top 50 athletes in michigan

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By Pat CaputoDigital First Media

If the Michigan State football teams of 1965 and 1966 weren’t the greatest college units of all-time in this state, regardless of sport, they were certainly close.

Those teams had an incredible amount of elite talent. None of MSU’s players was considered better than Spartans’ linebacker George Web-ster.

He was an amazing player, stand-ing 6-foot-4 and weighing 215 pounds and literally capable of playing every defensive position on the field dur-ing his era.

Most of the time, he backed the line for Hall of Fame coach Duffy Daugherty’s top teams.

The Spartans were 4-5 when Web-ster was a sophomore (freshmen were not eligible until 1972), but be-gan dominating college football in 1965, going 10-0 during the regu-lar season. Webster keyed a defense that held seven of its 10 opponents to a touchdown or less. The Spartans were named national champions by the UPI coaches poll, which was conducted before their up-set loss to UCLA in the 1966 Rose Bowl.

In 1966, the only blemish on MSU’s record was the fa-mous 10-10 tie vs. Notre Dame. They were not allowed to make amends in the Rose Bowl because the Big Ten had a no-repeat rule at the time. The National Football Foundation still named the Spartans as national champs. although Notre Dame was given the nod in the UPI and Asso-ciated Press (media) polls.

The AFL-NFL merger was in 1966, and although the leagues didn’t ac-tually join forces in playing games until the 1970 season, the first com-mon NFL Draft was in 1967. Webster was the fifth overall selection in the first round of that draft, and imme-diately became one of pro football’s top defensive players. He averaged 10 tackles per game as a rookie, and was named All-AFL each year until the merger included competition. Even though he only played three seasons of the 10 by the AFL. Webster was named to the AFL’s all-time team by the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Late in his career, Webster was hindered by injuries and wasn’t as effective as a player. He also played with Pittsburgh and New England.

To this day, he is considered by many the greatest football player in MSU history.

50GEORGE WEBSTER

#

Greatest football player in Spartan history

Sport: FootballMichigan Connection: Michigan State

UniversityPersonal: Born Nov. 25, 1945, Anderson, SC; Died April 19, 2007, Houston, TXHighlights:• Three-year starter and two-time consensus All-American linebacker at MSU 1964-66• Named as one of the Top 100 college football players

of all time by CollegeFootballNews.com• First-round draft choice (fifth overall) by the Houston Oilers in the 1967 NFL-AFL Draft• Three-time All-AFL 1967-69 during a 10-year NFL career with Houston, Pittsburgh and New England• Named to the AFL all-time first team• Inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1987

We challenged you, the readers of Digital First Media outlets across the state, to sound off about your favorite athlete with ties to Michi-gan. Our objective was to couple your nominations with a list cre-ated by Digital First Media experts to form a special section entitled, Michigan’s Top 50 Athletes.

A total of 229 votes were cast. Nearly all of the reader feedback came in the form of an open Google document. A dozen or so additional nominations came via email.

So, who is the greatest athlete born or raised in Michigan? What athlete got his/her start playing for one of Michigan’s great schools of higher learning? What athlete was born elsewhere but became famous wearing the olde English “D” of the Detroit Tigers, Honolulu blue and silver colors of the Detroit Lions or winged wheel jersey of the Detroit Red Wings?

For the record, the top 10 in the reader voting is as follows: Meryl Davis and Charlie White, Barry Sanders, Gordie Howe, Miguel Cabrera, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Kirk Gibson, Tom Brady, Joe Louis, Steve Yzerman, and a tie for 10th with Charles Woodson and Al Kaline.

Coupled with input from a panel of DFM experts led by columnist Pat Caputo and regional sports editor Jeff Kuehn, what follows are profiles that we feel are Michigan’s Top 50 Athletes in reverse order from No 50 to No. 1.

No doubt deserving athletes were left off the list. No doubt there will be disagreements about where athletes are placed on the list.

One thing that can’t be debated? We have all witnessed great mo-ments and formulated fantastic memories as a result of the talents and sacrifices of these gifted and dedicated men and women.

Enjoy!

The best of the best

2

Rugged Detroit roots carry tough player to championships

49#


Dave DeBusschere gained his greatest fame in New York as a member of the Knicks with NBA championship teams in 1970 and 1973.

Yet, it was his decid-edly rugged Detroit roots, which carried him so far.

DeBusschere was, in a word, tough. Although only 6-foot-6, he was one of the best rebounders of his generation, averaging in double figures in re-bounds the final 10 sea-son of his NBA career. De-Busshere was a regular on the NBA’s All-Defensive team and a deadly long-range shooter, whose ca-reer scoring average would undoubtedly have been higher had he played in the era of the 3-point shot.

DeBusschere was an ex-traordinary all-around athlete, who also pitched in the major leagues for the Chicago White Sox, go-ing 3-4 with a 2.90 ERA in 36 appearances. His baseball career included a six-hit, complete-game shutout of the Cleveland Indians in 1963. He only pitched in three MLB games after that stellar outing, electing to concentrate on basketball.

He was named as the Pistons’ player-coach at just 24, an experiment that lasted just a short time. His trade to the Knicks during the 1968-69

season ranks as one of the most lopsided – and not for the Pistons - in Detroit sports history.

DeBusschere was a school boy legend at De-troit Austin High School, leading the Friars from the Catholic League to the 1958 state championship over Benton Harbor, which fea-

tured future NBA great Chet “The Jet” Walker. It was an epic matchup. Walker was a first-team All-Amercan at Bradley University, played in seven NBA All-Star games and, like DeBusschere, a mem-ber of the Basketball Hall of Fame. DeBusschere had 32 points and Walker 25 as Austin edged Benton Har-bor by three points.

At the University of De-troit Mercy, DeBusshere averaged an incredible 24.8 points and 19.4 re-bounds per game during his three years on var-sity, and was on the third-team Associated Press All-American team as a senior.

DeBusschere retired at 33. He was the commis-sioner of the ABA when it merged with the NBA, and worked as team president for both the New Jersey Nets and the Knicks.

In 2003, DeBusshere, who had displayed no signs of previous health issues, died suddenly after a massive heart at-tack suffered while walking down a New York street.

He was just 62.

Sport: Basketball, baseballMichigan Connection: University of Detroit MercyPersonal: Born Oct. 16, 1940, Detroit, MI; Died May 14, 2003, New York, NY

Nickname: “Big D”Notable: • Played 12 NBA seasons with the Pistons and New York Knicks, averaging 16.1 points and 11 rebounds per game (1962-74)• Two-time NBA champion (1970, 1973)• Six-time All-NBA first defensive team• Pitched in Major League Baseball with Chicago White Sox (1962-63)• Named as one of the NBA’s 50 great-est players of all time in 1996• Inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983

DAVE DEBUSSCHERE

RON FREHM — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

New York Knicks’ Dave DeBusschere (22) drives against Baltimore Bullets’ Wesley Unseld in New York on Dec. 30, 1972. DeBusschere, a forward on two championship teams with the New York Knicks and also the youngest coach in league history, died May 14, 2003, of a heart attack at 62. DeBusschere starred collegiately at the University of Detroit.

3

Champion speed skater/cyclist

48#


There have been precious few athletes as versatile and decorated as Sheila Young-Ochowicz, a much-honored champion in both speed skating and cycling.

Raised on Detroit’s East Side, she became one of this nation’s top speed skaters as a teen during the late 1960s. Young-Ochowicz is from a family heavily involved in both cycling and skating, starting with her parents.

Young-Ochowicz did not medal during her first Winter Olympics in 1972 at Sapporo, Japan as a speed skater. She came very close, though, placing fourth in the 500-meter event.

However, Young-Ochowicz more than made up for it by garnering gold, silver and bronze medals during the 1976 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria.

In the process, Young-Ochowicz became the first American winter Olympian to medal three times in the same games.

There were only four individual speed

skating events for women at the time Young-Ochowicz captured her three medals. She was one of only two men or women speed skaters at the 1976 games to collect three medals.

Young-Ochowicz won world speed skating championships in 1973, 1975 and 1976.

Young also garnered three-world titles, and numerous national championships, as a cyclist. She is the only person to win world titles in speed skating and cycling in the same year (1973).

Young-Ochowicz didn’t have a chance for an Olympic medal in cycling during her prime because the sport wasn’t added to the Summer Olympic Games until 1984.

Young-Ochowicz started competing nationally in both sports before she was a teen. Her brother, Roger, was a world-class cyclist, and introduced her to her husband, Jim Ochowicz, another cyclist.

Their daughter, Elli Ochowicz, competed three times in the Winter Olympics as a speed skater (2002, 2006, 2010).

Sport: Speed skating, cyclingMichigan Connection: Detroit Denby High SchoolPersonal: Born Oct. 4, 1950, Birmingham, MINotable: • Olympic and world champion speed skater and world champion cyclist from late 1960s until early 1980s• Gold medal 500 meters 1976 Winter Olympics speed skating• Silver medal 1,500 meters 1976 Winter Olympics speed skating

• Bronze medal 1,000 meters 1976 Winter Olympics speed skating• Three-time world champion sprint velodrome cycling (1973, 1976, 1981)• Inducted into the U.S. Cycling Hall of Fame in 1988, elected to the Speed Skat-ing Hall of Fame in 1991

SHEILA YOUNG-OCHOWICZ


For the longest time, the National Hockey League was the exclusive domain of Canadians. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the height of the Original Six era, the league was some-times comprised of only players from Canada, even though four of the six fran-chises were located in the United States.

It changed to a degree during the 1970s, but the Americans were lacking a genuine superstar. When the American star power arrived, it was led by Pat LaFontaine.

Raised in Waterford, La-Fontaine honed his skills on Williams Lake behind his family’s home.

LaFontaine was a wonder as a junior player. He scored 175 goals and garnered 324 points playing Triple-A hockey for Detroit’s Com-puware program during the early 1980s. At the time, it was rare for an American to play major junior hockey in Canada. LaFontaine not only broke the mold, but he was easily the best player at that level playing for Ver-dun, a suburb of Montreal, in the Quebec Major Junior League, notching 104 goals and scoring 234 points in just 70 games.

As a result, LaFontaine was taken third overall in the NHL Draft by the Is-landers, and joined the team after playing for the U.S. in

the 1984 Olympics.With the Islanders in

1987, LaFontaine scored one of the most famous goals in Stanley Cup playoff history.

It was Game 7 of an open-ing-round series against the Washington Capitals. The game was in the fourth overtime tied 2-2, and had lasted six hours and 16 min-utes. There had been 131 previous shots on goal when the 132nd, a quick slap shot from 35-feet out by LaFon-taine, ended it.

It was the longest NHL game in 47 years. In the pro-cess, the Islanders became only the third team in NHL history at the time to rally from a three games to one deficit to win a playoff se-ries. It remains the 10th lon-gest game in NHL history is still arguably the most fa-mous.

LaFontaine was a highly-

skilled player. He had a ter-rific shot, was a top play-maker and one of the league’s better skaters.

He played during an era in which offensive produc-tion was high in the NHL, and was one of the league’s better producers. LaFon-taine played in five NHL All-Star games, and ranks 52nd all time in goals and 76th in points.

LaFontaine would have undoubtedly ranked higher (he was 17th all time in points and goals per game), but his career was cut short by a series of concussions. He is considered one of the all-time greats not only for the Islanders, but also the Buffalo Sabres. His final season was with the New York Rangers. LaFontaine was just 32 when he retired.

The Sabres retired La-Fontaine’s No. 16 in 2006.

47#Leading the American star power of hockey

Sport: HockeyMichigan Connection: Waterford Kettering High SchoolPersonal: Born Feb. 22, 1965, St. Louis, MONickname: FrannyNotable:• 15-year National Hockey League

career with the New York Islanders, Buffalo and New York Rangers, 1984-98• Accumulated 468 goals, 545 assists and 1,013 points in 865 NHL games• Averaged 1.17 points per game, 17th all-time in NHL• Third overall pick in the 1983 NHL Draft by the Islanders• Inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003

PAT LAFONTAINE

4

Tall, long and incredible force for knockout power

46#


Tommy Hearns changed the way box-ers are traditionally viewed. He was tall for his weight classes, 6-foot-1. He had a long reach, 78 inches. It didn’t mean, however, he wasn’t able to center him-self and unload punches that carried in-credible force and tremendous knockout power.

Hearns did not avoid anybody. His fights against Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler are considered among the most classic in boxing history.

The most famous and decorated fighter from legendary trainer Emanuel Stew-ard’s Kronk Gym in Detroit, Hearns was a national Golden Gloves champion as an amateur. He was well-seasoned by the time he turned pro in 1977, and rose quickly through the welterweight ranks.

He won his first world title in 1980, de-stroying Pipino Cuevas at the still-new Joe Louis Arena. It was a second-round knockout, but easily could have ended in the first round, Hearns was that devas-tating. Cuevas had no chance.

One of the biggest fights ever was when Hearns squared off with Leonard in a unification bout for the welterweight ti-tle in Las Vegas during 1981. Cable televi-sion was still in its infancy, and the fight was not carried on over-the-air television. Instead, it was shown in 300 locations na-tionally on closed-circuit television, sell-ing out many arenas. Hearns was leading the fight by a wide margin after dominat-ing the early rounds, frustrating Leonard with his long reach and power, but Leon-ard turned it around, eventually catching Hearns with a shot in the 14th round that sent him reeling. The referee stepped in, and it was over.

Hearns lost only five professional

bouts, but he was as impressive in defeat as he was in victory.

In 1985, Hearns stepped up in weight class and challenged Hagler for the world middleweight title. It was an incredible bout. The first round, in which Hearns and Hagler traded monster shots, might have been the most exciting round of boxing ever. Hagler’s face was bloodied, but Hearns hurt his hand. In the third round, Hagler caught him with a right

and knocked him out cold.Hearns fought Roberto Duran, who

beat Leonard, and knocked him out in the second round with a devastating right hand.

Because of his height, Hearns was eas-ily able to move up in weight class as he aged. He had won his second world ti-tle when he gained a 15-round decision over Wilfred Benitez for the lightweight crown late in 1982.

