'll talk to him about how he was able to do that and why guys don't do it today and whether we'll ever get back to a point

where anyone's stats will ever look like John Hiller's again. So we will take a quick break and then we'll be back with John Hiller for the rest of this episode and we will talk draft tomorrow. He's a fireman. My daddy's a fireman. He is brave. He is strong. Okay, so we now have the pleasure to be joined by John Heller. John, how are you? I'm doing good. Up here in the UP. A little cool today, so I've been out cutting grass a bit and just messing around the yard. start, I guess, going back to the beginning, because of course, you are one of the most accomplished Canadian pitchers in Major League history. And I know that at first, you didn't necessarily expect to end up playing baseball. You were more of a hockey guy, as many Canadians are.

So for people who haven't read up on your story, can you describe how you got to the point that you pursued baseball as a career? Oh, I guess, you know, I guess baseball more or less pursued me. You know, when we talk about wanting to play hockey or professional hockey, that was a wild dream. I was not even nearly good enough. You know, I loved to play, and I played from the time I was probably seven or eight years old as I did baseball. But like I said, I was a little left-handed goaltender,

and we didn't even have the proper equipment, you know, back in the early 50s for left-handed goaltenders. So I just sort of went out and enjoyed myself and picked up baseball just for something to do in the summer. And as time went on, I found out that I could throw strikes through, you know, fairly good fastball, I guess, and didn't mess around with anything else, curveballs. And I actually had a scout who was driving past Scarborough, and he saw some lights. And I was 16 at the time, and he just stopped curious and watched me pitch the ballgame.

And as it turned out out i struck out every batter in uh in the game that night i struck out actually the catcher catcher dropped the ball and won so i struck out 22 and seven innings and um he came and asked me afterwards if i'd ever had any thoughts about um pursuing a baseball career and i sort of chuckled. It was the first that I'd ever talked to anybody or even thought about it. And I was only 16. So he just, he asked for my number and I gave him my phone number and he says, you know, I might be in touch with you in the future. Well, it was actually almost a year and a half to two years. And he did, he called me, wanted to sit down, meet my parents. And actually we had a bird dog in scarborough bob prentice who had spent quite almost i think at 10 or 11 12 years in the cleveland minor league system and i played for

bobby on friday nights we had a little team called friday night selects and we barnstormed and then bob put a word to the tiger said you got to come and see this guy so next thing you know i got a contract in front of me for 400 a month to go play ball said, you've got to come and see this guy. So next thing you know, I've got a contract in front of me for $400 a month to go play ball in Jamestown, New York. And in a way, the rest is history. So one of the theories that surrounds whenever a young Canadian player is drafted or scouted in the current days, and it's similar with players who are in the Northeast, but one of the theories is that they just don't have time to get as many reps as someone who's from the Southwest or just the regular South in the in the United States because just because of weather

concerns. So what do you what do you have to say with regard to how your own development was? Because you said you picked up baseball as something to do during the summer. But how much of a year round process was it for you? And how if it wasn't a year-round process how important do you think that was oh goodness i just i just feel i was blessed i mean we only played uh you know and i can't even think back and think about exactly what months we played i know up here my grandson who's 13 and just won a tournament uh they've only got about a week and a half left of their season, and then that's it. And it's just still cool up here at times.

So I'm not even sure how... I played for the Kiwanis, organized these leagues back then, and I'm not even sure how late in the summer. When baseball was over, that was pretty much it for me. I didn't do anything until hockey. I didn't play football late in the summer. When baseball was over, that was pretty much it for me. I didn't do anything until hockey. I didn't play football. I loved track. I did do track at school, but never played basketball.

And I didn't actually even play for the high school hockey team. It was just the East York and then up in Scarborough Leagues. I don't know. I think that, you know, in recent years, once they started to play baseball in school, and that was way after I signed my contract, I believe, then it became maybe more of a sport that people started to think about maybe year-round or in the winter or stay conditioned.

But at my point, days i i did very little i was probably a little bit lazy back then and in in my teenage years and uh uh again i was just blessed i could throw a baseball i was quite thin i could run wasn't much of a hitter um i guess at that level i was in in toronto i was pretty good hitter butter. But just very blessed with an arm. I could pitch and pitch and pitch and not get a sore arm. And that was basically it. Once I got my opportunity to play in the pros, I wasn't overly ambitious. I didn't have these great dreams or what I was going to do.

And maybe because of growing up in Canada, Fergie Jenkins was the only other Canadian at the time that I knew of, and we didn't know each other. We were about 100, 150 miles apart, so we didn't even play against each other. So just, again, it was something I loved to do and just something that I did in the summer. And like I said, baseball sort of pursued me, and I became a better player

the longer I played. And I'm sure you want to touch on a heart attack, but after my heart attack, I started finally taking care of myself and bear down and became a much better ball player. Yeah, we will get to that in just a moment and as well as your work in the 70s. And you mentioned the rubber arm. And that's one thing I want to ask you because it was really, it seems like even from the very beginning of your professional career, even in the minors, you were always sort of in a swingman role. You were always starting sometimes, relieving sometimes. Was it more common at the time for pitchers to come up that way and not get nailed down to a certain role? Or was that just something about you that you always had that ability and teams always wanted to use you that way? Yeah, I, you know, I'm, I'm not even sure. I wish I could, you know, try and figure out what

was in their head or what they were thinking. You know, there was only, nobody made any money and I, I didn't even get a bonus. I got a pair of spikes. So, I mean, they didn't have an investment in me whatsoever. And most of the players I played with throughout my first, say, three years in the minor leagues, there wasn't a big investment. And so they weren't taking many chances. If I, you know, if I hurt myself or whatever, they weren't going to lose any money, just a few thousand dollars for development. And I was a starter in my first year in A-ball and then in second year. And then third year in AA, they decided that maybe they'd make me a relief pitcher. And so I was at Montgomery, Alabama, pretty much strictly relief.

