The Year of the Tiger... 1968? Well, yes. But it was more than that. Far more. It was The year of Detroit... when an entire community, an entire city, was caught up in the frenzy ofa baseball team trying to win a pennant. Notjust any team. Notjust any pennant. This was special. This was a stricken city, a worried citizenry, which suddenly found itself bound together in a common goal.

Corny? Maybe so. We can be pretty cynical, we newspapermen, but there was no doubting the fervor or the fever of the people of our city as they tried mightily to pull theTigers along to the American League pennant... their first pennant in 23 years. That's a long time, 23 years. You can raise whole families and send them through college in 23 years. Some can go to war. Some can start raising families of their own. All of this happened since the last time the Tigers won the American League pennant.

The Mood of our city was anything but gay in the spring of 1968. The summer loomed ominously. The newspaper strike droned on and on ... but something started happening in the middle of 1968. You would pull up to the light at Woodward and Clairmount and the guy in the next car would have his radio tuned up."... Horton stepping in. Willie's had two hits tonight." Or you would pick your way through the mobs at Metropolitan Beach and even though you didn't have a radio,you wouldn't miss a pitch." ... Stanley leading off second, Northrup off first here's the pitch from Kaat." Rouge Park.

...Belle Isle... the kitchens of the poshest restaurants in town... and those awful moments at the bottom of the Windsor Tunnel when you couldn't pick up Ernie of Ray and just when Bill Freehan got around to third base with the tying run. The stirring strains of "Got Get 'Em, Tigers" everywhere.

A baseball team trying to win a pennant. Men playing a boy's game. Well.yes. That's the way it was in The Year of the Tiger 1968. But it was a year I will never forget. It was a year when an entire community, an entire city, was caught up in the frenzy of a baseball team trying to win a pennant. For a moment even I forgot some of my worries.