Hearns won his fifth and last world ti-tle, setting the record for titles in most classifications, with a decision over Vir-gil Hill, gaining the light heavyweight ti-tle in 1991. He held it until losing to Iran Barkley the following year.

Hearns, Steward and the Kronk Gym will forever live in boxing lore — genu-ine stars during an era the sport took center stage.

Hearns fought on and off after until 2006 and is often seen at Pistons’ games at The Palace of Auburn Hills, arriving casually late and thrilling fans, who can’t help but greet him with, “Hey, champ.”

Hearns usually raises a clichéd fist in acknowledgment It’s a great moment each time, a reminder of how thrilling Hearns was in the ring.

Sport: BoxingMichigan Connection: Raised in DetroitPersonal: Born Oct. 18, 1958, Memphis, TNNickname: Motor City CobraNotable:

• World welterweight, light middle-weight, light heavyweight, middle-weight and super middleweight cham-pion of the world during a professional career spanning 1977-2006• 61-5-1 record with 48 knockouts as a pro• 15-4-1 record in title fights• First boxer ever to win world titles in five different weight classes• Consensus Fighter of the Year in 1980 and 1984• Inducted into the International Box-ing Hall of Fame in 2012

TOMMY HEARNS

DUANE BURLESON — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tommy Hearns, right, misses with a right to Shannon Landberg during their bout on Feb. 4, 2006, in Auburn Hills. Hearns won when the fight was stopped in the 10th round.

5


There is a saying as old as professional sports itself: Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make.

Well, for Tigers’ fans, John Smoltz repre-sents a classic example of the polar oppo-site - a trade they wish their favorite team never consummated.

Smoltz was a strong-arm pros-pect, who had yet to develop in the minor leagues, when he was dealt to the At-lanta Braves in exchange for veteran pitcher Doyle Alexander late in the 1987 season.

Initially, it didn’t seem like a bad deal for the Tigers. Al-exander won eight straight decisions, lead-ing the Tigers to the American League East title and the most reg-ular-season wins in MLB (98). Al-though the Ti-gers were upset by Minnesota in the play-offs, Alexander won 14 games in ‘88 for the Tigers.

However, it ultimately became the clas-sic example of how trading a prospect for a veteran player can come back to haunt a franchise.

According the Sabermetric statistic Wins Above Replacement (WAR), Smoltz is the 102nd best player in MLB history.

He is one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time, winning 15 games. It ranks second all time.

Smoltz was 24-8 in 1996 when he won the National League Cy Young Award, and dis-played his versatility by becoming a closer.

Smoltz had Tommy John sur-gery to fix an el-bow ailment. As a result, he missed most of the 2000 and 2001 seasons. He returned to full strength in 2002 as a closer, saving 55, 45 and 44 games the next three sea-sons before re-turning to the starting rotation.

When he was 40, in 2007, Smoltz was 14-8 with a 3.11 ERA and placed sixth in the NL Cy Young voting.

A l e x a n d e r ? He retired from baseball after go-ing 6-18 for the

Tigers in 1989.Smoltz ended his career with brief stints

with Boston and St. Louis in 2009.He is eligible to inducted into the Base-

ball Hall of Fame for the first time in 2015. There seems to be little doubt Smoltz will get in on the first ballot.

45#

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Lan-sing Waverly High SchoolPersonal: Born May 15, 1967, Detroit MINickname: SmoltzieNotable:• 213-155 record with a 3.33 ERA in 21 Major League Baseball seasons, mostly

with Atlanta• Drafted by the Tigers in the 22nd round of the 1985 MLB Draft and traded to Atlanta in 1987• Only MLB pitcher with more than 200 victories and 100 saves• 1996 National League Cy Young Award winner• 15-4 with a 2.67 ERA in postseason play• 1992 National League Championship Se-ries Most Valuable Player

One of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time

JOHN SMOLTZ


Micki King was a classic example of an athlete overcoming obstacles and rally-ing when down to achieve genuine great-ness.

In the 1972 Olympics at Munich, King was in third place with only three dives remaining in the three-meter spring-board event, and still pulled out a gold-medal performance. She also placed fifth in that same Olympics in the platform event.

King’s gold-medal performance repre-sented a comeback from the heartbreak she experienced four years earlier dur-ing the 1968 Olympics at Mexico City.

In third place, she fractured her arm while hitting the board on her ninth dive. She completed her 10th and final dive, but dropped to fourth, missing the podium.

It was typical of King to not led any-thing knock her off a path to greatness. She did not compete for either Pontiac Central High School or the University of Michigan. Neither had swimming and diving programs for females athletes at the time. At Michigan, King was forced to dive in the women’s pool. It was separate from the men’s only pool, which was used by the Michigan men’s swimming team. She was aided a great deal in her prog-ress by Michigan men’s diving coach Dick Kimball, though, who eventually trained her along with the men’s team - and in the same pool.

Competing for the Ann Arbor Swim Club, King won eight AAU national div-ing titles, and was a top water polo player.

King, whose father was a line worker at General Motors, learned to swim at her family cottage in Waterford. She be-came infatuated with diving after tak-

ing lessons at the YMCA in Downtown Pontiac.

After graduating at Michigan, King joined the Air Force, and was still en-listed when she won her gold medal. She served in the Air Force for more than a quarter of a century, leaving in 1992 to become an assistant athletic director at the University of Kentucky, a position she held for 14 years.

While she couldn’t compete for Mich-igan athletically, King was eventually awarded an honorary varsity letter by the “M” Club.

It was long overdue, for precious few athletes have represented the University of Michigan better.

44MICKI KING#

Sport: DivingMichigan Connec-tion: Pontiac Central High School and the University of MichiganPersonal: Born July 22, 1944, Pontiac, MINotable: • One of the world’s

top women divers during the 1960s and early 1970s• Olympic gold medal winner in the three-meter springboard at the 1972 Olympics in Munich• Fourth place in three-meter spring-board event in the 1968 Olympics at Mexico City• Fifth place in women’s platform div-ing in the 1972 Olympics• Two-time AAU champion Water Polo goaltender• Inducted in the International Swim-ming Hall of Fame in 1978

Few athletes have represented the University of Michigan better

6


There is a saying as old as professional sports itself: Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make.

Well, for Tigers’ fans, John Smoltz repre-sents a classic example of the polar oppo-site - a trade they wish their favorite team never consummated.

Smoltz was a strong-arm pros-pect, who had yet to develop in the minor leagues, when he was dealt to the At-lanta Braves in exchange for veteran pitcher Doyle Alexander late in the 1987 season.

Initially, it didn’t seem like a bad deal for the Tigers. Al-exander won eight straight decisions, lead-ing the Tigers to the American League East title and the most reg-ular-season wins in MLB (98). Al-though the Ti-gers were upset by Minnesota in the play-offs, Alexander won 14 games in ‘88 for the Tigers.

However, it ultimately became the clas-sic example of how trading a prospect for a veteran player can come back to haunt a franchise.

According the Sabermetric statistic Wins Above Replacement (WAR), Smoltz is the 102nd best player in MLB history.

He is one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time, winning 15 games. It ranks second all time.

Smoltz was 24-8 in 1996 when he won the National League Cy Young Award, and dis-played his versatility by becoming a closer.

Smoltz had Tommy John sur-gery to fix an el-bow ailment. As a result, he missed most of the 2000 and 2001 seasons. He returned to full strength in 2002 as a closer, saving 55, 45 and 44 games the next three sea-sons before re-turning to the starting rotation.

When he was 40, in 2007, Smoltz was 14-8 with a 3.11 ERA and placed sixth in the NL Cy Young voting.

A l e x a n d e r ? He retired from baseball after go-ing 6-18 for the

Tigers in 1989.Smoltz ended his career with brief stints

with Boston and St. Louis in 2009.He is eligible to inducted into the Base-

ball Hall of Fame for the first time in 2015. There seems to be little doubt Smoltz will get in on the first ballot.

45#

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Lan-sing Waverly High SchoolPersonal: Born May 15, 1967, Detroit MINickname: SmoltzieNotable:• 213-155 record with a 3.33 ERA in 21 Major League Baseball seasons, mostly

with Atlanta• Drafted by the Tigers in the 22nd round of the 1985 MLB Draft and traded to Atlanta in 1987• Only MLB pitcher with more than 200 victories and 100 saves• 1996 National League Cy Young Award winner• 15-4 with a 2.67 ERA in postseason play• 1992 National League Championship Se-ries Most Valuable Player

One of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time

JOHN SMOLTZ


Micki King was a classic example of an athlete overcoming obstacles and rally-ing when down to achieve genuine great-ness.

In the 1972 Olympics at Munich, King was in third place with only three dives remaining in the three-meter spring-board event, and still pulled out a gold-medal performance. She also placed fifth in that same Olympics in the platform event.

King’s gold-medal performance repre-sented a comeback from the heartbreak she experienced four years earlier dur-ing the 1968 Olympics at Mexico City.

In third place, she fractured her arm while hitting the board on her ninth dive. She completed her 10th and final dive, but dropped to fourth, missing the podium.

It was typical of King to not led any-thing knock her off a path to greatness. She did not compete for either Pontiac Central High School or the University of Michigan. Neither had swimming and diving programs for females athletes at the time. At Michigan, King was forced to dive in the women’s pool. It was separate from the men’s only pool, which was used by the Michigan men’s swimming team. She was aided a great deal in her prog-ress by Michigan men’s diving coach Dick Kimball, though, who eventually trained her along with the men’s team - and in the same pool.

Competing for the Ann Arbor Swim Club, King won eight AAU national div-ing titles, and was a top water polo player.

King, whose father was a line worker at General Motors, learned to swim at her family cottage in Waterford. She be-came infatuated with diving after tak-

ing lessons at the YMCA in Downtown Pontiac.

After graduating at Michigan, King joined the Air Force, and was still en-listed when she won her gold medal. She served in the Air Force for more than a quarter of a century, leaving in 1992 to become an assistant athletic director at the University of Kentucky, a position she held for 14 years.

While she couldn’t compete for Mich-igan athletically, King was eventually awarded an honorary varsity letter by the “M” Club.

It was long overdue, for precious few athletes have represented the University of Michigan better.

44MICKI KING#

Sport: DivingMichigan Connec-tion: Pontiac Central High School and the University of MichiganPersonal: Born July 22, 1944, Pontiac, MINotable: • One of the world’s

top women divers during the 1960s and early 1970s• Olympic gold medal winner in the three-meter springboard at the 1972 Olympics in Munich• Fourth place in three-meter spring-board event in the 1968 Olympics at Mexico City• Fifth place in women’s platform div-ing in the 1972 Olympics• Two-time AAU champion Water Polo goaltender• Inducted in the International Swim-ming Hall of Fame in 1978

Few athletes have represented the University of Michigan better

6

Heart and starts set track star apart from the rest43#


In an event dominated by taller athletes with longer legs, Hayes Jones rose to the very top despite being relatively short at 5-foot-10.

There were two things that set Jones apart. One was his extraordinary starts. The other was his competitive heart. In big races, Jones had an incredible will that eventually made him an Olympic champion.

Jones captured Olympic gold in 1964 at Tokyo. Running in the 110-meter hurdles final on a wet track, and literally ripping through puddles of water, Jones got off to a fast start and won going away.

It was the second Olympic medal Jones secured. In 1960 at Rome, he won

bronze, also in the 110-meter hurdles, placing behind American teammates Lee Calhoun and Willie May.

Jones improved his time by more than a third of a second from one gold medial race to another in four years. He ran a 14.0 in the Olympic final in 1960 compared to 13.67 in 1964. His personal best in the event was 13.63 in 1963.

Jones was raised in Pontiac and attended Pontiac High School. Jones won both the 120-yard high and 220-

yard low hurdles at the 1959 NCAA Championships while at Eastern Michigan.

Jones wasn’t only an outstanding hurdler, he was a world-class sprinter and long jumper.

Jones won the state long jump championship in high school, and was part of an American four-by-100 meters relay team that set the world record at the USA-USSR track meet in Moscow 1961, running the first leg. At the time, it was a huge international event because

it was held during the height of the Cold War.

It was one of the first marquee events broadcast on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, which would become a longstanding television institution.

His Olympic gold medal-winning race was the last run by Jones, who has gone on to a distinguished career in private business and public service, which included a brief stint as a representative in the Michigan State Legislature.

Sport: TrackMichigan Connec-tion: Eastern Michigan UniversityPersonal: Born Aug. 4, 1938, Starkville, MSNotable:• Raised in Pontiac, one of the world’s top

hurdlers and sprinters during the late 1950s and early 1960s.• Gold medal 110 meter hurdles, 1964 Olympics in Tokyo• Bronze medal 110 meter hurdles, 1960 Olympics in Rome• NCAA Champion in low and high hurdles in 1958• Member of 4x100-meter world-record team• Inducted into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1976

HAYES JONES

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hayes Jones of Detroit, bottom right, and Blaine Lindgren of Salt Lake City, clear the last hurdle in the 110-meter hurdle final which Jones won at the Olympic games in Tokyo, Oct. 18, 1964. At bottom left is Russia’s Anatoly Mikhailov who came in third. At top left is Mariel Duriez of France of who ran fifth, and going over a hurdle is Edy Ottoz of Italy, who came in fourth.

7

By Matthew B. MoweryDigital First Media

If there’s one thing that characterizes the career of Jack Morris, it’s winning.

He was the Opening Day starter for the Detroit Tigers every season in the 1980s, a decade in which they won more games than any other MLB franchise save the Yankees.

And Morris won more games in that de-cade than any other pitcher in baseball, in-cluding 14 or more in 10 straight seasons. He led the team in wins 11 times, a fran-chise record.

He started three All-Star Games, threw a no-hitter in 1984 and three consecutive shutouts in 1986.

He won three World Series champion-ships — one each with the Tigers, Twins and Blue Jays — earning World Series MVP honors in 1991, when he pitched a 10-in-ning shutout in Game 7 against the Braves. It’s gone down in history as one of the fin-est postseason pitching performances of all time.

Before losing three games in his final playoff run in 1992, his postseason record was 7-1 with four complete games in nine starts.

He was a workhorse, one who famously “pitched to the score,” allowing him to fin-ish 175 of his 527 career starts. He started 490 straight games without missing a turn in the rotation.