And next step to that, back to Syracuse, relief pitching and a little bit of starting. And then later, Toledo did both. You know, and then at the major league level, I was, we were, you know, Pat Dobson was my roommate. And we were both the same. He was right-handed from Buffalo, New York. And he was a right-handed reliever. I was left, of course, and then we would start games when we had, you know, scheduled doubleheaders back in those days.

Every Sunday was pretty much a doubleheader, or one of the starters was out for a while, and either Pat or I would go in and start, and, you know, chances are, we'd be pitching relief for maybe a month, and then the next thing you know we were starting a ball game and we went eight or nine innings. So there was no, we'd just go out there and pitch. If you were in there for one inning, pitch one. If you were in there in the fifth, then you were expected to go through to the ninth. And if you started, you were expected to complete the ball game.

There was, you know, we didn't pitch count. And actually, Fulmer with the Tigers broke my record last year. I, in 67, Earl Wilson got hurt, and I was thrown into the starting rotation. And my first two games were complete game shutouts. And then my third game was I pitched, I think, eight and a third innings and got a man on, and the manager brought in Fred Lasher, and he saved the game. So I had, what, nine and 18, 26 and a third innings of scoreless ball starting.

And then I started one more game after that. Really, I got bombed, actually, by Oakland. And then Earl Wilson recovered from his injury, whatever it was, and I was thrown back in the bullpen. It's just the way it was in those days. It's totally different. Even after my heart attack, I hadn't faced a batter in a year and a half. I was a minor league pitching coach, slash, scout,

whatever they wanted me to do in the minors, and I threw bat in practice, and all of a sudden, a year and a half, I went through on the side for Billy Martin in Chicago, and he liked what he saw, and I was in a game that night. You know, no rehab, and I actually, I think I pitched three innings and didn't walk, maybe two, and didn't walk a batter. So, I mean, it's just totally a different day, you know, a different time, and we were used differently,

and expectations were much different. And, you know, nowadays, too, the money is so great, and I'm not focusing on the salaries, but more focusing on the investment that the ball clubs have. So they coddle these fellows a little bit, probably a little too much, but they've got such great investments in them. And they're signing five-year $200 million contracts, $150 million. So they watch them a little differently than what they watched us.

Yes, right. So tell us about the circumstances that led to the heart attack. And there are accounts in various places that say multiple heart attacks. Others say just one heart attack. Can you give us the specifics? How did it happen and when and where? Okay. I'm January 11th, living in Duluth, Minnesota.

And I just got back from a snowmobile trip up near the Boundary Waters. We're way northern Minnesota, and it was probably 25 below zero. Anyways, the first morning home, and I was having my usual breakfast, coffee and a cigarette, and that's when I had the first heart attack. I never lost consciousness, but it just grabbed my chest, and I put the cigarette out, and about an hour later, I tried the same thing, and I got that grab in the chest again, and quite stupid of me, but about an hour later, I did it again, and I had a little more severe pain, and that's when I got some of the other symptoms, pains in the arms, and in the neck, and sweating, and that's when I got some of the other symptoms, pains in the arms and in the neck and sweating.

And that's when I decided I better call somebody. So I called my doctor. And he actually just, I mean, I was 27 years old. So there was no, I thought I had pneumonia in 1966. So I thought, well, it was this inhaling thing and that was the lungs. I thought there was something with that. Anyway, he said, well, come into the hospital, and I'll meet you there. And I had to unhitch my snowmobile.

So I'm outside. It's maybe 10, 15 below zero. I'm sweating, and I'm out unhitching my snowmobile from my Bronco. It sounds like not the recommended thing to do after a heart attack. Probably not. Anyways, the next thing I know, I'm at the hospital, and within 10 minutes, I'm in the coronary care unit, all hooked up and being told that I've had a heart attack.

So I spent a good two and a half, three weeks. They did it different back then. It was pretty much complete bed rest for about two and a half to three weeks. They did it different back then. It was pretty much complete bed rest for about two and a half to three weeks. Anyway, then I had a surgery that was quite radical. I went to Minnesota and had an experimental surgery and had an intestinal bypass, and it happened to work.

