Gibby’s Grit Leads List of Great Detroit Tigers Moments [VIDEOS]
Hall of Fame writer Tom Gage’s new book chronicles the best of Tiger baseball.
Video copyright 2010, MLB Advanced Media, Major League Baseball
Kirk Gibson‘s eighth inning home run in game five of the 1984 World Series was one of Detroit’s most memorable sports moments. In Tom Gage‘s view, it was the most important moment in the Detroit Tigers’ history. Gage’s new book, “The Big 50: The Men and Moments That Made the Detroit Tigers” chronicles individuals and events that define Tiger baseball. He tells WDET’s Pat Batcheller Gibson’s gusto on that October night in Detroit led to an improbable run that gave his team the lead over the San Diego Padres.
“It was a pop-up that many–in fact, most–in fact, all but one player that I knew at the time would have stayed at third base on,” Gage recalls. That player was Gibson, who tagged up and charged home on a pop-up to second base, breaking a 4-4 tie in the fifth inning.
Gage admits it was hard to narrow his list of men and moments to fifty.
“It could have been the Tigers’ big 206, probably, if I had all the pages I wanted.”
Tom Gage was the Tigers’ beat writer for the Detroit News from 1979 to 2014. His work has won numerous awards, including the J.G. Taylor Spink Award from the Baseball Writers Association of America in 2015. He was honored that year by the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. and inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.
Click on the audio player to hear the conversation.
Video copyright 2014 MLB Advanced Media, Major League Baseball