But that perceived propensity to pitch to contact — and give up runs in the pro-cess (he also led all pitchers in hits, runs, earned runs and home runs allowed in the 1980s) — was at the core of the protracted arguments over Morris’ Hall of Fame can-

didacy.“This guy — I’ve been in many games

with him where he’d give up a four or five or six spot in the first two innings and re-

fuse to come out of the game. He’d walk in the dugout and say, ‘I’ve never lost with 10.’ We’d win 9-8,” former teammate Kirk Gibson told MLB.com two years ago, ad-mitting that it probably “muddies his case” when judging Morris by his ERA.

“Or if he’s out there and it’s the seventh inning and we’re up by six runs and he has to give up four to win, he’s certainly not coming out of the game. Certainly his postseason accolades and records are al-most unmatched, certainly within the era of the game that he played.”

Morris was passed over for the Hall of

Fame by the writers, after coming close his last few attempts.

“I’m relieved. I’m glad. I’m tired of get-ting scrutinized by writers,” Morris told the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ Mike Berardino after missing out on the 75-percent voting threshold for the 15th and final time last January. “Fifteen years ought to be long enough for anybody, you know? If it’s not going to happen in 15 years, it’s not going to happen.”

Starting in December 2016, Morris be-comes eligible to be voted in by the Veter-ans Committee.

42JACK MORRIS#

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit Tigers pitcher (1977-90)Personal: Born May 16, 1955 in St. Paul, Minn.Nickname: Mount

MorrisNotable:• Played 14 of his 18 seasons in De-troit, winning 198 games, and finishing 154 of his 408 starts.• A five-time All-Star, Morris made 14 consecutive Opening Day starts, a big-league record. • No-hit the White Sox on April 7, 1984, the franchise’s first no-hitter in 26 seasons.• Winningest pitcher in the 1980s, but also led all pitchers in starts, innings pitched and hits allowed.• A five-time All-Star, Morris played on World Series championship teams for three different franchises (1984 Tigers, 1991 wins, 1992 Blue Jays, 1993 Blue Jays).• Compiled a 7-4 postseason record, with five complete games, two of them in the ’84 World Series. A third came in the 1991 World Series, a 10-inning gem in Game 7.

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

In this photo from 1988, Detroit Tigers’ Jack Morris pitches against the New York Yankees in New York.

If there’s one thing that defines his career, it’s winning

8

41RICK LEACHProductive and charismatic QB

#By Pat CaputoDigital First Media

Even before he arrived in Ann Arbor and became one of Michigan’s truly legendary athletic performers, Rick Leach was well-known in this state.

At Flint Southwestern High School, Leach was one of the best prep athletes - if not the very best - this state has ever produced.

Leach was an All-State quar-terback in foot-ball, an All-State outfielder in base-ball and an All-State point guard in basketball.

Michigan foot-ball coach Bo Schembechler was calculated by nature, and gen-erally didn’t take many risks, yet he named Leach as his starting quarterback as a freshman.

Leach had been a dropback passer in high school, but was a good and savvy enough athlete to adjust to the tri-ple-option offense Michigan was deploying at the time.

Leach ran for 2,176 yards and passed for 4,284 yards at Michigan. He accounted for 82 touchdowns rushing and passing, which was the NCAA record at the time. From his sophomore to senior seasons, Leach led the Wolverines to a 30-6 record, and victories over Ohio State each season during the “10-

year War” between Schembechler and Buck-eyes’ coach Woody Hayes.

Michigan lost all three times Leach played in the Rose Bowl, but he was named co-MVP of the game one year.

It was common for Leach to participate in spring practice for football and play for the Wolverines’ baseball team on the same day.

He was considered the better baseball prospect, and was taken in the first round by the Tigers in the MLB Draft. He was also drafted in the fifth-round (132nd overall) by the NFL’s Denver Broncos.

Leach played a decade in MLB, but was primar-ily a backup out-fielder and first baseman. Leach was a .268 life-time hitter with a .704 OPS and 18 home runs in 1,719 MLB at bats with four differ-ent teams.

The Bo-Woody rivalry is leg-endary. Leach started four of those 10 games for Michigan, and

won three, two in Columbus.He was a perfect cross of the triple option

era that dominated college football during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, and the high-powered passing attacks that were to come.

Leach was a left-hander, and he made that cool. Michigan has had many great quarter-backs. It’s difficult to argue any were more productive and charismatic than Rick Leach.

Sport: Football, baseballMichigan Connection: University of Michigan, Detroit TigersPersonal: Born May 4, 1957, Ann Arbor, MINickname: Guts and Glue of the Maize and BlueNotable:• Four-year starter at

quarterback for Michigan, 1975-78; Major League Baseball outfielder/first baseman 1981-90 with Detroit, Toronto, Texas and San Francisco• Finished third in Heisman Trophy voting in 1978• All-American in football and baseball at Michigan• Three-time All-Big Ten quarterback and Big Ten MVP in 1978• First-round draft choice by the Detroit Tigers in 1979 (13th overall)


Michigan Wolverine quarterback Rick Leach (7) scrambles out of the pocket protected by offensive guard Mark Donahue (60) during Rose Bowl action in Pasadena, Calif. on Jan. 2, 1978.

9

40DEREK JETEROne of greatest players in MLB history grew up in Kalamazoo


Based on sheer accomplishments, Derek Jeter, admittedly, deserved to be higher on this list. He played on five World Series championship teams, and ranks among MLB’s all-time leaders in many categories. He was an extraor-dinarily great clutch baseball player by any standard, and the consummate teammate and professional.

But he wasn’t born in Michi-gan, nor did he garner his fame, fortune ($265.1 million in salary during his career) and success with any of this state’s college or profes-sional teams.

His connection is being raised here, in Kalama-zoo. Born in New Jersey, and ac-tually a life-long Yankees’ fan be-cause of his roots, Jeter moved to Kalam-azoo not long before he started elementary school. Major League scouts were drawn to Kalamazoo, where Jeter starred for Central High School.

The Houston Astros had the top pick in the 1992 MLB Draft and their Michigan area scout at the time was former Tigers’ Hall of Fame pitcher Hal Newhouser, who strongly recommended the Astros pick Jeter.

When they didn’t, opting for outfielder Phil Nevin instead, Newhouser was so out-raged, he resigned his position. Jeter was eventually picked by the Yankees with the sixth overall choice.

Jeter’s ascent to greatness was swift. He became essentially the “next one” in a long

line of Yankees stars from Babe Ruth to Lou Geh-rig to Joe DiMag-gio to Mickey Mantle to Reggie Jackson to Jeter.

He holds many Yankees’ team re-cords, including for most hits and stolen bases. And he was the quint-essential winner. According to the Sabermetrics sta-tistic Wins Above R e p l a c e m e n t (WAR), Jeter is the 58th greatest player in MLB history.

The statistics don’t lie. Jeter was that good, with a large de-gree of intangi-bles tossed in for good measure.

Jeter played most of his career during baseball’s so-called “steroids era” and with and against many ball players who con-ducted themselves in a questionable man-ner.

Those were never any issues with Jeter. He always stayed above the fray.

There is little question Derek Jeter will be a first-ballot inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame the first year he is eligible in 2020.

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Ka-lamazoo Central High SchoolPersonal: Born June 26, 1974, Pequannock, NJNickname: The Captain, Mr. NovemberNotable:• Played his entire Major League Baseball career as a

shortstop for the New York Yankees, 1995-2014• 1996 American League Rookie of the Year• Five-time Gold Glove Award winner, 2000 World Series MVP, 2000 MVP All-Star Game• 3,465 hits, most ever by an MLB shortstop, and sixth all time• 2009 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year• Five-time World Series championship team member

KATHY WILLENS — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter (2) fields a ground ball against the Baltimore Orioles on Sept. 25, 2014, in New York.

10

Lanky fireballer was the right pick for Tigers in 2004 draft

39#


The reward for the abysmal 2003 sea-son — when the Tigers approached the all-time record for losses — was the chance to pick at the top of the draft the next June, and fortunately, they nailed it.

With the No. 2 overall pick in 2004, they selected a lanky fireballer from Old Dominion, Justin Verlander, hoping for an instant impact starter. Instead, they got a guy who — up until the last two seasons of struggles — seemed to be on a Hall of Fame career arc.

Along with reliever Joel Zumaya, Ver-lander streaked onto the scene with his blazing fastball and blew everyone away in a dynamic rookie season in 2006, help-ing lead the Tigers to the World Series for the first time in 18 seasons.

He dipped a bit in 2008, then — heed-ing advice from Jack Morris, another player on this list — developed himself from a thrower into a pitcher over the next three seasons, establishing himself as one of the best in the game.

The 2011 season was his masterpiece, as he won 24 games, tossed his second career no-hitter, won the pitching Tri-ple Crown, then won the Cy Young and MVP in slam-dunk votes. He also led the Tigers back to the playoffs for the first time in five seasons, starting a run of four straight division titles.

His trademark, like that of his men-tor, Morris, has been his desire to be the club’s unerringly reliable workhorse. He’s made seven straight Opening Day starts, the most since Morris’ team re-cord 11 straight, and prides himself that he’s never been on the disabled list.

It shows in his statistics, too. After nine full seasons, he ranks third

in franchise history in strikeouts eighth in wins and starts, and 11th in innings pitched and total batters faced, and is the club’s active leader in every one of those categories.

There’s a worry that all that work will catch up to a power pitcher, though, and his last two seasons may be indications of that. After agreeing just before the start of the 2013 season to a five-year ex-tension which made him the highest-paid

pitcher in baseball history, Verlander has stumbled to his worst two seasons since 2008.

Some of that can be attributed to core muscle repair surgery he had in the off-season between the two campaigns.

“I think (he) will bounce back, I think

he’s really driven to bounce back,” GM Dave Dombrowski said recently, “and that core injury probably bothered him a little bit more, particularly for prepa-ration into the year.”

Verlander’s contract keeps him a Tiger at least through 2019.

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit Tigers pitcher (2005-present)Personal: Born Feb. 20, 1983, in Goochland, Va.Nickname: JV, Must-see JV

Notable:• The first rookie pitcher in baseball history to win 10 games by the end of June, Verlander was named AL Rookie of the Year in 2006.• A six-time All-Star, Verlander is the second to ever win Rookie of the Year, Cy Young and MVP, joining Don New-combe.• Finished top three in Cy Young voting three times between 2009 and 2012, and no worse than 11th in that span.• Won the pitching Triple Crown in 2011, following it up with the Cy Young and MVP, just the fourth Tigers pitcher to win the league’s top honor.• One of just 28 pitchers with multiple no-hitters to his name. Was the second Tigers pitcher to have two, joining Virgil Trucks.

JUSTIN VERLANDER

TONY DEJAK — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Justin Verlander delivers to Cleveland Indians’ Michael Bourn during a game on Sept. 3, 2014, in Cleveland.

11

38Terrible Ted: ‘You had to play tough in those days’

#

By Chuck PleinessDigital First Media

You don’t get the nickname “Terrible Ted” without earning it.

“I had the idea that I should beat up every player I tangled with and nothing ever con-vinced me it wasn’t a good idea,” Lindsay said of his style of play. “You had to play tough in those days, or they’d run you out of the build-ing.”

Lindsay and Nels Stewart are still the only players in NHL history to have led the league in penalty minutes and in scoring during their careers.

Lindsay, who was just 5-foot-8 and 160 pounds, retired as the NHL’s all-time penalty minute leader.

Lindsay wasn’t a one-dimensional player. He was also a natural goal scorer.

Lindsay was a mem-ber of the infamous “Production Line” in the 1940s and 1950s with the Red Wings, which also had Gordie Howe and Sid Abel on it.

After the 1947-48 season, Lindsay finished in the top 10 in scoring for the first time in his career. Two seasons later, he was the NHL’s scoring leader and helped lead the Red Wings to the Stanley Cup.

He also won Cups in 1952, 1954 and 1955 with Detroit, the latter two he captained the team.

“It was a unit,” Lindsay said. “To win seven league championships in a row, nobody’s ever going to defeat that record in hockey. Nobody

will ever win it seven years in a row. Not with 30 teams.

“We had great skaters,” Lindsay continued. “We had great puck-handlers. A lot of people think we were all old fogies back in those days who couldn’t skate. We had guys who could skate with anybody today.”

But things changed for Lindsay in 1957.After leading the league in assists and to-

taling a career-high 85 points, Lindsay and a number of other high-profile players decided to organize the NHL Players’ Association.

That didn’t sit well with Red Wings’ general manager Jack Adams and he dealt Lindsay, who at the time was the league’s third all-time leading goal scorer, to the Chicago Blackhawks.

The move to the Black-hawks, who weren’t good at the time, was meant more of a punish-ment than a wise hockey move.

After three seasons in Chicago he decided to retire after having played 999 games.

But in 1964, Abel, who had taken over be-hind the bench and as GM, wanted Lindsay back.

During that final season in the league, Lind-say helped lead the Wings back to the top for the first time since his departure.

In all, Lindsay totaled 379 goals and 472 as-sists in 17 seasons. He logged 1,808 minutes in 1,067 games, topping 100 minutes in 10 seasons and leading the NHL in penalty minutes twice.

Lindsay also spent stints as the Red Wings’ GM and interim coach.

Sport: HockeyMichigan Connec-tion: Detroit Red Wings winger (1944-57 and 1964-65)Personal: Born July 29, 1925, Renfrew, Ontario, Canada

Nickname: “Terrible Ted”Notable: • Four-time Stanley Cup champ• Art Ross winner• Inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1966• Red Wings retired his No. 7 in 1991• Appeared in 11 NHL All-Star Games

TED LINDSAY


Team captain Ted Lindsay of the Detroit Red Wings hugs the Stanley Cup on April 16, 1954, after his team defeated the Montreal Canadiens, 4-3, in a sudden-death extra period to win the Stanley Cup finals in Detroit.

12


When Jim Harbaugh was the starting quarterback at Michigan, the Wolverines’ ri-valry with Ohio State was at a fe-ver pitch. The leg-endary Bo Schem-bechler was Mich-igan’s coach, and he wasn’t fond at all of his players providing bulletin board material for opposing teams.