It never did have any success after that. And within six months, my blockages were gone, and I was ready to start trying to work out. And I went from about 210 pounds, and I got some infections in the hospital and such. I was down to 145. So I had a little road back, and I just went to the YMCA and started working out and started running and I'd say within another six months I thought I was ready to you know come back to the major leagues or come back to baseball in some sense and the cardiologists in Michigan I went to a couple hospitals and they were more or less afraid to endorse me. They didn't think I could play ball again and actually ended up seeing President Johnson's personal cardiologist in Atlanta, Georgia. He was head

of the American Heart Association. And I guess the ironic thing, I had two appointments with Dr. Hurst, his name was, but the president had heart attacks the day before my appointment, so they both were canceled, of course. Anyway, I finally saw him in probably June of 72, and he just sort of winked at me, and he said, give me a couple weeks. He says, you'll be playing again. Well, you're still here, so I guess he did good work. Yeah. Anyway, he actually came out with a statement he said john hill is going to have a heart attack if he doesn't play ball again it's my opinion that uh pitching baseball is not going to hurt him so in this present day and age you have teams that are in communication with their players even their minor league players throughout the offseason they're in constant communication

about how their players are doing health-wise but how how did the tigers become aware of the fact that you had a heart attack? Did you reach out to them? Was it something that eventually came out? What was the process? I eventually had to. Duluth is not a small city. I don't know now. It was close to 100,000, maybe 90,000 people back then. So I guess in a way, remote enough or out of the way enough, I just asked, I knew the media, and I said, please don't put this in a paper. In my own way, I need to get hold of the Tigers.

Well, I thought I was going to get better because I was, you know, I never passed out. I didn't have this huge angina. So this was January 11th. We didn't usually report until about the end of February. So I was just biding my time, figured, okay, I'll get better and I'll be okay until I had the angiogram and they found out there was blockages. And I would guess it was probably about a week from spring training. And I called our general manager, Jim Campbell, and I said, Jim, I don't think I'm going to make spring training. I've had a heart attack.

And he started laughing. He thought I was just, you know, giving him some bull and such. So I finally convinced him that, you know, no, this is true. I'm probably not going to make it. Well, then that's when he finally got his people to look into it and talk to the doctors, and that was that for that time. So he just said, go do what you got to do. But again, I was not instrumental.

You know, I had a decent year in 68 and such, but they were going to get along without me. So I wasn't a priority i don't think i never they didn't stay too much in touch with me and i did have our team physician who um i don't know if we had a little special relationship or not but he kept uh he was the one that got me the appointments with dr hurst and he kept telling me we're gonna do're going to do all we can to try and get you back, John. So I doubt very much I would have ever played again if it wasn't for Dr. Livingood, you know, looking around and trying to find ways to get me back.

And of course, players today are so well-conditioned and exercising constantly, and there are team nutritionists and healthy meals in the clubhouse. I mean, things were very different at that time. So what was your exercise or health regime prior to the heart attack, if there was one, and how did that change post-heart attack? Well, I guess, well, the first thing, I quit smoking and I quit drinking. I don't, you know, the shame, I guess the shame of the times, if we probably, if the guys nowadays drank probably as much as we did back then,

we'd be probably considered to have a problem. But, you know, I always think, I know hockey players are good, you know, good beer drinkers. They like, you play hard at night and you unwind a little bit and, you know, you go have a few brews afterwards. I think they watch them a little more closely now. But I drank on the road. I just did.

I didn't. I hardly worked. I hated to run. And I hardly did a thing. We all had to work back then. You know, when you're making $6,000, $7,000 a year playing baseball. And I had to maintain an apartment in Detroit, and I had a house in Minnesota.

I went back to Minnesota every winter, so with that salary and maintaining two places and having a couple children. But I didn't do a darn thing really in the wintertime prior to my heart attack. And then after my heart attack, I continued not to smoke. And I did start drinking again, but I think I watched it. And then I would work out at the YMCA in the wintertime after that and do some conditioning. I still wouldn't think it was anything maybe like they do nowadays. still wouldn't think it was anything maybe like they do nowadays and we were probably most of us probably went to spring training you know five six seven maybe ten pounds overweight and they

put rubber suits on us and put us through a program and uh spring training was as much trying to lose a few pounds as it was trying to get into shape and you know you see the players nowadays they probably could start playing a week or two after, you know, being in spring training a bit. Right. And so when you come back from the heart attack, the Tigers had given you a contract to be a minor league instructor and then a batting practice pitcher. And then you go right from that into actually being back in games again. And you were a different player at that point. I know that you picked up a slider, I think, from Johnny Sane earlier, and then you picked up the change up while you were in the minors from a minor league pitching coach, and

you were just a different guy after that with the three pitches. So tell us about picking up those pitches because often today there is an analytical component to it where a team will look at a guy's arsenal and say, well, the numbers say that if you pair this pitch with that pitch, it will be more effective. And back then, I guess it was more kind of ad hoc. It was just, hey, I met this guy and he told me this grip and here we go. And it worked. And for you, that kind of transformed your career. So tell us about how you picked up those pitches. Yeah, well, I never really did.

You know, I think one of the blessings of growing up in Canada, and I didn't have anybody there telling me I had to throw curveballs and, you know, we had to win ballgames. We were a bunch of guys out there having some fun. And, of course, winning was always great, but it didn't seem that there was a whole lot of pressure on the coaches to win baseball games. So I never threw really what I would call a breaking ball

until I got into pro ball. So I was pretty much an adult, 19-year-old. Arm had developed pretty much. And so one reason I feel I didn't have too many arm problems, but Johnny Sane, he had this little breaking ball and it was fairly easy to throw with not much stress in your elbow. And we called it a slurve. It was combination curveball and slider. And I could throw that and get it across the plate for strikes, you know, pretty good. Never really had a good change up and I needed, I didn't throw that hard. We didn't have the guns back then, but

I'd say maybe 91. And I needed another pitch and a fellow, Johnny Grazigi was a minor league pitching coach in the Tiger organization when I went to spring training that year and uh he just could throw this thing and his arm speed was just unbelievable and the ball would just sort of squirt out and uh learned how to throw it with the same spin as my fastball and it changed my whole career around so then i had a great great great catcher bill freehand 11-time All-Star. And Bill would just put down signs, and I threw them. I rarely shook off, and I felt he was there every day, and he knew the batters, and he knew me. So that was about it.

