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Now, at the busy intersection of Trumbull and Michigan Avenues, long lines of fans trying to buy their way into sold-out Tiger Stadium spill over the sidewalk into the street. Signs in store fronts all over town exhort: "Sock it to 'em, Tigers!" In the J. L. Hudson Co.'s six metropolitan department stores, "Tiger Shops" are doing a brisk business in tiger meat (the real thing) and "tiger" everything else. "Action Line," the ombudsman column of the Detroit Free Press, is being deluged with 30 requests a day from "little old ladies" seeking World Series tickets.
Even with each game that the Tigers lose, the town's fever barely cools. Every fan knows, after all, that the best of teams can crack under late-season pressure. The Tigers themselves have blown big leads and folded in the stretch run before. But this season the team and the town are supremely confident. Most of that confidence is based on the oaken endurance and the impish excellence of Denny McLain.
Endless Quarrel. The confidence is well placed. A look at this year's leading hitters is an eloquent reminder of how good Denny and the other top pitchers really are. Only five men in the majors are batting .300. Boston's Carl Yastrzemski, No. 1 in the American League, has a .290 average and faces the dubious distinction of becoming baseball's first sub-.300 batting champion. In 1961, a year when the sluggers controlled the game, 18 players batted .300 or better and 2,730 home runs went into the record book. This season's home-run output: 1,772.
Frustrated batters quarrel endlessly over the reasons for baseball's power failure. San Francisco's Willie Mays, a lifetime .309 hitter who is now batting .279, blames the anemic averages on umpires. He is sure that they are "making the strike zone bigger." Other batsmen have other bugaboos: the physical strain of coast-to-coast travel, the bushel-basket-size gloves used by today's fielders, the visual vicissitudes of night baseball, the distant fences in modern ballparks. "You got at least two parks in our league that ought to be outlawed," grouses St. Louis Cardinal Outfielder Curt Flood. "In San Francisco, the wind blows 90 m.p.h. in your face. In Los Angeles, the park is so big you got to play golf—hit the ball, go get it and hit it again." Houston Second Baseman Joe Morgan, on the other hand, insists that slumping hitters have no one but themselves to blame: "They continue to wait for their pitches instead of making the most of what's thrown them."