And yet what did Harbaugh do his senior season at Michigan with the Big Ten title on the line in the Ohio State game? He guaranteed a victory over the Buckeyes.

Thing is, Har-baugh delivered on it. The Wolver-ines’ 26-14 victory clinched a share of the Big Ten title and a trip to the Rose Bowl, and sealed Harbaugh’s spot in Michigan lore. The Wolverines rolled up more than 500 yards in total offense, which was un-heard of at the time vs. the vaunted Ohio State defense led by All-American and future NFL All-Pro linebacker Chris Spielman.

In his final two years as a starter, Harbaugh led Michigan to a 21-3-1 record. He represented a change from Michigan’s quarterbacks un-der Schembechler to that point. He didn’t run the triple option, and was a pocket passer. He wasn’t only the first of Schembechler’s quar-terbacks to play the position in the NFL, he was a first-round NFL Draft choice of the Chi-cago Bears.

Harbaugh’s father, Jack, was an assistant coach at Michigan. Harbaugh became the start-

ing quarterback at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School midway through his sophomore year, but moved to Palo Alto, Calif. for his junior and senior years of high school with his father, who had been named defensive coordinator at Stan-

ford.Harbaugh re-

turned to Ann Arbor for college. He was the starting quar-terback his sopho-more year, but broke his arm early in the season at Michigan State. He emerged as a top player his junior season, and placed behind only Miami quarterback Vinny Testaverde and Temple running back Paul Palmer in Heisman Trophy balloting after his senior season.

Harbaugh was a fiery leader, and fit the mold of his coach with the Chi-cago Bears, Mike

Ditka. But for the most part, the Bears didn’t achieve as expected during Harbaugh’s stint in Chicago. The highlight of Harbaugh’s NFL career was in 1995 when he led the underdog Indianapolis Colts to the AFC Championship game, coming within a play or two of reach-ing the Super Bowl.

Harbaugh started most of his NFL career, but had a below .500 record (66-74) as an NFL starter.

Harbaugh has had terrific success as a coach, turning around a floundering program at Stan-ford, and taking the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl. His Super Bowl team lost to the Baltimore Ravens, coached by his older brother, John, his former teammate at Pioneer High.

To this day, Harbaugh still carries that cer-tain swagger that is trademark.

37JIM HARBAUGHA fiery leader fit for success as coach

Sport: FootballMichigan Connection: University of MichiganPersonal: Born Dec. 23, 1963, Toledo, OHNickname: Captain ComebackNotable:• Played at Michigan 1983-86, and in the NFL 1987-2000 with

Chicago, Indianapolis, Baltimore and San Diego• Current head coach of the San Francisco 49ers• 1986 Big Ten Player of the Year• Finished third in the 1986 Heisman Trophy voting• 1995 NFL Comeback Player of the Year• Pro Bowl selection 1995• Lost to his brother, John (Baltimore Ravens) in the Super Bowl

# 36BILLY SIMSA short but memorable stay in Detroit

#By Paula PascheDigital First Media

If there were any doubts about whether Billy Sims could flourish in the NFL, they were all gone by the end of his opening game for the Detroit Lions.

It was Sept. 7, 1980, against the Los An-geles Rams at Anaheim Stadium.

Sims, the first-overall pick, came to the Lions hoping to turn the franchise around from a 2-14 season in 1979.

In the first game of his rookie season Sims ran for three touchdowns — 10 yards, one yard and 41 yards. He totaled 134 rush-ing yards on 22 carries. It was the first time an NFL player scored three touchdowns in his first game.

Sims also caught a 60-yard pass from Gary Danielson and had another four-yard reception.

It was an im-pressive 41-20 win over the Rams (a 9-point favorite) who would finish the season 11-5, while the Lions would improve to 9-7.

In his first three games as a rookie, Sims had 382 rush-ing yards and six touchdowns

Sims, who wore No. 20 like Lem Barney be-fore him and Barry Sanders after him, had four solid sea-sons with the Lions.

Then it came to a sudden end on a fluke play in his fifth season in 1984.

It was Oct. 21 at Minnesota. Sims had

carried 20 times already when Daniel-son got the call from the sidelines. Sims didn’t like the call and in the huddle said, “Change the bleeping play” according to a Detroit News story.

It wasn’t changed and Sims ran around the right end, planted his right foot to cut back when his knee buckled. Tendons and cartilage shredded.

No one knew it at the time but it was his last football game. He had extensive surgery and hoped to return the next fall.

It wasn’t meant to be.It was a short stay in Detroit for Sims,

but a memorable one.He helped get the Lions to the playoffs

in 1982 and 1983.He gave Lions fans a thrill.He was known for his high-stepping

and, of course, the karate kick.In a Nov.,

13, 1983, game Sims was the deep back , got some nice blocking, hur-dled over one Houston Oiler and then with his right foot karate kicked c o r n e r b a c k Steve Brown knocking him to the turf.

After that he was given the nickname “Kung Fu Billy Sims” by ES-PN’s Chris Ber-man.

Sims still makes trips to Detroit for oc-casional Lions’

alumni games and to keep an eye on his Billy Sims Barbecue restaurants in the area.

Sport: FootballMichigan connection: Detroit Lions running back 1980-84Personal: Born Sept. 18, 1955, in St. Louis, Mo.Nickname: Kung Fu Billy SimsNotable:• First overall pick in the

1980 draft out of Oklahoma, where he won the Heisman Trophy in 1978.• Was named to Pro Bowl in 1980, 1981, 1982 and led Lions to playoffs in 1982 and 1983.• Finished career with Lions (1980-84) with 1,131 carries for 5,106 yards (4.3 yards per carry) and 42 touchdowns. Also 186 catches for 2,072 yards and five scores.

13

35DESMOND HOWARDMichigan star was known for his spectacular plays


There have been many, many bigger foot-ball players than Desmond Howard. He stood 5-foot-10 (and that might have been a reach) and weighed 185 pounds. While Howard certainly had excellent speed, there were faster play-ers, too.

But Howard had an incredible knack for making the big play that made him one of the best wide re-ceivers in college football history, and one of the top kick return-ers of all time in the NFL.

In 1991 at Michigan, How-ard caught 19 t o u c h d o w n passes in 12 games. He rushed for two more, and added one on a kickoff return, accounting for nearly two touchdowns per game. It wasn’t just that Howard accounted for nearly 1,600 yards in offense that season, but the big-play aspect of his performance that set him apart. He had 91 touches that season, aver-aging 17.6 yards per touch. Of those touches, 24 percent ended with a touchdown.

Howard put together a similar sizzling performance in 1990. His being announced as the Heisman Trophy winner was a mere formality. Howard had four times the votes of Florida State quarterback Casey Weldon, who placed second.

Howard’s Heisman Trophy pose after scoring a touchdown against Ohio State

is one of the classic moments in Michigan sports history. Michigan was 9-3 and 10-2 during Howard’s final two college seasons.

Taken fourth overall in the NFL Draft by Washington, Howard was initially viewed as a bust. Eventually, he found his niche as a kick returner. He led the NFL in punt returns in 1996, and finished sixth or bet-

ter three times each in kickoff and punt returns during his NFL career.

The apex of Howard’s career came in the Su-per Bowl while he was playing for Green Bay fol-lowing the 1996 season. Against New England, he had nearly 250 return yards, in-cluding taking a kickoff back 99 yards for a touch-down that sealed the win. How-ard’s role was so integral, he was named as the Su-

per Bowl MVP.He ended his career with the Lions in

1999, 2000 and 2001. He was named to the Pro Bowl as a return specialist following the 2000 season.

As a receiver, Howard had limited impact in the NFL (just 123 catches, seven touch-downs), but he often took over games with his returns.

Now a commentator on ESPN’s College Game Day, Howard remains in the spotlight of college football, albeit in a different way.

He won’t be soon forgotten as a player, though. The best word to describe his play: Spectacular.

Sport: FootballMichigan Connection: University of Michigan, Detroit LionsPersonal: Born, March 15, 1970, Cleveland, OhioNickname: MagicNotable: •Played wide receiver at Michigan 1989-91, and

in the NFL 1992-2002 with Washington, Jacksonville, Green Bay, Oakland and Detroit• Heisman Trophy winner 1991• Super Bowl MVP 1997• All-Pro 1996, Pro Bowl 2000• Ninth all-time in kickoff return yards in NFL history


In this Oct. 2, 1991, file photo, Michigan’s Desmond Howard (21) drives past a diving Indiana defender to pick up extra yardage during the second half of a game in Ann Arbor. Heisman Trophy winner Howard, who went on to win a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers, was elected tp the College Football Hall of Fame on May 27, 2010.

14

35DESMOND HOWARDMichigan star was known for his spectacular plays


There have been many, many bigger foot-ball players than Desmond Howard. He stood 5-foot-10 (and that might have been a reach) and weighed 185 pounds. While Howard certainly had excellent speed, there were faster play-ers, too.

But Howard had an incredible knack for making the big play that made him one of the best wide re-ceivers in college football history, and one of the top kick return-ers of all time in the NFL.

In 1991 at Michigan, How-ard caught 19 t o u c h d o w n passes in 12 games. He rushed for two more, and added one on a kickoff return, accounting for nearly two touchdowns per game. It wasn’t just that Howard accounted for nearly 1,600 yards in offense that season, but the big-play aspect of his performance that set him apart. He had 91 touches that season, aver-aging 17.6 yards per touch. Of those touches, 24 percent ended with a touchdown.

Howard put together a similar sizzling performance in 1990. His being announced as the Heisman Trophy winner was a mere formality. Howard had four times the votes of Florida State quarterback Casey Weldon, who placed second.

Howard’s Heisman Trophy pose after scoring a touchdown against Ohio State

is one of the classic moments in Michigan sports history. Michigan was 9-3 and 10-2 during Howard’s final two college seasons.

Taken fourth overall in the NFL Draft by Washington, Howard was initially viewed as a bust. Eventually, he found his niche as a kick returner. He led the NFL in punt returns in 1996, and finished sixth or bet-

ter three times each in kickoff and punt returns during his NFL career.

The apex of Howard’s career came in the Su-per Bowl while he was playing for Green Bay fol-lowing the 1996 season. Against New England, he had nearly 250 return yards, in-cluding taking a kickoff back 99 yards for a touch-down that sealed the win. How-ard’s role was so integral, he was named as the Su-

per Bowl MVP.He ended his career with the Lions in

1999, 2000 and 2001. He was named to the Pro Bowl as a return specialist following the 2000 season.

As a receiver, Howard had limited impact in the NFL (just 123 catches, seven touch-downs), but he often took over games with his returns.

Now a commentator on ESPN’s College Game Day, Howard remains in the spotlight of college football, albeit in a different way.

He won’t be soon forgotten as a player, though. The best word to describe his play: Spectacular.

Sport: FootballMichigan Connection: University of Michigan, Detroit LionsPersonal: Born, March 15, 1970, Cleveland, OhioNickname: MagicNotable: •Played wide receiver at Michigan 1989-91, and

in the NFL 1992-2002 with Washington, Jacksonville, Green Bay, Oakland and Detroit• Heisman Trophy winner 1991• Super Bowl MVP 1997• All-Pro 1996, Pro Bowl 2000• Ninth all-time in kickoff return yards in NFL history


In this Oct. 2, 1991, file photo, Michigan’s Desmond Howard (21) drives past a diving Indiana defender to pick up extra yardage during the second half of a game in Ann Arbor. Heisman Trophy winner Howard, who went on to win a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers, was elected tp the College Football Hall of Fame on May 27, 2010.

14

34MIKE MODANO#


Mike Modano was hoping to feel a bit like a rookie when he stepped onto the ice at Joe Louis Arena.

He got his wish.“It’s a big change, almost like you’re starting over,”

Modano said after participating in his first informal practice with his new team, the Detroit Red Wings in 2010. “You get a little bit of enthusiasm and a little bit of excitement getting out there. I was hoping that would happen and it did. I’m a little bit excited about that.”

After spending his entire 20-year NHL in the Dal-las Stars’ organization, Modano signed a one-year deal with Detroit on Aug. 6, 2010.

He played his youth hockey at Joe Louis Arena as a member of the Little Caesars hockey program.

“It feels good being back at the Joe and skating again,” said Modano, a native of Livonia. “It has al-ways been a life-long dream I suppose ever since grow-ing up and watching them. I’m finally here playing at home. I could be a good fitting to my career if I go out and have a good year and have some fun.”

Modano was 40 at the time he signed the one-year deal with the Red Wings, hoping to raise the Stanley Cup one last time before retirement.

The Red Wings, who beat out San Jose and Minne-sota for his services, had a great track record bring-ing in veteran players near the end of their careers.

However, Modano’s time in Detroit was limited to just 40 games after he suffered a lacerated wrist. He could never find his way back into the lineup consis-tently after that.

He had just four goals and 11 assists with the Wings.Modano was the No. 1 overall pick in the 1988 NHL

Entry Draft, selected by the Minnesota North Stars.He won a Stanley Cup with Dallas in 1999.Modano, who was selected to the Hockey Hall of

Fame Class of 2014, finished his career with 561 goals, the most by a player born in the United States and 1,374 points, which is also the most by an American-born player.

His No. 9 jersey was retired by Dallas in 2014.

Sport: HockeyMichigan Connection: Born in Livonia; played one season with the Detroit Red Wings (2010-11 season)Personal: Born June 7, 1970, Livonia, MichiganNotable:• Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 2014

• Most goals by a player born in the United States (561)• Most points by an American-born player (1,374)• Most career playoff points by an American-born player (145)• Most games played by an American-born forward (1,499)• Won the Stanley Cup with Dallas in 1999• His No. 9 retired by Dallas in 2014

Livonia native has most NHL goals by an American-born player


Detroit Red Wings center Mike Modano (90) controls the puck during the third period of a game against the Edmonton Oilers in Detroit on Nov. 11, 2010.

15

Olympic competitors showed dignity in triumph and disappointment

33#


Meryl Davis and Charlie White were born in the same hospital in Royal Oak — Beaumont — during the same year. They were raised within a 10-minute drive of each other in the Bloomfield Town-ship area , and honed their talent during their for-mative stages as ice dancers close to home at the De-troit Skating club.