Simplified it as much as we could, or as much as I could. I think once the pitcher decides to be, tried to get a little too smart, that's when we get in trouble. So throw strikes, pitch ahead, and, you know, first pitch fastball, and that was about it. You know, when I came back, all I wanted to accomplish was to get the opportunity again, to find out if I could. And, you know, I was 27 years old, two children, no education, no skill.

So that was my motivation was I needed to work. I needed a paycheck. And then after the heart attack, it was more like, boy, I've got nothing to lose. Yes. I mean, I imagine, I would guess that most people were even thinking I was going to fail. Even my ex-wife, she's passed away now, but my first wife didn't even think that I could make it after she saw all the weight I'd lost and how weak I was.

But I had really, in my mind, nothing to lose, so I just went out there and gave it what I had. And I was, in a way, really fortunate to have Billy Martin, I think, as a manager because he always sort of played the hot hand and he didn't care who you were, whether you were the lowest on the rung or the so-called superstar. If you were doing well, you were playing.

If you weren't doing well, you weren't playing. And from the day I came back, I sort of excelled. And I'd say within two or three days, I was the closer and pretty much remained the closer right up until Sparky Anderson joined the manager and fortunate that they didn't rehab back then because if I had been lousy during any kind of rehab, I might not have ever got back to the majors.

Anyway, with the weight loss, my fastball was better. I'd rested a year and a half too, so I had some rest in the arm and everything was better. When you pitch, I came back at about 165 to 170 pounds, so that was at least 30 pounds lighter than what I'd ever pitched at before. So I just felt that I was freer and I had more life on it,

and everything was good. I didn't lose a ball game. I just didn't mean that much to me anymore. It was just, hey, you're out there, you're playing. So attitude was changed and I think that really helped. So 1973, you're closing, you're serving as a fireman role. There haven't been very many fireman roles up to this point. And you listen to people talk about a bullpen in the present day, and you have managers and relievers talking about the importance of having defined roles and relievers benefiting from knowing when they're going to come into the game so that they're not taken by surprise. But of course, in 1973, you entered as early as the fourth inning.

You threw as late as the 10th inning. You came in when your team was tied, when it was losing, when it was winning. How what was your own mindset when you would go to the ballpark in 1973 not knowing when you were going to be called in and i mean you entered most of your games with runners on base so you were just going right from the bullpen to a high stress situation immediately so how did you how did you manage that over six months i i don't even know if there's an answer that's just the the way it was. I mean, and you're correct about that. We didn't start innings back then. Usually came in. And I really truthfully believe that I was a better pitcher when I came in with men on base because the adrenaline is just going nuts. You know, you get that excitement and when your

adrenaline's going, you throw a little harder than maybe you did would have to start the inning so i i would i sort of excelled when i came in in with men on base and then i always played to the fact that the the you know we're all human beings and hitters want to be the hero and uh that's why when you're closing late in the ball game, you know, they always talk about that's the hardest place to be. But I always felt that it wasn't that difficult because the batters were overly anxious. I didn't have to make perfect pitches. It didn't seem as long as I got ahead because these guys all wanted to drive in the winning run. It's just human nature. A little more aggressive in the ninth inning the batters were than they would be in the

first, second, third inning. So I sort of played on that. And, you know, if you could stand, if you could accept to lose a ball game, then, you know, when you had your good stuff, you were going to be a decent relief pitcher. It's when you watch these guys nowadays or any time when they start nibbling or if I got two strikes on a guy, I want to get him out with the next pitch. I don't want to go 3-2. I watch so many guys get bang, bang, two strikes,

and now the next thing you know it's 3-2. And that's just, you know, get them out. I think the manager that the Tigers have now, I love his whole theory. A lot of it's based on that they don't have those superstars or the big power hitters. He's got everybody just playing fast. He wants his pitchers to get the ball, play fast, keep the infield ready. Don't let the opposing hitters get into sort of a tempo that they like. I just love that.

Gartenheimer, I think he's a wonderful manager he's playing to what he has the talent he has back in our day, I guess the managers managed according to what they had also, and they had Mickey Lulich pitched over 300 innings, I think 3 or 4

maybe more years in a row and he never missed a start because of a sore arm. We had the riots in 67. He got called up to the National Guard, but he pitched every fourth day. Never had a sore arm. We're expected to go out there and pitch. They'd throw 130 pitches, 140 pitches. The arm was conditioned to that and it stayed conditioned to that. the arm was conditioned to that and it stayed conditioned to that. And you mentioned Billy Martin and my friend Stephen Goldman once wrote about Billy that he was perhaps the only manager in history unlikely to coddle a pitcher after heart surgery. So you

had maybe the guy there who was most likely to use you in this sort of role. And you look at Billy's history and everywhere he went, there were pitchers pitching career high innings totals. And sometimes he would leave a trail of broken pitchers behind him when he went from one team to another. But at the time when you were getting into all these games and all these appearances that we would call high leverage now, was there a sense that you were a trailblazer, that you were pioneering something, that this was something new? Or did you see it as just kind of what other teams were doing or what other pitchers had done in the past? Were you wondering, OK, how how often can I be used here? How, you know, were there articles being written about the the new model of relief pitcher John Hiller?

