Ernie Harwell: My 60 Years in Baseball by Tom Keegan; Ernie Harwell

Author:Tom Keegan; Ernie Harwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781572434516
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2002-04-01T10:00:00+00:00

12. Healing Tigers

Smoke curled into view beyond the left-field fence as word of danger on the streets of Detroit began to spread throughout Tiger Stadium. Harwell and Ray Lane were in the booth and made mention of the smoke before getting word from WJR not to mention it again.

By the time the game ended that day in the summer of 1967, everyone was under strict orders to go home and stay home. They were told to avoid the freeways, lest they run the risk of having their cars toppled. Harwell heeded the warning, and when he got home to Grosse Pointe, the first thing he saw when he walked in the door was a brand-new television. Lulu had purchased one ticket in a raffle that day and won the TV. His humor untainted by the troubles in his city, Ernie cracked, “Have you been out looting again, Miss Lulu?”

Lulu hadn’t heard about the riots. Soon she would hear plenty about them. She would hear rumors that the rioters planned to cut a path to the suburbs. Gray’s girlfriend, Sandy, had to spend the next couple of days with the Harwells for fear that heading home wouldn’t be safe.

One young man with the Tigers didn’t heed the orders from club executives to head home to safety. Willie Horton’s steering wheel wouldn’t let him do so. Horton was a big name in Detroit baseball circles since he hit a home run that crashed off the bottom of the light tower in right-center at Tiger Stadium in a high school city championship. He and Alex Johnson, who would go on to win a batting championship in the major leagues, led Northwestern High past Cass Tech. Horton was a catcher and an underclassman. His legend was born with that long home run.

Years later, when the city he so loved erupted in violence, Horton couldn’t bring himself to stay away from the fray. He ventured into the streets with his Tigers jersey on.

“Really, to tell you the truth I don’t know why I did it,” Horton says. “I saw things that were unreal. You see so many things burning you think it’s a war. You see all that and you don’t really understand what’s going on.”

He saw rocks flying through windows. He saw cars and buildings ablaze. He saw confused young men driven to violence.

“I just started driving,” Horton remembers. “I started out at Livernois and ended up on 12th. You just try to talk to people. Some of them stopped and listened to me. Some of them kept on doing what they were doing. Some of them scratched their heads and tried to figure out what I was doing there. I didn’t even think about how dangerous it was. I was just trying to do what was best. When I got home, my uniform looked like it had been in a fire. To this day, I’m glad I did that. From that point on, I tried to get more and more involved in bringing peace to the city.

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