The road to the Olympic gold medal was a long one for Dav is and White, but a steady climb that culminated with a brilliantly effi-cient gold medal performance in 2014 at Sochi, Russia.

T h e s h o w turned in by Da-vis and White was not only artistic in nature, but brilliant in design and execution.

In a sport, with such a glaring once-every-fourth-year spotlight which of-ten leads to jumbled nerves, Davis and White were unshakable.

Four years before, at Vancouver, Da-

vis and White also performed well, but were edged out by the Canadian team of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who trained at the same rink in Can-ton as Davis and White, and with the

same coach, Ma-rina Zoueva. But the silver medal was just a start.

Early in their careers, Davis and White were over-shadowed by the American couple of Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto.

D a v i s a n d White placed sec-ond to Belbin and A gosto in the 2008 U.S. Champi-onships, and then won it in 2009 for the first of six con-secutive years.

W hen Dav i s and White won the Olympic sil-ver medal in 2010, it was two spots ahead of Belbin and Agosto, who also trained in Michigan. White

is engaged to marry Belbin.After winning Olympic gold, White

and Davis both competed in “Danc-ing with the Stars,” each with a pro-fessional dancer for a partner. Davis won the competition, while White fin-ished fifth.

Sport: Ice DancingMichigan Con-nection: Raised in Oakland CountyPersonal: Meryl Da-vis, born Jan. 1, 1987, Royal Oak, MI; Charlie White, born Oct. 24, 1987, Royal Oak, MINotable:• Ice dance pair since the late 1990s• Olympic gold medal champions 2014• Olympic silver med-alists 2010• World ice dance champions 2011, 2013• U.S. national ice

dance champions 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA FILE PHOTO/TIM THOMPSON

Meryl Davis and Charlie White practicing at the Arctic Edge of Canton on Jan. 17, 2014.

MERYL DAVIS AND CHARLIE WHITE

16

Olympic competitors showed dignity in triumph and disappointment

33#


Meryl Davis and Charlie White were born in the same hospital in Royal Oak — Beaumont — during the same year. They were raised within a 10-minute drive of each other in the Bloomfield Town-ship area , and honed their talent during their for-mative stages as ice dancers close to home at the De-troit Skating club.

The road to the Olympic gold medal was a long one for Dav is and White, but a steady climb that culminated with a brilliantly effi-cient gold medal performance in 2014 at Sochi, Russia.

T h e s h o w turned in by Da-vis and White was not only artistic in nature, but brilliant in design and execution.

In a sport, with such a glaring once-every-fourth-year spotlight which of-ten leads to jumbled nerves, Davis and White were unshakable.

Four years before, at Vancouver, Da-

vis and White also performed well, but were edged out by the Canadian team of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who trained at the same rink in Can-ton as Davis and White, and with the

same coach, Ma-rina Zoueva. But the silver medal was just a start.

Early in their careers, Davis and White were over-shadowed by the American couple of Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto.

D a v i s a n d White placed sec-ond to Belbin and A gosto in the 2008 U.S. Champi-onships, and then won it in 2009 for the first of six con-secutive years.

W hen Dav i s and White won the Olympic sil-ver medal in 2010, it was two spots ahead of Belbin and Agosto, who also trained in Michigan. White

is engaged to marry Belbin.After winning Olympic gold, White

and Davis both competed in “Danc-ing with the Stars,” each with a pro-fessional dancer for a partner. Davis won the competition, while White fin-ished fifth.

Sport: Ice DancingMichigan Con-nection: Raised in Oakland CountyPersonal: Meryl Da-vis, born Jan. 1, 1987, Royal Oak, MI; Charlie White, born Oct. 24, 1987, Royal Oak, MINotable:• Ice dance pair since the late 1990s• Olympic gold medal champions 2014• Olympic silver med-alists 2010• World ice dance champions 2011, 2013• U.S. national ice

dance champions 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA FILE PHOTO/TIM THOMPSON

Meryl Davis and Charlie White practicing at the Arctic Edge of Canton on Jan. 17, 2014.

MERYL DAVIS AND CHARLIE WHITE

16

Named national athlete of the year, along with other awards

32#


One game summed up Tom Harmon’s brilliance more than any other. It was his last for Michigan. On the road, in front of an extremely hos-tile crowd, Harmon scored three rushing touchdowns, passed for two more, kicked four extra points, intercepted three passes and averaged 50 yards a punt in a 40-0 rout of Ohio State. He completed 11-of-12 passes and rushed for 139 yards that day. Not only was Harmon, a sin-gle-wing tailback, selected first-team All-American for the second straight season and awarded the Heisman Tro-phy as the best col-lege football player in the country, but he also was named as the national ath-lete of the year by the Associated Press.

Harmon was a brilliant athlete. Not only was he the fastest player on the field during virtually every college game he played, but one of the biggest. At 6-1, 200 pounds, he was as big as many of the line-men of the day, and had world-class speed.

Michigan had been struggling when Harmon arrived in Ann Arbor. The Wol-verines compiled just a 10-22 record from 1934-37.

Harmon’s first varsity season, 1938, was

also the first at Michigan for legendary coach Fritz Crisler. Harmon was on the first team to wear the Wolverines’ famed winged helmets. Led by Harmon and quar-terback Forest Evashevski, Michigan was

19-4-1 during Har-mon’s three years, narrowly missing out on winning the Big Ten title each season.

Harmon was so revered, he ap-peared on the cov-ers of both Time and Life maga-zines.

He was the first overall pick of the NFL Draft in 1941 by the Chicago Bears, but opted to play with a New York team in a ri-val league before serving the coun-try in World War II. An Air Force pi-lot, he was ejected twice from planes over combat zones

and suffered severely burned legs. Harmon did return to football, playing

two uneventful seasons for the Los An-geles Rams, but was hindered by his war wounds and retired.

He had married actress Elyse Knox dur-ing the early 1940s, and became a long-time sports broadcaster known for his smooth voice and delivery.

Among his children is actor Mark Har-mon, who was the starting quarterback at UCLA during the early 1970s.

Sport: FootballMichigan Connection: University of MichiganPersonal: Born Sep-tember 28, 1919, Rens-selaer, IN; Died March 15, 1990, Los Angeles, CA (age 70)

Nickname: 98Notable:• Played at Michigan 1938-40, and for the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams 1946-47.• Heisman Trophy winner 1940• First-team All-American 1939, 1940• Associated Press Athlete of the Year in 1940• NFL’s first overall draft choice in 1941 (Chicago Bears)• Elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954


Tom Harmon of the University of Michigan in action against Pennsylvania on Oct. 26, 1940.

TOM HARMON17


Every once in a while, there are stories that even-tually take on a larger-than-life, Paul Bunyan-esque quality.

Count many of the sto-ries about Willie Horton in that category.

Like the story of his prodigious, 450-foot blast that hit the right-field roof at Tiger Stadium — as a 16-year-old senior in high school at Detroit Northwestern, playing in the Detroit Public School League championship against Cass Tech.

There’s the legend of him leaving Tiger Sta-dium in full uniform after a Sunday doubleheader in 1967, and climbing up on a truck to talk with rioters who were in the process of beginning to tear the ra-cially divided city apart.

And there’s the one when Horton — the least defensively-oriented of the Tigers four key outfield-ers in the 1968 season — gunned out Lou Brock at the plate in Game 5 of the World Series, when the Cardinals speedster tried to score on a single to left.

Then there were all the home runs — 325 of them, the sixth-most by a right-handed hitter at the time of his retirement.

You’d think all of those

legends came from a giant of a man.

Instead, it was a stocky (but powerful) guy very generously listed at 5-foot-11.

But Horton played big-ger.

With his power, he was

one of the best hitters in the “Year of the Pitcher” in 1968, finishing fourth in the American League MVP balloting behind teammates Denny McLain and Bill Freehan, and Bos-ton’s Ken Harrelson.

He also played a long

time, spending 14 of his 18 seasons with his home-town team.

The creation of the des-ignated hitter position in the American League helped the injury-prone Horton — who had par-ticular problems with his

legs — to lengthen his ca-reer. He was twice named the AL’s outstanding DH in the latter stages of his career.

It wasn’t always harmo-nious, though. As the first African American star for one of the last teams to integrate, Horton walked away from the Tigers for a short time in 1969, up-set with the pace of that process.

“I was very upset be-cause I wanted to see more blacks on the Tigers so I met with Mr. (John) Fetzer (the owner) and (general manager) Jim Campbell to

discuss the issue,” Horton said in an interview with the Detroit Free Press in 2008.

“I won’t repeat every-thing I said but it paid off because we started to get more black players. I got it off my chest, and car-ried the torch as well as I could.”

Now an assistant to the general manager with the club, Horton is the only non-Hall of Famer hon-ored with a statue at Co-merica Park, and one of four Michiganders hon-ored with his own day (Oct. 18) on the calendar.

31WILLIE HORTON#

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit Tigers outfielder, designated hitter (1963-77)Personal: Born Oct. 18, 1942 (one of 21 children in his family), in Arno, Va.Nickname: “Willie the Wonder”Notable:

• Played the first 15 of his 18 big-league seasons with his hometown Tigers.• A four-time All-Star, and the AL Comeback Player of the Year in 1979, he was twice named the AL’s outstanding designated hitter. Finished fourth in the 1968 MVP balloting, behind teammates Denny McLain and Bill Freehan, and Boston’s Ken Harrelson.• World Series champion in 1968.• At the time of his retirement, his 325 career home runs were the sixth-most by a right-handed hitter. He hit No. 300 off Tigers ace Jack Morris.• His No. 23 is retired by the Tigers, and he is one of the players enshrined in statue form at Comerica Park.

Only Detroit Tigers non-Hall of Famer honored with statue


Detroit Tigers’ Willie Horton runs to the dugout carrying the ball and working on a piece of bubble gum during the Tigers’ season opener in Detroit on April 7, 1977.

18


A strong case can be made Alexi Lalas is the best soccer player this country has ever produced.

A rugged defender, the 6-foot-3 Lalas starred in the 1994 World Cup for the United States, and was subsequently given a con-tract to play in one of Eu-rope’s top leagues, Serie A in Italy. He stood out for his play, even at the high-est levels of soccer, and for his then-long red hair and distinctive beard.

Lalas also had a long and accomplished ca-reer in the MLS. This af-ter a brilliant stint at Rut-gers, during which he was widely regarded as the best player in the nation.

Lalas has essentially transformed from the American face of soccer to its voice since retiring as a player in 2004.

As a commentator for ESPN during interna-tional matches, particu-larly the World Cup, every word Lalas says is listened to carefully.

Also, Lalas was the gen-eral manager of the Los Angeles Galaxy when they

signed English superstar David Beckham in 2007.

Lalas was raised in Bir-mingham, but spent much of his youth in Greece with his father after his parents divorced. It is there he first played soccer.

Lalas not only stood out in soccer at Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook King-swood prep school, but hockey.

He drew little interest from colleges, though, and walked on at Rutgers after writing dozens of colleges seeking a chance.

It wasn’t long before he earned a scholarship and All-American honors.

For more than two de-cades, there hasn’t been a more well-known presence in American men’s soccer than Alexi Lalas.

30# ALEXI LALASSoccer star makes his mark in the booth after stellar career on the field

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO/GUNNAR ASK

Alexi Lalas of the U.S., right, keeps the ball away from Sweden’s Jonas Thern, left, during an international friendly soccer match in Norrkoping Sweden on August 16, 1995.

Sport: SoccerMichigan Connection: Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood prep schoolPersonal: Born June 1, 1970, Royal OakNickname: The Ginger GiantNotable: • One of the top American soccer

players collegiately, professionally and internationally, 1988-2004• Played every minute of all four of host USA Soccer’s four games in the 1994 World Cup, and named honor-able mention All-Star• One of the first Americans to play in Italy’s presti-gious league, Serie A• Played Major League Soccer (MLS) with New Eng-land, New York, Kansas City and Los Angeles• All-American and winner of the Hermann Trophy as the nation’s top college soccer player at Rutgers, 1991.• Inducted to the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2006

19

Big Ben will always be remembered for his toughness

29#By Dave PembertonDigital First Media

No athlete embodied the spirit of a town quite like Ben Wallace did in his heyday.

As the city of Detroit and the sur-rounding area was in the midst of a re-cession and the once stable auto industry began to feel the effects of a down econ-omy, a group of underdogs led by Wallace gave the area something to cheer about.

Overlooked by the national media, Wallace and the “Goin’ to work” Pistons were expected to get trounced by the flashy Los Angeles Lakers in the 2004 NBA Finals.

The Lakers featured superstars Sha-quille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant as well as future Hall of Famers Gary Payton and Karl Malone who came to the Lakers to win a championship.

Detroit had Wallace and a group of castoffs. The city of Los Angeles was likely already planning a victory parade before the series started.

But Wallace was used to being an un-derdog. Coming to the NBA from Divi-sion II Virginia Union out of college, Wal-lace wasn’t even supposed to make it to the league.

Undersized and often underrated, Wal-lace went to work every night.

Wallace was never flashy, but he im-pacted the game with his defense and rebounding.

The Pistons dominated the Lakers in five games to win the 2004 NBA cham-pionship, a defining moment for Wallace and company.

Nobody ever expected Wallace to lead the Pistons to an NBA championship when he came to Detroit as part of the Grant Hill trade in 2000.

Pistons’ fans were devastated by the lose of Hill and many felt the Pistons

were only getting Wallace so they didn’t lose Hill for nothing.

Wallace gave a glimpse of what he was capable of in his first-year in a Pistons’ uniform.

He followed that up by leading the league in rebounding and blocked shots, and winning the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year award in 2002.

Wallace would go on to win the Defen-sive Player of the Year award four times during his tenure in Detroit.

Known as “Big Ben.” The Palace would erupt when Wallace would block a shot or grab a big rebound and the PA system would play the chime from the “Big Ben” bell in London.

The arena would often be full of fans

wearing large Afro wigs, a Wallace trade-mark.

Sadly for Piston fans, Wallace would leave in the summer of 2006 when the Chicago Bulls offered him a larger con-tract. But he would return in 2009 and play the final three seasons of his career.

In 2012, he broke the record for most games played by an undrafted player.