Yeah, maybe. You know, I used to compare myself in a way. I always looked at the box scores to see how Sparky Lai with the Yankees was doing. But even in that day, Sparky was pretty much maybe a one-inning pitcher. He might come in in the eighth with a man on, maybe two out, and then pitch the ninth. But he was, and then Clay Carroll, who's played for Sparky, he don't pitch many innings in relief for Sparky. He was always trying to match up. But Clay, I broke his record. Clay had 37 saves, I believe, and I got 38 that year.

The only, Raleigh Fingers was coming up just a little after me. He was pitching multiple innings in relief. You know, he was pitching those two, three innings. Then Goose Gossage was doing similar, but they had a left-hander, right-hander combination. I can't think of the left-hander's name. But those guys both threw in the high 90s. But it was the beginning of a time when they were starting to, you know,

bring the closer in in the seventh inning. And that lasted for, you lasted for quite a few years. And I don't know, I don't remember guys, I mean, I play with Denny McClain, Earl Wilson, Joe Sparma, Mickey Lulich, and none of those guys had Tommy John surgery, none of them had elbow problems, and they all pitched into the ninth inning. You know, most of the games they pitched.

And so I don't, you know, the other thing we worry about is these guys, they're not even pitching six innings, and next thing you know they're having Tommy John. So whether they're stronger and bigger and they're basically maybe throwing the ball too hard for the way we are made and the torque that goes on the arm that could possibly be it but they surely don't pitch as much as the guys did back in my day no and especially the starters you know you got guys like Sam McDowell that pitch 150 pitches you know I need to do that every four days. And there was a bunch like that.

So I don't know. It's up for discussion always with these arm surgeries, especially Tommy John surgery. Would you pace yourself if you came in on the seventh and you knew that you were going to finish the game? I mean, you know, one argument maybe is that the guys today, if they come in for an inning, they can really just go all out. The hitters today are so good that there's no break in the lineup. You have to just max effort on every pitch.

Were you max effort or were you saying, okay, I've got to get through three innings here so I can't put everything into each pitch? I don't know. I was max effort. When I started from pitch one, I never let up. The only time I let up was I remember a game of Baltimore, and I couldn't get anybody out, and I was throwing. I thought I was throwing good, so I decided to throw half speed, and they ended up popping the balls up. But no, I just, no.

If I came in first inning, fourth inning, fifth inning, I pitched as hard as I could for as long as I could. And same when I started. But I just threw strikes. You know, I concentrated on throwing strikes. And I was able to throw. And I wasn't afraid, you know, I was never afraid to get beat. And I think that, you know, I never nibbled.

I mean, a lot of guys, you know, I never nibbled. I mean, a lot of guys, you know, I wasn't a power pitcher, but I still challenged guys. When it got to be 3-1, I used to say to myself, okay, it's time. I used to call it, okay, it's time for baseball. And you're going to get my fastball. And if you can hit it, then you're going to hit it. But I'm not going to throw a 3-0-1 silly little changeup or a curveball or something like that because they call it, you know,

I hear them say, well, don't give in to the batter. Well, I think that's in reverse. If I'm going to throw him a little dinky change-up or a little dinky curveball, that's when I'm giving in to him, I think. When I'm challenging a guy i don't consider that given in i just think there's times in that ball game where you just got to challenge them you don't want to walk anybody you know i just i see them now they pitch around guys i hated that i hated when the manager says okay gonna you know walk them give them four and i just

hated giving anybody a free base. And I got right-handers out actually better than I did left-handers, so I didn't worry about whether, other than there was a few guys that I couldn't get out, and most of them were left-handed, so Rod Carew, George Brett, I had a dickens of a time getting those two guys out.

So I just, you know, i just looked old school oh grew up an old blue cross family my dad worked his butt off his whole life he was a body man body and fender and i believe when i did something you're going to get 100 every time i do it for every pitch and uh it's all there was to it so best man win in, you threw more than you did in any other season. You got up to 150 innings and 59 games. You won 17 games in relief, which is a record that no one has touched. No one has exceeded since then. Now that very same season, you were second in baseball in innings thrown by a reliever. You were at 150. Mike Marshall was at 208. He threw in 106 games. Did you feel any sort of rivalry, or were you jealous at all of what the Dodgers are having Mike Marshall do?

