New Book by Former Tiger Catcher Lance Parrish and Tom Gage Provides Fascinating Insights Into the ’84 Championship Season 

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Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Although there have been several good books about the Tigers’ magical 1984 championship season, including Bless You Boys: Diary of the Detroit Tigers 1984 Season by Sparky Anderson, (1984) Inside Pitch: Roger Craig’s ’84 Tigers Journal (1984), ’84: Last of the Great Tigers/Untold Stories From An Amazing Season by Eli Zaret, (2003) and Wire to Wire: Inside the 1984 Detroit Tigers Championship Season by George Cantor (2004), there has never been one written from the perspective of a Tiger player.

Until now.

Triumph Books recently released, The Enchanted Season: The Detroit Tigers 1984 World Series Run and My Life as the Big Wheel, by Lance Parrish with Tom Gage.

New Book by Former Tiger Catcher Lance Parrish and Tom Gage Provides Fascinating Insights Into the ’84 Championship Season

The book not only provides unique and fascinating insights by the former Tiger catcher nicknamed “The Big Wheel” but also serves partially as an interesting autobiography by one of the key players and leaders from that remarkable team that went wire to wire in first place to capture the Tigers’ last world championship 40 years ago.

Parrish who made his major league debut with Detroit in 1977 at age 21 became the full-time catcher from 1979 through 1986. As the clean-up hitter in 1984 he led the team with 33 homers breaking his own American League record for most home runs in a season by a catcher, led the team with 98 RBIs, and caught Jack Morris’s no hitter in April. In the decisive game 5 of the ’84 World Series he scored two runs, stole a base, and hit a crucial 7th inning homer off Goose Gossage. The eight-time All-Star and six-time winner of the Silver Slugger award, won the Gold Glove award three times during his 19-year career.

Nobody was more qualified to write the book with Parrish than Tom Gage who served at the Tiger beat writer for the Detroit News from 1979 to 2015.  Gage received the prestigious J.G. Taylor Spink Award at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015, and was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2016 and the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2020.

Gage and ’68 World Series hero Mickey Lolich previously chronicled the Tigers’ 1968 championship season with their 2018 book Joy in Tigertown: A Determined Team, A Resilient City and Our Magical Run to the 1968 World Series.

Parrish, who moved on his 6th birthday at age six from Pennsylvania to California  where he would star in high school in both baseball and football tells of turning down a football scholarship at UCLA to begin a professional baseball career with the Tigers when he was drafted in the first round of the 1974 draft.

Without giving too much away, besides providing a month to month take on the ’84 season and a look at each World Series game, Parrish reveals a number of different stories and thoughts including:

  • How the Tigers tried to make him a switch hitter and initially saw him as a third baseman.
  • Serving as Mark Fidrych’s catcher in the Class A ball
  • How Les Moss helped him become a major leaguer
  • The overblown story of being a bodyguard for singer Tina Turner
  • The mistake Milt Wilcox made in shaking him off just before Jerry Hairston as the 27th batter spoiled Milt’s perfect game in 1983.
  • Catching Jack Morris’s no hitter and the disappointing phone call from Tiger President Jim Campbell.
  • How the Tigers screwed Randy O’Neal, the winning pitcher in the team’s division clinching game by not giving him to this day a World Series ring
  • His regret in leaving the Tigers as a free agent in 1987 over a contract dispute

Parrish also offers interesting observations about Sparky Anderson, his coaches, the Tigers unsung heroes, a brief analysis of the team’s pitchers and hitters, and a concluding section on the team’s legacy. I thoroughly enjoyed the book by Parrish and Gage, and learned things about the ’84 Tigers that I never knew before. It is a quick read and one that Tiger fans will enjoy.