Wallace is the Pistons all-time leader in blocks (1,486), second in steals (931) and third in rebounds (7,264).

He holds the franchise records for blocks in a game (10), which he did twice.

It’s unclear if Wallace will one day be in the Basketball Hall of Fame or have his number retired by the Pistons, although it can be argued he is deserving of both. But for Pistons’ fans who saw Wallace in his prime, ‘Big Ben’ will always be re-membered for his toughness, hard work and commitment to defense.

DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA FILE PHOTO

Many of the highlights involving Ben Wallace during the height of the Bad Boys era at The Palace of Auburn Hills involved Wallace throwing down a thunderous dunk.

Sport: BasketballMichigan connection: Detroit Pistons center/forward (2000-06 and 2009-12)Personal: Born Sept. 10, 1974, White Hall Alabama

Nicknames: Big Ben, BodyNotable: • Four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year (2002, 2003, 2005, 2006)• Won NBA championship with Pistons (2004)• Led NBA in blocks (2002)• Led NBA in rebounds (2002, 2003)• Four-time NBA All-Star, five-time All-Defensive first team, three-time All-NBA second team

BEN WALLACE

20

Longtime Tigers second baseman was one of a kind

28#


It’s almost unfair to profile Lou Whita-ker without Alan Trammell, and vice versa, considering how attached at the hip the two players were throughout their extensive, one-team careers.

“We’re forever linked,” the shortstop said when the team retired manager Sparky An-derson’s number.

After winning a Southern League title together at Double-A Montgomery in 1977, the two were called up in September, and started together for the first time on Sept. 9, the first night of the longest-running dou-ble-play combination in big-league history.

They also recorded the most games as teammates, and turned the most double plays in MLB history.

“It’s to the point where I know where he’ll be without even looking,” Trammell said often.

They appeared together on “Magnum, P.I.”

They appeared together for the last game at Tiger Stadium.

They turned a ceremonial double play when the franchise celebrated the 30th an-niversary of the 1984 champions.

They were always considered insepara-ble.

But they were two very different guys.While Trammell was the straight-laced

one, Whitaker was more flamboyant.Whitaker spoke of himself in third per-

son, at times, and (jokingly?) said he was his own idol.

He famously showed up for a 1994 meet-ing of the MLBPA in a limo, wearing a fur coat, when the players were already being looked at as greedy by preparing to strike.

He also famously forgot his equipment bag on his way to the 1985 All-Star Game, and had to play with Cal Ripken Jr.’s extra

glove and a generic Tigers jersey, purchased by a clubhouse boy from the souvenir stand, with Whitaker’s No. 1 stenciled on the back. It’s now in the Smithsonian.

His showing up for the ceremony hon-oring Anderson in 2011 was somewhat of a surprise, considering he’d skipped the 25-year anniversary ceremony, honoring the ’84 squad. He just appeared in one of the Comerica Park suites, unannounced.

In a lot of ways, Whitaker was one of a kind.

But he’ll always be associated with Tram-mell. The likelihood that either of them goes into the Hall of Fame (Whitaker dropped off the BBWAA ballot after one year) probably increases once both are eligible for induc-tion by the Veterans Committee.

And, if they’re included in the statuary at Comerica Park? Probably together.

“Maybe they’re still working on it,” Whitaker joked this summer. “They’re try-ing to be perfect, so it takes years to make perfection.”

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit Tigers second baseman (1977-95)Personal: Born May 12, 1957, in Brooklyn, NYNickname: Sweet LouNotable:

• Played 19 seasons, all for the Tigers• Played more games (2,390) in a Tigers uniform than any player not named Al Kaline or Ty Cobb • Was named American League Rookie of the Year in 1978 • A five-time All-Star, four-time Silver Slugger and three-time Gold Glove winner• Second in franchise history in both walks and strikeouts, as well as second all-time in assists.

LOU WHITAKER

PETER SOUTHWICK — ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

Detroit Tigers second baseman Lou Whitaker, above, sails over the slide of Boston Red Sox base runner Wade Boggs after throwing to first to complete a double play on a hit by Boston’s Jim Rice during a game at Boston’s Fenway Park on June 25, 1985.

21


If there’s a word associated with Alan Trammell, it’s got to be grace.

Not in a physical sense — al-though he was as smooth as you’ll ever want to see at the shortstop position — but from a demeanor standpoint.

Trammell was certainly the less flamboyant of the two shortstops the Tigers took in the first seven rounds of the 1976 draft. (Picked by the Tigers in the seventh round, Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith spent one more season at Cal Poly-SLO before signing with the Padres.)

Trammell was never seen as the “star” of the talent-laden Tigers of the mid-1980s, taking a back seat to more flamboyant teammates like Jack Morris, Kirk Gibson, Wil-lie Hernandez and even his dou-ble-play partner, Lou Whitaker.

Yet, it was Trammell who was the MVP of the 1984 World Se-ries, and runner-up for the Amer-ican League MVP in 1987 (proba-bly should’ve won it over the Jays’ George Bell), the next time the Ti-gers went to the playoffs.

He won’t stump for votes for the Hall of Fame (he’s eligible on the BBWAA ballot for one more year), but said it would be ideal if he and Whitaker were selected to go in to-gether by the Veterans Committee.

“If that happened, if we were ever so lucky — because we were brought up the same day — if we happened to be selected to go in together, that would be the dream. That would be the way I would script it,” Trammell said this sum-mer.

“Now whether or not that hap-

pens, it’s out of my hands. And I get somewhat uncomfortable talk-ing, because there’s nothing more I can do. And again, I’m not go-ing to self-promote. That’s not my style. We knew we could play, and the stories and memories are there. If it doesn’t happen to be that, then you know what? It’s been a great ride, and I’m going to continue to enjoy this ride.”

Trammell played with grace into the lean years of the 1990s, as long as his body would allow, and had no problems (at least pub-licly) with moving off the short-stop position for guys like Travis Fryman and Chris Gomez.

He handled being saddled with a roster lacking talent when he took over as Tigers manager in 2002, and handled being fired af-ter 300 losses in three seasons with equal grace.

As bitter as he could’ve been about his firing, Trammell has never held a grudge, returning at the club’s request for the 25th and 30th anniversary celebrations of the 1984 championship squad (he was the team’s spokesperson at this summer’s celebration), as well as the retirement of Sparky Anderson’s number in 2011.

“For me, it’s something, if I’m able, I’ll try in every way I possi-bly can,” Trammell said this sum-mer. “I wanted to be here again. The stories never get old.”

Nothing more need be said about Trammell than this: After being fired as the Arizona Dia-mondbacks’ bench coach with a week left in the season, he grace-fully agreed to be the interim manager, replacing his best friend and former teammate, fired man-ager Kirk Gibson.

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit Tigers shortstop (1977-96)Personal: Born Feb. 21, 1958, in Garden Grove, Calif.Nickname: TramNotable: • Played 20 seasons, all for the Tigers, then spent three more (2003-05) as manager.• Played more games (2,293) in a Tigers uniform than any player not named Al Kaline, Ty Cobb, Lou Whitaker or Charlie Gehringer, with an AL record 1,918 of those coming next to Whitaker, his longtime double-play partner.

• A six-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glove shortstop and three-time Silver Slugger, he finished top 10 in the MVP voting, including a close second in 1987.• Named World Series MVP after the Tigers won it all in 1984.• Recently fired, along with manager Kirk Gibson, from his post as Arizona Diamondbacks bench coach.

27ALAN TRAMMELLSmooth-fielding shortstop was 1984 World Series MVP

#

AP PHOTO/PETER SOUTHWICK

Minnesota Twins Dan Gladden (32) prepares to slide into second as Detroit Tigers shortstop Alan Trammell reaches for the throw from the catcher during a game on Oct. 10, 1987.

22


If there’s a word associated with Alan Trammell, it’s got to be grace.

Not in a physical sense — al-though he was as smooth as you’ll ever want to see at the shortstop position — but from a demeanor standpoint.

Trammell was certainly the less flamboyant of the two shortstops the Tigers took in the first seven rounds of the 1976 draft. (Picked by the Tigers in the seventh round, Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith spent one more season at Cal Poly-SLO before signing with the Padres.)

Trammell was never seen as the “star” of the talent-laden Tigers of the mid-1980s, taking a back seat to more flamboyant teammates like Jack Morris, Kirk Gibson, Wil-lie Hernandez and even his dou-ble-play partner, Lou Whitaker.

Yet, it was Trammell who was the MVP of the 1984 World Se-ries, and runner-up for the Amer-ican League MVP in 1987 (proba-bly should’ve won it over the Jays’ George Bell), the next time the Ti-gers went to the playoffs.

He won’t stump for votes for the Hall of Fame (he’s eligible on the BBWAA ballot for one more year), but said it would be ideal if he and Whitaker were selected to go in to-gether by the Veterans Committee.

“If that happened, if we were ever so lucky — because we were brought up the same day — if we happened to be selected to go in together, that would be the dream. That would be the way I would script it,” Trammell said this sum-mer.

“Now whether or not that hap-

pens, it’s out of my hands. And I get somewhat uncomfortable talk-ing, because there’s nothing more I can do. And again, I’m not go-ing to self-promote. That’s not my style. We knew we could play, and the stories and memories are there. If it doesn’t happen to be that, then you know what? It’s been a great ride, and I’m going to continue to enjoy this ride.”

Trammell played with grace into the lean years of the 1990s, as long as his body would allow, and had no problems (at least pub-licly) with moving off the short-stop position for guys like Travis Fryman and Chris Gomez.

He handled being saddled with a roster lacking talent when he took over as Tigers manager in 2002, and handled being fired af-ter 300 losses in three seasons with equal grace.

As bitter as he could’ve been about his firing, Trammell has never held a grudge, returning at the club’s request for the 25th and 30th anniversary celebrations of the 1984 championship squad (he was the team’s spokesperson at this summer’s celebration), as well as the retirement of Sparky Anderson’s number in 2011.

“For me, it’s something, if I’m able, I’ll try in every way I possi-bly can,” Trammell said this sum-mer. “I wanted to be here again. The stories never get old.”

Nothing more need be said about Trammell than this: After being fired as the Arizona Dia-mondbacks’ bench coach with a week left in the season, he grace-fully agreed to be the interim manager, replacing his best friend and former teammate, fired man-ager Kirk Gibson.

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit Tigers shortstop (1977-96)Personal: Born Feb. 21, 1958, in Garden Grove, Calif.Nickname: TramNotable: • Played 20 seasons, all for the Tigers, then spent three more (2003-05) as manager.• Played more games (2,293) in a Tigers uniform than any player not named Al Kaline, Ty Cobb, Lou Whitaker or Charlie Gehringer, with an AL record 1,918 of those coming next to Whitaker, his longtime double-play partner.

• A six-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glove shortstop and three-time Silver Slugger, he finished top 10 in the MVP voting, including a close second in 1987.• Named World Series MVP after the Tigers won it all in 1984.• Recently fired, along with manager Kirk Gibson, from his post as Arizona Diamondbacks bench coach.

27ALAN TRAMMELLSmooth-fielding shortstop was 1984 World Series MVP

#

AP PHOTO/PETER SOUTHWICK

Minnesota Twins Dan Gladden (32) prepares to slide into second as Detroit Tigers shortstop Alan Trammell reaches for the throw from the catcher during a game on Oct. 10, 1987.

22

By Paula PascheDigital First Media

Let’s go back to the NFL champion-ship game in 1953 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit.

With 4:10 remaining, the Detroit Li-ons were down 16-10 to the Cleveland Browns.

No worries, Bobby Layne was at the helm.

Layne engineered an eight-play, 80-yard drive ending with a 33-yard touch-down pass to Jim Doran. Doak Walker’s extra point gave the Lions a 17-16 lead.

That drive? Two minutes and two sec-onds.

It’s one of the reasons that Layne is known for turning the two-minute drill into an art form.

The win that day in 1953 gave the Li-ons their second straight NFL title.

They would win again in 1957, but Layne was on the sideline that day. He broke his leg in three places in a pile-up in a late-season game and as tough as he was, he was on crutches watching his teammates win the title in 1957 with To-bin Rote as the quarterback.

Layne was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers after that season because appar-ently the Lions didn’t think he could fully recover from that broken leg.

Layne was not happy. On Oct, 6, 1958, he said, “The Lions will not win for 50 years!”

Yes, it was the curse of Bobby Layne. In that 50-year span the Lions won plenty of games, but only one playoff game. They have yet to make it to a Super Bowl.

Layne was called the “toughest quar-terback who ever lived” in a 1995 Sports Illustrated story. He was one of the last players in the NFL to take the field with-out a face mask.

He also rose a little hell off the field.

He loved Cutty Sark and was known for his drinking exploits.

‘’When Bobby said block, you blocked and when Bobby said drink, you drank,’’ Layne’s teammate Yale Lary said in a 1982 New York Times story.

Layne died in 1986 at the age of 59 from cancer.

He was a hell-raiser until the end.“If they could put it on a computer

and tell us now when we’d die, we could plan, we could really get it on,’’ he said in that New York Times story. ‘’But no complaints. Life’s good. I wake up every mornin’ and I say, ‘Good mornin,’ God.’ I never say, ‘Good God, mornin.’ ”

26BOBBY LAYNE#Hellraiser called ‘toughest quarterback who ever lived’

Sport: FootballMichigan connec-tion: Detroit Lions quarterback, 1950-58Personal: Born Dec. 19, 1926 in Santa Anna, Texas; died Dec. 1, 1986.Nickname: The

Blonde BomberNotable:• Led the Lions to national champion-ships in 1952 and 1953; was on the sideline with a broken leg when they won a third national title in 1957.• Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1967• A six-time Pro Bowl selection, he led the NFL in passing touchdowns in 1951 and in passing yards in 1950 and 1951.• Known as a quarterback, he also kicked field goals.• He flipped a ceremonial coin prior to Super Bowl XVI which was held at the Pontiac Silverdome.


Bobby Layne, quarterback of the Lions, in Detroit on Dec. 31, 1952.

23 T

A total of 229 votes were cast online and another dozen nominations came in via email as readers across the state and beyond took part in the voting process for the No. 1 Michigan athlete of all time. What follows are some of the nominations received.