Because that is such an enormous difference between first and second place on any lead award. It's hard to imagine you, one of the original firemen, topping out at 150 and having somebody still beat you by 58 innings. Yeah, I know. That was unbelievable. No, I didn't. See, Mike grew up in our organization, and I'm not even sure what year. I played with him in Toledo, I believe, in 67, and I think we all got called up at the same time. No, Mike had some strange theories. He started with the leaded ball, and then he had these theories there. He was a kinesiologist, and he said he could pitch with one set of muscles one day and one set the next day. We all told him he was nuts.

both had that great year he was with Montreal in 1973 and he was fireman of the year for them and then I was fireman of the year so I did watch what he was doing mainly because we were teammates and friends and then we both had the you know the real good year and those you know that wasn't in the forecast you look at what we did earlier and Mike was a converted shortstop. I was a mediocre little left-handed pitcher, so I think in 1973 we both were very interested in each other, mainly because, like I said, that just came out of nowhere. That wasn't forecasted for us to have that. And then when I saw what he was doing with the Dodgers, I shook. No, there was no way I wanted to pitch more than what I wanted. And, you know, what's crazy, I'm

not even sure exactly the numbers. I'm one of these dinosaurs. I don't even go on a computer. But Ralph Falk, we didn't have a very good team. and Ralph came to me. I think I was like maybe 12 wins or something like that, and he says, John, and I got up to not 12 wins. Let me put it this way. I was up about 16 wins or 17 wins, and I might have had eight or nine losses, and Ralph Falk came to me and says, John, if you don't mind, every time we get a tie ball game in the last three innings, I'm going to put you in. Maybe you've got a chance of beating Elroy Face at the record for the major leagues, which is 18.

And so he says, every time we get a tie ball game in the last three innings, I'm going to put you in. Well, I kept losing every day. I didn't pick up a win, I don't think, in the last two, three weeks. So that's why I ended up with 14. And, you know, sure, that's crazy. You got 31 decisions in the bullpen. That should have never, I mean, you know, most records will be broken, but 31 decisions out of the bullpen, I don't think that'll ever happen again.

Not the way they're doing now either. So. Right. Well, looking at the whole course of your career, you made 43 starts and you were really good in those starts. You had a 303 ERA in your starts and, you know, presumably you could have had success if you had been a starter. Did you ever want to be, did you feel like there was at all a lower status associated with being in the bullpen? Often you get relievers now who want to be starters, but because you were in this role where you were pitching so much and so often and were so valuable and you were getting Cy Young votes and MVP votes, was there any desire to start? And you mentioned your ability to play against hitters of both handedness.

You had almost no platoon split at all the whole course of your career. So you could face anyone anytime. So were you thinking I want to start or were you thinking I like this role? I, you know, early in our, in our careers back then, because everybody wanted to start. I mean, that there was there was uh the relief pitcher you know let's say prior just prior to uh my success let's say in the 60s the relief pitcher was just either a guy that couldn't start or might have a good arm you couldn't throw strikes all the time and so there was not there were very few exceptional you know relief pitchers. Ron Paranowski comes to mind.

He was good with the Dodgers, and Larry Sherry had a little success, but then Elroy Faith was the exception. He was very good at what he did. But we all wanted to be starters, but I was, again, in a position where Mickey Lulich, Denny McCllain joe sparma who people don't remember him much he but he had the best stuff of any of them and then earl wilson had great stuff and so i knew as long as we were there i wasn't going to be a starter and we didn't have free agency didn't have arbitration so you know if i squat too much they'd send me down the minor league so we just

sort of did what we could do i think the thing that i'm proudest of as far as starting are the number of complete games i got with that uh you know limited number of starts i probably you know i kid about it with when i go to fantasy camp and such and get back to Detroit and see some of the present-day Tigers, I said, you know, the ironic thing is, is I had 40-something starts. You're going to end up maybe with hundreds, and I'm going to have more complete games than you ever will think of just because of the way the game is played now and the way they use them. And I'm more proud of those complete games, I think, which meant I wasn't training for a starting position,

and my conditioning wasn't the greatest, but I guess I had the fortitude that I wanted to complete that ball game. So I got quite a few complete games. And I wasn't a strikeout pitcher, but I think I got almost eight strikeouts per nine innings. So, you know, it's just the way the career went. And I'm very pleased. I don't know if I do much things different.

The heart attack, and even though I was maybe a little loose with my life before that, that made me a better pitcher, I think, later on. So, no regrets. In the present day, I'm sure you've noticed there are more strikeouts than there have ever been. Pitchers are throwing harder than they've ever thrown. There are a variety of reasons for this, but there's an increasing conversation about how the game might need to change in order to intervene and stop these trends before they get too extreme. Now, of course, one of the most significant changes baseball has ever made happened after the 1968 season when they lowered the mound to try to make things a little more fair you pitched before that you pitched after that so what was your own experience throwing off a mound that went down from 15 to 10 inches i can't remember

i can't because i had my better years you know i mean if i'm gonna say that uh that the mound affected me um i had my better years. I mean, at 69, I can't remember what kind of year I had and such and that, but I had my better years through the 70s with the so-called flatter mound or the actual, you know, the grade was different. I had a very poor year in 76. It's just one of those things. So the mound didn't affect me.

It might have affected some people. I guess things like that, if you allow it to, if you get off to a bad start, you're going to blame it on the mound. If you get off to a good start, you say the mound didn't make any difference. So I don't remember it being anything that I was too concerned about. Yeah, and of course the strike zone changed as well, but that didn't hold you back either because, as you said. No, a little bit.

I was, you know, more of a, we were highball pitchers more back then. They had the umpire, and when they changed the, they had the outside balloon protection, and then when they all went to the inside thing, they could bend down lower, and that's when the strike zone. A lot of guys back then, Denny McClain, Palmer, Jim Palmer, high fastball pitcher, Nolan Ryan, high fastball pitcher. But when they brought it back down, it affected me more.

