Tonight begins the 2004 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals. Twenty years ago, during my cohort's first semester of graduate school, baseball fans in the UM community got to root for the Detroit Tigers as they won the 1984 World Series. One list places this Tiger squad as the No. 9 best World Series-winning team of all-time.

At the start of the Fall '84 semester, there was about a month left in the regular season, as the Tigers coasted to the American League Eastern Division title. The Tigers then made short work of the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series and the San Diego Padres in the World Series (back then, there was one fewer round of play-offs than today).

The '84 Tigers started the season off 9-0 (including a no-hitter by Jack Morris against the White Sox) and 35-5 (click here for a full game-by-game log). That they were in first place every day of the season inspired the title of George Cantor's book on the team, Wire to Wire, which I read recently. The book, published earlier this year, features a series of short chapters each focusing on a different member of the '84 Tigers. Many former players were interviewed to get their reminiscences on the championship they won two decades earlier.

That Detroit team was noteworthy for the fact that its core consisted of a number of players who had come up through the Tiger farm system within a few years of each other. These players included the aforementioned Morris, Alan Trammell (now the Tigers' manager), Lou Whitaker, Lance Parrish, and Kirk Gibson (pictured on the book-cover photo linked above).

Gibson is well-known for a dramatic home run he hit while injured for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1988 World Series. He also hit an important one for the Tigers in the closing (fifth) game of the '84 World Series; against San Diego pitcher "Goose" Gossage, who had overruled his manager's decision to walk Gibson intentionally, Gibson blasted a late three-run homer to give the Tigers, who had been leading by only one run at the time, some insurance runs. In fact, on one list of greatest World Series moments, Gibson appears twice: his '88 homer is No. 1 and his '84 homer is No. 9.

I lived in a graduate dormitory (Baits) on North Campus my first year and I remember watching Gibson's homer off Gossage, as well as the Tigers' recording the final out against the Padres, from one of the nearby dining halls, where I had gone for a late afternoon snack on a Sunday.

Among the Detroit pro sports teams, the Tigers appeared to have the most support among the people I hung out with at UM. Now that the Tigers' on-field performance has plummeted in recent years, it wouldn't surprise me if hockey's Red Wings and basketball's Pistons, both of which have won championships in their respective sports within the last few years, have overtaken the Tigers.

The '84 Tigers are one of the very few World Series champions to have none of their players in the Hall of Fame (among teams going far back enough so that their players would have sufficient opportunity to be voted in). Morris, Trammell, and Whitaker are most commonly discussed as potentially deserving to get in. Cantor discusses this a few times in his history of the '84 Tigers, but even people not linked to the Tigers make similar arguments. Rob Neyer, whose Big Book of Baseball Lineups seeks to determine the best historical lineups fielded by every team, writes that:

"If you study the issue with any sort of sophistication, it's pretty clear that Trammell, like... [teammate Darrell] Evans, ranks among the all-time greats at his position" (p. 90).

The Tigers were managed by Hall of Fame skipper Sparky Anderson, who had previously managed two World Championship teams with Cincinnati. (As an aside, this year the Cardinals' Tony LaRussa will attempt to join Anderson as the only people to manage World Series winners in both leagues; LaRussa led the 1989 Oakland A's to the title.) Anderson was (and presumably still is) a very colorful personality, with his own unique style of expression.

I also had the opportunity during my Michigan years to listen to Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell on the radio. I consider Harwell and the Dodgers' Vin Scully (whom I listened to growing up in L.A.) to be the two top baseball broadcasters I've ever listened two (not favoring one over the other).

Another important piece of the team's history is Tiger Stadium, which hosted its last game at the conclusion of the 1999 season. Author Tom Stanton attended every Detroit home game that year in doing research for his book The Final Season. The book, which I read a couple of years ago, really transcends baseball. Stanton used the Tigers as a vehicle for blending in reflections on his family life. He also interviewed a lot of the "everyday people" who worked at Tiger Stadium.

Since 2000, the Tigers have played at the new Comerica Park. I attended one game at Tiger Stadium, in 1987, during my graduate school days.