READER COMMENTSA VOTE FOR DOAK WALKER Pat (Caputo), you mention (Bobby) Layne and (Joe) Schmidt - two Hall of Fame Lion greats. Let’s not forget Doak Walker, the three-time Southern Methodist University All-American and five-time Pro Bowler. Doak is one of only four underclassmen to ever win the Heisman Trophy, and despite playing only six years (all with the Lions), he is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as well as the College Football Hall of Fame. The running back of the year award in college football now carries his name. Walker played in three World Championship games -- all against the Browns -- winning two. He was a great clutch player, and I believe the only pro to record a statistic in every major football category -- rushing , passing, punting , kickoff, kickoff and punt returning, intercep-tion, and placekicking of both extra points and field goals. He was also a sometime-”trailer” on kickoffs where he executed more than one game-saving tackle; he scored points in every category except safety and fumble return, and won the NFL scoring title in both his first and last years. Upon retirement he ranked third all-time in NFL scoring. Arguably , he was the most versatile footballer of all-time, and at 5-foot-10, 170 pounds, clearly the best relatively small man ever to play.At his induction into the hall in 1986, Bobby Layne said of his old high school teammate (weirdly enough, Matt Stafford also went to Highland Park High School in Texas), “If the score wasn’t close, you might not know that Doak was even on the field, but if it WAS close, you would know he was there, and most often he would be the difference.” Al-though he is among the four or five greatest Lions, the Doaker won’t make your top ten, but it would surely be a shame if we didn’t re-member him in the top 50 Michigan athletes.P.S. Walker is one of only four Lions to have his number retired (37).

John Grindstaff,St. Clair Shores

DEBUSSCHERE COULD DO IT ALLI’m nominating Dave DeBusschere - the most dominant and skilled athlete I have ever witnessed at the high school, college, and professional level, in multiple sports. I am 71 years old, raised in Detroit and a life-long Michigan resident.DeBusschere starred in basketball, baseball and golf at Austin Catholic Prep on Detroit’s east side. He led Austin to an undefeated basketball season and the Class A state championship in 1958, defeating Benton Harbor and Chet Walker. In baseball, he was a dominant pitcher and hitter, leading Austin to the Catholic League title at Tiger Stadium.DeBusschere played college basketball and baseball at the University of Detroit. He starred in both sports and led U of D. to the NCAA and NIT basketball tournaments in his three years of play (freshmen were not eligible at that time). He holds many of the school’s career records, notably points per game and rebounds. His performance in baseball was equally stellar.DeBusschere was drafted by both the Detroit Pistons and the Chicago White Sox following graduation. He pitched two years in the White Sox organization, including in the majors. He then gave up baseball to concentrate on basketball full-time, as he was named coach of the Pistons at the age of only 24. He was a key player for the Pistons (in those Cobo Hall days), but his career really blossomed when he was traded to the New York Knicks, and was said to be the missing piece to the “puzzle”, as he was instrumental in helping the Knicks to two world championships. He was voted to the All-NBA Defensive team for a number of years, and following his career, was voted one of the top 50 players of all time in the NBA.On top of all this, Dave was a great friend to all that knew him, and treated all team-mates and opponents with respect. All this from the son of a Detroit saloon keeper.

Here’s hoping that Big Dave will make your top 50.

Earl Vogel,Oxford

A VOTE FOR THE MAGIC MANHow can you not include a hometown boy who made good not only on the court, but off as well. Probably the greatest point guard in the NBA, Earvin “Magic” Johnson could do everything on the court and played every position, even in the NBA where specializa-tion is the norm. His teams won five NBA titles and he was a part of the gold medal winning Dream Team in the Olympics. But it all started here in Michigan and Lansing Everett High School.More importantly, Magic Johnson helped to bring awareness to AIDS when he suddenly retired from basketball. Then his triumph return during the All-Star game. More im-portantly, Magic brought an awareness not only to AIDS, but also to inner-city issues as well. There is only one MAGIC MAN and he is a Michigander.

Steven La Joie,Oxford

GIVE MORRIS THE CREDIT HE DESERVESJack Morris was the best pitcher of the 1980s, and one of the best in Tigers; his-tory. He went on to win two World Series after he left Detroit. Morris should already have been recognized by the Baseball Hall of Fame, but since they haven’t given him his due there, we can do so here.Greg Donahoe,Warren

WHEATLEY DESERVES CONSIDERATIONI proudly nominate former University of Michigan and NFL running back Tyrone Wheatley as one of Michigan’s all-time greatest athletes.

Hailing from the often forgotten city of Inkster, he consistently led teams (Robi-chaud Bulldogs, University of Michigan Wolverine’s, NFL’s Oakland Raiders) in athletic achievements.He was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2013. He deserves to be included in your Top 50 athletes in the history of the State of Michigan special section.As a retired Robichaud High School (1972-2002) teacher who also resides in the community, I am lucky to know Tyrone and am in awe of his athletic abilities..

Dr. Catherine L. Garcia-McDonnell

ABBOTT WAS AN AMAZING TALENTFor Jim Abbott to overcome his physical limitation (born with one hand) and put together both an amateur and MLB career that only most people could dream of is truly amazing. Consider the following:• Four years as a member of the University of Michigan baseball team (1985-88 LHP)• Two Big Ten championships• 1987 Golden Spikes Award winner (Amateur Baseball’s best regular season player.)• 2007 College Baseball Hall of Fame inductee• 1988 Olympic Gold Medal (Seoul)• Selected eighth overall in the 1988 MLB Draft• 11-year MLB career (1989-99)• Threw a no-hitter on Sept, 4, 1993 in Yankee Stadium as a member of the New York YankeesAnd he accomplished all this with one hand. Truly amazing. For these reasons, I nominate Jim Abbott as Michigan’s all-time greatest athlete.

Jeremy Good,North Branch

24

NORTHRUP WAS ONE OF THE BESTJim Northrup was born in Breckenridge, Michigan. He attended Alma College and was a five-sport letterman. He was quarterback of the Alma Scot’s football team and named a small college All-American. He played forward on the Scottie basketball team, ran track and golfed, but his love was baseball. On the World Championship 1968 Detroit Tigers team, he led the team in hits and RBI’s. He hit five grand slams that year and broke up three no-hitters and had the game-winning triple off Bob Gibson in the seventh and decid-ing game of the 1968 World Series. After he retired from baseball, he played two seasons for Mike Illich on the Detroit Ceasars professional softball team. He later became a radio announcer for the Tigers’ organization. His only baseball hero was Ted Williams, but he himself was a hero to many Michigan sandlot-ers, myself included. He wasn’t a show-boater ... just a regular nice guy from Breckinridge that we could all identify with. He always gave 100 percent or more.

SGM F.T. Jones III,Dearborn

KALINE’S A BREATH OF FRESH AIROf all the athletes that have played for Michigan teams, I would say Al Kaline would be among the best. He came to Detroit as a teenager and stayed here his entire career. He led the team to a World Series champion-ship in 1968, reached the 3,000-hit club, and presented himself as a true professional.When his playing career ended, he did not move out of the state. He remained, raised his family and worked for his beloved Detroit Ti-gers. In an age where it seems to be the norm to hear about the antics of athletes, Al Kaline was a breath of fresh air and truly one of the boys of summer.

Steven La Joie,Oxford

REMEMBER THE GREAT LUBANSKI?The Michigan athlete I am voting for is Eddie Lubanski. Why? ... Umm ... where should I start? One, he’s the best professional bowler there was. He set and broke records (per: The Guinness Book of World Records). He’s in the Pro Bowlers’ Hall of Fame. Secondly, he’s from Detroit and lived in Michigan until the day he died.

Katie McLeod,Tucker, GA

MR. HOCKEY STANDS ALONENobody matches Gordie Howe. Four Stanley Cups, six Hart Trophies, six Art Ross Trophies and five decades playing professional hockey

in addition to his sixth decade return to skate for the Vipers (I was there). There have been many great athletes with Michigan roots yet Gordie still lives here. He brought pride to Michigan like nobody else ever has.

Neil Baxter,Rochester Hills

HARMON DEFINES MICHIGANTom Harmon was an All-American; Heisman winner and war hero. Who knows how good a pro player he could have been if not for WWII. He was a great family man; an excellent foot-ball commentator and a true credit not only to Michigan, but the United States of America. In my mind, he is the clear choice.

Jay Dean,Louisville, KY

KALINE IS MR. TIGERMr. Tiger — nuff said.

Steve Bentley,Toledo, Ohio

SAMPLING OF VOTES FOR WHITE & DAVIS Charlie White and Meryl Davis are not only amazing Olympic gold medal-winning athletes with many record-breaking scores and accom-plishments under their belts, but they are true role models who go out of their way to make a positive difference in the lives of others. As a teacher, I especially admire what they do for education and for children, for example being a part of the Classroom Champions program. I also love how they so positively and proudly represent the State of Michigan. In addition, their commitment to each other and their longevity as a team is extremely admirable and powerful and should serve as an example to others.

Teresa Phillips,Aberdeen, NC

Amazing athletes, strength, power, elegance and grace. Beautiful team. Wonderful example to today’s youth. Giving back to their commu-nity. Wonderful role models.

Mary Oates,Northbrook, IL

Best personalities, best attitude, wonderful role models, very giving to the community.

Jay Cantrell,Jeffersonville

MERYL DAVIS STANDS ON HER OWNMeryl Davis is so talented. She’s a beautiful skater and person who dedicated 17 years of her life to skating and finally won the gold medal in Souchi with Charlie White. She is such a shining example for young girls to look

up to. The world loves her and respects her;.Doris Shafer,

Salem, ORMeryl Davis is dedicated to the University of Michigan as well as community and state. Her life as an Olympic ice dancer is celebrated with a 2014 gold medal. Her devotion to education is proven. Her dedication and tenacity for doing good works has been shown by the many visits to children in the hospital. She is a role model to young girls and a true blue citizen. Her nomi-nation as Sports Woman of the Year proves she is worthy of your consideration for the best athlete with ties to Michigan.

Iva Johnson,Suffield, Ohio

Meryl Davis is an Olympic gold medalist Ice Dancer and a wonderful representative athlete for the USA ... solid gold inside and out. Her in-credible energy and work ethic also helped her win Dancing With the Stars while performing with Stars on Ice. She’s “nice on ice and good on wood!” as DWTS Judge Len Goodman said. She’s the total package and makes America Proud.

Margie Cummings,East Grand Forks, MN

JETER IS A MICHIGAN MANDerek Jeter has been an ambassador for being a good sport and a good person his whole life. He began getting noticed as an outstanding athlete at Kalamazoo Central High School, and would have been a star at the University of Michigan, but was drafted by the New York Yankee organization. He was not born here, but grew up here and made a huge difference in the lives of Michigan children, both through his example and through his Turn2Foundation in Kalamazoo.

Laurie O’Meara,Roseville

WOODSON MADE NCAA HISTORYCharles Woodson is the only defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy as college football’s best player, and brought a national champion-ship to Michigan; overall a really transcendent player.

Chase Powers,Birmingham

ALL HEARTFormer Red Wing Joey Kocur is one of the best hockey players ever. Not only is he good at his sport, but his heart is as big as all outdoors. When we would see him out and about in Highland, he would greet everyone and never had a big ego. My adult son is learning disabled and worked at a local tire store. Joey always had time to say hello and tell him to have a good day. It meant a lot to us all. Now he has

the Kocur for Kids event in Highland and it is all his heart. A great athlete and humanitarian.

Cathy Weeks,Highland

NONE BETTER THAN HAYES JONESOlympic champion in the 110 meter high hurdles at the 1964 Olympics. World Record holder member of 4 X 100 meter relay. Won bronze at the 1960 Olympics. NCAA champion and a native of Pontiac, MI.

Craig McCarthy,Detroit

BOWLER MAKES A MARKTheresa Christopher was a stand out high school Bowler for Trenton. Christopher aver-aged 208 during high school. She was a four-year Mega Conference awardee and a Division 2 state champion, who bowled a perfect 300 in regionals during her senior year.Christopher earned a scholarship at the Univer-sity of Central Missouri and was a four-year academic All-American, who anchored her col-lege team for her final two years. She appeared on ESPN during the national finals in 2009 and was on the All-Tournament team that year. Christopher continued her education, earning a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the Uni-versity of Central Missouri in speech pathol-ogy. She currently has obtained her “C’s” and her state license as a speech pathologist and is working for the City of Taylor Public Schools. She is a wonderful role model and example of what female students athletes should strive for. She was able to compete in a sport and yet earn a degree in the field of her dreams. She is very happy and proud of what playing a sport and being good at it was able to provide her.

Fran Christopher,Trenton

DAVISON NATIVE SCORES BIGKen Morrow is one of only two players to win a gold medal in the Olympics (1980) and Lord Stanley’s Cup in the same year with the New York Islanders. Morrow grew up in Davison.

Tim McNaught ,Davison

NO SHORTAGE OF TOM BRADY FANSTom Brady, duh! Because he is Tom Brady!

Mark Kelly,Billerica, MA

Tom Brady for President, great leadership potential.

Dave Bartholomew,Bedford, MA

25


You either loved or hated Sergei Fedorov.

But the one thing you couldn’t deny him was how highly skilled a hockey player he was.

Fedorov could play the wing, cen-ter and even on the blue line.

Former teammate Steve Yzer-man called Fedorov the “best skater” he had ever seen.

During the 1993-94 season in Detroit, Fedorov received the Selke Trophy, awarded to the best defen-sive forward in the NHL, along with the Lester B. Pearson Award, most outstanding player as selected by his peers. That season he finished second in scoring (56 goals, 64 as-sists) behind Wayne Gretzky.

In 1990, Fedorov became the sec-ond player to defect from the Soviet Union during the Goodwill Games in Seattle and quickly signed with Detroit.

In his first season in Detroit he totaled 31 goals and was named to the NHL All-Rookie Team.

In 1995, head coach Scotty Bow-man helped assemble perhaps one of the most memorable line of five skaters in Red Wings’ history – the “Russian Five.”

Fedorov joined forces with Igor Larionov, Vyacheslav Kozlov, Viacheslav Fetisov and Vladimir Konstantinov.