My ball did a little bit up around the letters. It didn't do the same thing down below. Now, chances are, too, I was getting older, and I don't think I lost ball. You know, I don't think guys don't lose the velocity as much as they lose that little zip, just where the ball would explode a little bit at the end. And, you know, like I said, we didn't have any kind of guns, but you could tell some days when that ball just jumped a little bit and had a little more movement. And as you got older, I guess your muscles weren't as flexible and such, and you lose

that little wee zip at the end, little movement. That was Johnny Stain's theory was, you know, location was never a priority with him. They talk about it now because you watch these guys sit on the outside of the plate all day long, but his whole thing was movement on a ball. Movement stuff and then location was third because he said, if you throw a ball right down the middle, if it's got a little movement, then chances are he's not going to hit it square anyway. So always trying to get some kind of movement on the ball.

Yeah, I've seen some research about how the change in the strike zone really affected some guys differently, depending on whether they were high or low ball hitters or pitchers. So that makes sense. Well, since Jeff asked about 1968, and since it is the 50th anniversary, not to make you feel old, you guys won the World Series that year, of course, in seven games. But I wanted to ask whether you have any

memories of Bob Gibson's performance in that series, since obviously he was incredible and started three games and was amazing that whole season. And you won anyway, but what was it like facing him and having him be such a force of nature at the time? Oh, I tell you what, he's one of the few that you just stopped and watched. When we were in the bullpen, we goofed off a lot. We didn't watch a lot of baseball down there. Maybe got near the end of the game. One exception was, of course, when Mark Fidrich joined us and the way he pitched and the way

he had fun. We all stopped to watch him. But in most cases, we were doing our thing down there, whatever it may be. But when Gibson took the mound, we all stopped to watch him. He was just exceptional. I think, what, 1.28 or 1.2-something ERA that year. And I think he did it a couple years in a row, 20-something complete games, 29 or 28, I recall, maybe. So, oh, yeah, and then that performance he put on the first game,

he set a strikeout record and everything. But, you know, it was just, I've often felt, you know, even when I'm watching now, and I watch the Tigers, we've spent our winter in Arizona and sort of become a Diamondbacks fan just because of the, you know, we can get there to a ball game and the games are on all the time. But so anyway, we came from behind so many times that year to win ball games. And I have these feelings that I watch. If I watch teams for a year, and it's almost like, oh, okay,

it's this team's time to win. It just seems that everything seems to fall in place, and you have a feeling that this team is going to win this year, that team's going to win this year. And that's how a lot of us felt about 68 Tigers. And even though we were down to probably a better team all around, some of my teammates might not like that, but I think basically they had better numbers, I think, than we did.

And they had the experience from the year before, but we still had just that feeling, we're going to come from behind, we're going to win this. And, of course, we did. But I think we all pretty much felt that. It happened all year. And we kept waiting for that break and kept waiting for that thing to happen that would turn the game around. And it did a couple of things. Yeah. I wanted to ask, in 72, you won the AL East by half a game because there had been a work stoppage and the games weren't made up. And so the Red Sox ended up finishing half a game behind the Tigers and had played fewer games. And just, you know, if they had played another game, maybe they would have tied it. I don't know how

they felt about that, but how did you guys feel? Were you happy to have won or were you thinking it would have been fair if they'd gotten that chance to make that game up? Basically, I don't recall. When you said that, I don't even remember that there was a game difference. And I don't, you know, all I remember in 72 was in the playoffs, and I think Jim Rice was at the umpire, and I think he was actually Bill Freehand's godfather. Anyway, Norm Cash always came off.

He cheated. Most first basemen do to a degree. Maybe not now since they do the stupid replays. But back then, they always came off a little early. And they called that guy safe at first base. And that would have made a difference, I think. And he was out by three steps. And they said Norm came off.

Well, if we look at replays of that, he didn't come off any more than any other time. So anyway, that's what I remember from 72. As I remember, we had a chance, and we had like an older, you know, Billy Martin and the Powers to Be went out and got players from all over both leagues. And, you know, and we stayed right in there and won right in the division and probably should have won the division. And then I remember, that's the year I came back, and after a couple games, our two relief pitchers,

Chuck Seelbach and Fred Sherman, they both had sort of injuries. So Bill Martin threw me in there as a closer. And you're talking about how he would use you. I pitched, I believe, 13 games and 15 days for him at one time. Got eight saves in that thing. So that basically made my whole year. And you never felt any ill effects from that sort of thing? I mean, even later in your career?

I don't believe so. No. What I did, no. Because I got my 13 years in. I retired probably prematurely. There was things going on in my life that felt I needed to be home. But in 1975, I'd never water skied in my whole life. I went to Bill Brehan's cottage in Michigan,

and he talked me into going water skiing. I didn't want to. I think I stretched my arms out somehow. The first day back, we're playing against Cleveland, and I must have been starting because I'm 1975. Anyway, I had six strikeouts in a row and had two strikes and a guy, Charles Spikes, and decided to rear back and maybe grab a little extra, and I pulled something under my arm.

