Sentimental choice-Mickey Lolich.

One of the first real books I ever read as a kid was Bill Freehan's BEHIND THE MASK, which I absolutely loved. It's a great inside look at baseball -- or at least it was when I read it, when I was about ten or eleven.

I always felt bad for the Cardboard God Willie Horton during that episode. I wonder how many people thought he was a furloughed murderer and rapist.

(a) career record for triples, 309. (Not to mention career OPS+ of 144.)

(b) I get to keep intact what may be the greatest outfield of all time: Cobb, Crawford, Heilmann.

(c) I love the name "Wahoo Sam" Crawford.

I agree with Horton as the wild card. If not him, I'd choose Gates Brown.

Boone or Kell, but I went with Boone and his OPS+. Hard to leave Whitaker off the list but the team was loaded at 2nd base. Tigers seem to have so many underappreciated players that I remember watching in awe. Freehan, Parrish, Northrup, Whitaker, McAuliffe, Fielder, Cash, Horton, Gibby, and my favorite Chet Lemon.

As a kid I was astounded when the Tiger manager had the balls to move Stanley from CF to SS during the 68 world series. When Northrup hit that ball over Curt Floods head my yelling could be heard all over Germany. Little did I know at the time that Curt Flood would later make such a big sacrifice for his fellow players.

can't disagree with most of the choices here. Any team that has Hank Greenberg at first is A-OK with me.

I think you have Heilmann confused with Veach. Heilmann and Crawford overlapped slightly, but were never great together.

I did some quick math (maybe not so quick -- I was probably nine years old), then scribbled my results on a scrap of paper.

Now, imagine you're my father, and you've invited a business associate over to the house on a Saturday afternoon for some important work talk. Suddenly your son runs into the room, clearly wanting to tell you something but not wanting to interrupt, so he hands you a folded scrap of paper. It reads:

"Mickey Lolich averaged 8.3 innings per start in 1971"

Honestly, how do you react to something like that? I wish I knew, but I'd already run back out of the room.

There can, of course, be no such thing as a Tigers team without Sam Crawford on it. I'm going to solve the outfield problem by putting him in left, where he played only 46 games for the Tigers. But I'm guessing he could handle left.

C Freehan
1B Greenberg
2B Gehringer
3B Fryman (An easy choice going by the numbers -- I'm surprised he hasn't been mentioned yet.)
SS Trammell
LF Crawford
CF Cobb
RF Kaline
DH Heilmann
SP Newhouser
RP Hiller

Wild Card - Kirk Gibson

FYI: Some new comments are in on the following older posts: Cubs 1977 and Larry Biittner (Cubs), plus some lingering discussion on the recent Wade Boggs and Randy Jones posts.

In retrospect, Fryman over Kell is not as easy a choice as implied in 14 . Fryman had a longer Tigers career, Kell was a somewhat better hitter. Both were good glove guys, though Kell was probably better in that regard.

How about Hank Aguirre and that 1962 season. Where did that come from. So not including the war years these are the season I'd use to pick my rotation.
1962 Hank Aguirre
1968 Denny McLain
1976 Mark the bird Fidrych
1997 Justin Thompson
I'm staying with the four man rotation. Anything else is an abomination.

But also thanks for the support of Crawford's candidacy. He's a favorite of mine, and he's still got the 309 triples (309!) and the nickname.

And Gates Brown was a strange, almost mythic character in those years, renowned for having pinch-hitting superpowers.

None of the other results offer anything useful.

Let's say "without repeating."

Wild Card - Sweet Lou Whitaker

It might come as a surprise to some, but I grew up a Tigers fan. My dad was born in Detroit and the first game I ever watched was at Tiger Stadium. Even though I was born only 2 years before it, I reveled at the time in the fairly recent history of the 1968 Tigers, who I would still rate my favorite team. (Weird how you can have a favorite team, even though you never watched them. I grew to love them from books I read.)

My 2 favorite Tigers were Willie Horton and Norm Cash. It is really hard for me to leave them off, but Whitaker is one of the 15 best 2nd baseman in the history of the game. I have discussed at my site that I think Trammell is the most glaring omission from the Hall of Fame, as his stats at a premium defensive position should make him a slam dunk. Whitaker is not that far behind him and is the player I'm most on the fence about if he should be in or not. His dumbass comments during the player strike might be enough for me to say no, but he should be on the roster. Here are his similar batters list from baseball reference.
1 Ryne Sandberg (901) *
# Alan Trammell (899)
# Barry Larkin (879)
# Ted Simmons (871)
# Buddy Bell (861)
# Roberto Alomar (858)
# Brian Downing (853)
# Joe Torre (853)
# Joe Morgan (850) *
10 Carlton Fisk (845)

Norm Cash might have had the greatest overlooked season in baseball history. For those of you that don't know his stats for 1961, here they are.
Avg. .361
OBP .487
SLG .662
HR 41
RBI 132

For that he finished...4th in the MVP race. He was behind these guys named Maris and Mantle and also finished behind Jim Gentile.
Cash had an OPS higher than all 3 of them, with it being .157 points higher than MVP Maris. He never batted higher than .286 the rest of his career, but he did have a top 10 finish in OPS 6 different years. 9 times he was in the top 10 in homers and twice finished second in the category.

Bill James sees little to choose from between Freehan and Parrish, but he does rank Freehan higher.

....the shakiest of my selections was Willie Hernandez at RP. I think that I would rather face Hiller in his prime than Hernandez. It was a tough call between Freehan and Parrish. Coincidentally, all Tigs that have their #'s retired are on my team....Kaline, Gehringer, Greenberg, Newhouser, Cobb*, Horton

*technically...didn't have a uniform number, but otherwise would be retired.

I also have to admit to giving the edge Kell at 3B (he was the tiger's t.v. play-by play announcer growing up alongside Kaline.

Also, as a life-long Tiger fan....thanks to everyone for not including "Cardiac" Todd Jones as the RP. He's the all-time Tigs leader in saves and the 00's leader in disappointment.