It was underneath. It was nothing like a rotator or anything like that so anyway i was out a while with that and that seemed to affect a little bit of my oh let's say rubberless the arm or a little life in the arm for my last three years so four years so other than that no i i don't remember ever you know i was always uh know, I probably pitched in pain like most guys did, especially the bullpen guys back then. And they come to me, can you pitch? Sure. You know, I don't remember ever saying no.

Well, the last thing I wanted to ask you, since you were on the Tigers for so long and you were the last member of that 68 team that was active in the majors and you played with Detroit all the way to 1980. So you played with the foundation of the next great Tigers teams, Whitaker and Trammell and Jack Morris and Kirk Gibson and on and on. You played with these guys earlier in their career. And of course, Trammell is going into the Hall of Fame now. it always seems like Whitaker has been underrated a bit and maybe left out of that discussion more than he should be. Of course, you weren't playing with those guys in their primes, but could you tell even when they were coming up that, oh, this is the foundation of the next great Tigers teams. These guys are going to be double play partners for the next decade plus. I could tell we're going to be special. I really did. As a matter of fact, I thought Lou, when he, you know,

Lou said he was a little cocky. Alan was quiet. And Lou, sweet Lou, you can call me, you know, I don't know how old he was. He might have been 19 years old, you know. Somebody said, hi, Lou. Oh, you can call me sweet Lou. But he had his talent sort of shone a little more maybe.

He was a little faster, a little stronger than Allen when they first came up, that I remember anyways. And I knew they had a chance. You just never know. You know, when you see guys with great talent, sometimes they make it, sometimes they don't. Things can happen, and it's not always physical. But I knew they both had a chance.

I saw on the ball field uh hall of fame no very few people i see from day one i did coach john smoltz and we lost him i was coaching double a and tigers tried decided to trade him to uh atlanta for uh doyle alexander uh i was one guy when I talked to the manager of the Atlanta, I can't think of his name right now, but he called me at the time to ask me about Schmoltz. I told him, I said, I think you

have a future Hall of Famer. His arm was just so exceptional. So much better than anybody in our organization. And then Jack Morris is going in also. So yeah, I played with all of those guys for a couple of years, sometimes limited. But I saw that they were great players.

They were going to do something too. Lance Parrish, Tommy Brookens was the almost seems to be the left-out guy and he made the team every year though. And so yeah, they had a great ball club. I was a little surprised and disappointed maybe that they didn't take that team to a couple more World Series. I thought he had the talent to. To do that, you've got to put it all together and get some breaks, too.

But I always thought that that team underachieved a little bit. All right. Well, I'm glad we got to talk to you. You had an incredible career. I can't think of anyone who has ever deserved a Comeback Player of the Year award more than you did in 1973. But that season, I've looked at those numbers for years and wondered how it happened. And I don't know whether we'll ever get back to the point where we'll see guys having seasons like that again or whether

that's just permanently in the past but either way it's been I don't know I don't think so it's just the way the money is you know the protecting of the ball players now and everything so but things evolve funny sometimes I never thought

they'd bring in closer. It's been a six and seven thing either. And, you know, Cleve, it's worked for him quite a few times. So doing a lot of experimenting. You know, these shifts, they drive me nuts. I'm not a hitter. But I see guys just crush the ball in a hole in there. You've got some guy way out of position just sucking it up

and there's just another at bat. Some of these hitters just got to go nuts. Especially left-handed pole hitters because they always have that hole. Boy, they're probably hitting 15 points less just because of these shifts. The game's evolved. I don't like

the rule changes, but the game when it changes and they adjust to things, that's probably good. I hate the replays, and I just don't like some of the stuff that's going on, but nobody cares what I think anymore.

Well, we cared. We cared enough to talk to you for an hour. Yeah. And I was thrilled. I didn't even know Ontario had a Sports Hall of Fame. When I got the call last year, that was a thrill. We always feel honored to be able to go home and have some accolades and such stuff.

I was thrilled to go back to Toronto last year and be part of that. Went in with a couple good hockey players, too. All right. Well, John, thank you very much for your time. It was a pleasure. Okay. Good talking with you.

I'm glad we got together. I'm a little reluctant sometimes. I'm glad everything worked out. All right. Thanks, John. Okay, Ben. All right. Thank you.

All right. That will do it for today. Thanks to John for his time. I know there are some good reasons why bullpen usage has evolved the way that it has, but when I listen to him talk about how little he cared about roles and knowing when he would be coming into the game, I can't help but think that the emphasis on that sort of thing has a lot to do with the way players come up and are conditioned.

And if they don't expect to know their roles, maybe they don't need to know their roles. So I do wonder whether we'll see some sort of swing back toward that era, though probably not all the way. If you read my Josh Hader article, you'll see that there are some signs, at least, that we're getting away from the strict one-inning or less standard appearance. Russell Carlton wrote at BP earlier this year that we need to bring back the one-time-through-the-order guy. He called it the Otto. And maybe Andrew Miller, Chris Davinsky, Josh Hader. These relievers represent the first rumblings that were getting there.

But not everyone is Josh Hader, and not everyone was John Hiller. Wanted to mention in the Women's College World Series, which is going on right now, one of the teams, the Washington Huskies, has a left-handed catcher. Emma Helm, she's a freshman. Not quite as unusual in softball as it is in baseball. But just about this time last year, we talked to a left-handed catcher, Janelle Wheaton, who is with the Florida Gators. So if you're interested, that was episode 1069. You can go back and listen to that.

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