Fedorov moved to right wing to accommodate things.

That unit played a huge role in the team’s back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 1997 and 1998

Later in his time in Detroit, Bow-man experimented with Fedorov

on the blue line, pairing him with Chris Chelios to add his puck-mov-ing dimension to the blue line.

In 13 seasons with the Red Wings, Fedorov helped lead them to three Stanley Cup championships, the last coming in 2002.

Fedorov, who is the last Red Wing to win the Hart Trophy, ranks fourth on Detroit’s career list for

goals (400) and fifth in points (954).Then, came the summer of 2003.Fedorov signed as an unre-

stricted free-agent with the Ana-heim Mighty Ducks, who gave the multi-talented player $32 million over four years.

Fedorov turned down a person-ally-delivered offer from Wings owner Mike Ilitch of $50 million

over five years.After recording his 10th 30-plus

goal season with the Ducks that first year with the club his career went south quickly.

He was dealt to Columbus after the 2004-05 lockout. In two and a half seasons with the Blue Jackets he totaled 113 points and became the first Russian-born player to play

1,000 games in the NHL.The Blue Jackets decided to trade

Fedorov, who is eligible to enter the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2015, at the trade deadline to Washington in 2008 where he played his last sea-son in the NHL.

Fedorov, who is currently the gen-eral manager of HC CSKA Moscow of the KHL, was often booed when he returned to Joe Louis Arena.

He played in 1,248 NHL games, racking up 483 goals and 1,179 points.

25SERGEI FEDOROVRussian sensation was a smooth scorer, dynamic defender

#Sport: HockeyMichigan Connection: Played 13 sea-sons with the Detroit Red Wings (1990-2003)Personal:

Born Dec. 13, 1969, Pskov, RussiaNotable:• Three-time Stanley Cup champion• Won the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league’s MVP in 1994• Won the Lester B. Pearson Award in 1994, the league’s MVP as voted by the players• Won the Frank J. Selke Trophy in 1994 and 1996 as the league best defensive forward• First Russian player to reach 1,000 NHL points• Most goals by a Russian-born NHL player (483)


Sergei Fedorov won three Stanley Cups during his Detroit Red Wings career.

26


You either loved or hated Sergei Fedorov.

But the one thing you couldn’t deny him was how highly skilled a hockey player he was.

Fedorov could play the wing, cen-ter and even on the blue line.

Former teammate Steve Yzer-man called Fedorov the “best skater” he had ever seen.

During the 1993-94 season in Detroit, Fedorov received the Selke Trophy, awarded to the best defen-sive forward in the NHL, along with the Lester B. Pearson Award, most outstanding player as selected by his peers. That season he finished second in scoring (56 goals, 64 as-sists) behind Wayne Gretzky.

In 1990, Fedorov became the sec-ond player to defect from the Soviet Union during the Goodwill Games in Seattle and quickly signed with Detroit.

In his first season in Detroit he totaled 31 goals and was named to the NHL All-Rookie Team.

In 1995, head coach Scotty Bow-man helped assemble perhaps one of the most memorable line of five skaters in Red Wings’ history – the “Russian Five.”

Fedorov joined forces with Igor Larionov, Vyacheslav Kozlov, Viacheslav Fetisov and Vladimir Konstantinov.

Fedorov moved to right wing to accommodate things.

That unit played a huge role in the team’s back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 1997 and 1998

Later in his time in Detroit, Bow-man experimented with Fedorov

on the blue line, pairing him with Chris Chelios to add his puck-mov-ing dimension to the blue line.

In 13 seasons with the Red Wings, Fedorov helped lead them to three Stanley Cup championships, the last coming in 2002.

Fedorov, who is the last Red Wing to win the Hart Trophy, ranks fourth on Detroit’s career list for

goals (400) and fifth in points (954).Then, came the summer of 2003.Fedorov signed as an unre-

stricted free-agent with the Ana-heim Mighty Ducks, who gave the multi-talented player $32 million over four years.

Fedorov turned down a person-ally-delivered offer from Wings owner Mike Ilitch of $50 million

over five years.After recording his 10th 30-plus

goal season with the Ducks that first year with the club his career went south quickly.

He was dealt to Columbus after the 2004-05 lockout. In two and a half seasons with the Blue Jackets he totaled 113 points and became the first Russian-born player to play

1,000 games in the NHL.The Blue Jackets decided to trade

Fedorov, who is eligible to enter the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2015, at the trade deadline to Washington in 2008 where he played his last sea-son in the NHL.

Fedorov, who is currently the gen-eral manager of HC CSKA Moscow of the KHL, was often booed when he returned to Joe Louis Arena.

He played in 1,248 NHL games, racking up 483 goals and 1,179 points.

25SERGEI FEDOROVRussian sensation was a smooth scorer, dynamic defender

#Sport: HockeyMichigan Connection: Played 13 sea-sons with the Detroit Red Wings (1990-2003)Personal:

Born Dec. 13, 1969, Pskov, RussiaNotable:• Three-time Stanley Cup champion• Won the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league’s MVP in 1994• Won the Lester B. Pearson Award in 1994, the league’s MVP as voted by the players• Won the Frank J. Selke Trophy in 1994 and 1996 as the league best defensive forward• First Russian player to reach 1,000 NHL points• Most goals by a Russian-born NHL player (483)


Sergei Fedorov won three Stanley Cups during his Detroit Red Wings career.

26

Hot-headed hurler won MVP award two years straight

24#

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO/HARRY HARRIS

Hal Newhouser was an All-Star seven times and won consecutive MVP titles in 1944 and 1945.


Whether he was being called “Prince Hal” for his very particular, refined mannerisms or “Hurricane Hal” for his explosive temper, Harold Newhouser did not like to be gainsaid.

He didn’t like to be pulled from games, and he didn’t like to to have his opinion contradicted.

‘’You couldn’t get the ball away from him -- he hated to be pulled from a game,’’ the former Tiger catcher Joe Ginsberg was quoted in Newhouser’s New York Times obituary.

As the now-famous story goes, Newhouser — who was retiring anyway — quit his job as a scout for the Houston Astros when they drafted Phil Nevin over Derek Jeter, against his advice.

It also became baseball legend that Newhouser made himself in to a Hall of Famer when he man-aged to harness that temper — a storyline he didn’t buy into.

“That’s nonsense,” he was quoted as saying in his JockBio.com biography. “I’ll be hot-headed all my life. That’s just the kind of guy I am. ... I didn’t win be-cause I controlled my temper. I controlled my tem-per because I began to win ... there’s no use getting mad when you’re winning!”

Even Newhouser’s chief pitching rival, the Indians’ Bob Feller — who could’ve been his teammate ear-lier, had Cleveland’s scout moved more quickly the day legendary Tigers scout Wish Egan signed the De-troit native — noticed the intensity. The two Hall of Famers met on the mound 14 times in their careers.

“He didn’t smile too often when he was in uni-form,” Feller was quoted in “The Hall: A Celebration of Baseball’s Greats,” a book by the Hall of Fame. “Hal took the game very seriously — in fact, I think it was really more than a game to him.”

For Newhouser, who didn’t play organized base-ball until age 15, the uptick in success was swift. Through his first five seasons, he was 34-52, hav-ing walked just four fewer batters (442) than he’d struck out (446).

His next five seasons, though, from 1944-48, he’d go 118-56, averaging 24 wins per season, and lead-

ing the league in wins four of the five years, with 29, 25, 26 and 21 victories.

Only five other pitchers — a list that includes Cy Young, Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson — have had three consecutive seasons of 25 or more wins.

The dropoff was just as swift, once shoulder trou-ble hit around age 30: Newhouser won just 22 games his final five seasons, seven of those in 1954, as he helped the Indians to the AL pennant.

Given that his greatest success came in the war years— Newhouser was classified 4-F for a heart is-sue — against depleted rosters, he was passed over for the Hall of Fame for years, before being voted in by the Veteran’s Committee in 1992.

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit Tigers pitcher 1939-53Personal: Born May 20, 1921, in Detroit, died Nov. 10, 1998 in SouthfieldNickname: Prince HalNotable:

• Played 15 of his 17 seasons with the Tigers, and was a seven-time All-Star.• The only pitcher to win consecutive MVP awards (1944, 1945)• Led the American League in wins four times, ERA twice and strikeouts twice, winning the pitching Triple Crown in 1945, helping the Tigers win the World Series.• Has 200 wins and 1,770 strikeouts, one of four pitchers to reach those marks in each category.• Completed 212 of his 374 starts.• Spent 20 years out of baseball, as the vice president of Community Bank of Pontiac, but returned to the game as a scout.• Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1992• His No. 16 is retired by the Tigers, the only pitcher so honored.

HAL NEWHOUSER

27

Prolific scorer named one of NBA’s 50 greatest23#

By Dave PembertonDigital First Media

Long before he was Mayor of Detroit or a successful businessman, Dave Bing was a Hall of Fame basketball player for the Detroit Pistons.

Bing played nine seasons for the Pistons, averaging 20 points or more per game in seven of them.

Bing came to the Pistons as the No. 2 overall pick in 1966 after a stellar college career at Syracuse.

Syracuse wasn’t the bas-ketball powerhouse that churned out NBA players year-after-year like it is to-day when Bing attended. In fact, Bing admitted he turned down programs like UCLA and Michigan to go to Syracuse because he thought his chances of standing out were better with the Orange.

Bing’s doubts proved to be unfounded as he aver-aged 22.2 points as a sophomore, 23.2 as a junior and 28.4 as a senior leading the Orange to its second NCAA tournament appearance in school history.

In the 1966 NBA Draft, the Knicks picked Michigan’s Cazzie Russell No. 1 overall and the Pistons grabbed Bing with the second pick.

He averaged 20 points a game as a rookie and was named Rookie of the Year.

He followed that up by leading the NBA in scoring, averaging 27.1 points per game. He was the first guard since 1948 to lead the NBA in scoring.

Bing scored a career-high 2,213 points in the 1970-71 season, averaging 27 points a game, good for fourth in the NBA.

The following year in a preseason game, Bing suf-fered a detached retina and was forced to miss 45 games.

Ignoring the advice of doctors who said he could permanently damage his eye sight, Bing returned and

scored 21 points.Bing considered his return one of the greatest mo-

ments of his career.“Number one was when I scored 54 points against

the Chicago Bulls at Cobo,” Bing said in an online chat on ESPN.com. “I think my second biggest moment was after my eye surgery. I missed 45 games, and our

big nemesis was the New York Knicks, who at the time had Earl Monroe and Walt Frazier. I got a stand-ing ovation from the sell-out crowd. They really let me know that they appre-ciated me and were glad I was back.”

The Pistons made the playoffs in Bing’s final two seasons with the Pistons (1974 and 1975).

Bing was traded to his hometown Washington Bullets in 1975. He played two seasons for the Bullets and one for the Celtics be-fore retiring after the 1977-78 season.

The Pistons retired Dave Bing’s No. 21 and he was the first Syracuse player to have his number (22) retired.

He was named one of the NBA’s 50 greatest play-ers in 1996.

Bing is still among the Pistons franchise leaders in several categories. He’s fourth all-time in points (15,235), third in assists (4,330), fourth in field goals made (5,772), second in field goal attempts (13,119), sec-ond in free throws made (3,691), second in free throw attempts (4,789) and eighth in games played (675).

Bing is second all-time for the Pistons in scoring av-erage (22.6). He holds the franchise record for field goals in a season (836) and a game (22). Bing’s 54 points on Feb. 21, 1971 is the third most by a Piston.

After basketball, Bing went on to have a success-ful business career founding Bing Steel and later The Bing Group.

He was elected mayor of Detroit in 2009 and left of-fice in 2013 after he decided not to run for re-election.

Sport: BasketballMichigan connection: Detroit Pistons guard (1966-75)Personal: Born Nov. 24, 1943, Washington D.C.Notable: • NBA Rookie of the Year (1967)• Led NBA in scoring in 1968

• Seven-time NBA All-Star, NBA All-Star Game MVP in 1976• Two-time All-NBA first team• Elected to Basketball Hall of Fame in 1990• Former mayor of the City of Detroit


In this April 5, 1974 file photo, Detroit Pistons’ Dave Bing (21) drives past Chicago Bulls’ Norm Van Lier (2) during a game in Chicago.

DAVE BING

28

By Matthew MoweryDigital First Media

If not for nearly four years of service in World War II, Hank Greenberg could’ve gone down as one of the best players in the history of the game, statis-tically.

Instead, he’s more re-membered for something he disliked being labeled as.

“When I was playing, I used to resent being singled out as a Jewish ballplayer. I wanted to be known as a great ballplayer, period,” Greenberg was quoted in

“Baseballs, Basketballs and Matzah Balls” by Mitchell Smith. “I’m not sure why or when I changed, because I’m still not a particularly religious person. Lately, though, I find myself want-ing to be remembered not only as a great ballplayer, but even more as a great Jewish ballplayer.”

If Charlie Gehringer was the quiet portion of the Ti-gers’ “G-Men” in the 1930s — the nickname for the Tigers after their core of stars, Gehringer, “Goose” Goslin and Greenberg — then the opposite end of the personality spectrum

was Greenberg, who could be abrasive and outspoken.

That served him well in a career in which he was the first at a lot of things.

He wasn’t the first Jewish player in the big leagues, but he was undoubtably the first Jewish superstar — which was problematic, considering the rampant anti-Semitism of the time, often spurred on in Green-berg’s new home town by powerful men like Henry Ford.

Never was that pressure more felt than during the 1934 pennant race, when he chose not to play on Yom Kippur. Or four years later, when he was chasing Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 60 home runs, coming up two shy when he hit none over the last five games of the season.

His outspoken personal-ity was hardly all bad.

He had kind words for Jackie Robinson, when the latter was in the process of breaking baseball’s color barrier.

He counseled Roger Maris, when the Yankee slugger was chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record — as Greenberg had in 1938.

He prepped Ralph Kiner on how to be a power hit-ter in his one-year exile in Pittsburgh to end his ca-reer, after he was waived by the Tigers.

But Greenberg will most

often be remembered for being first so often.

He was the first ball-player to earn $100,000 per season.

He was one of the first ballplayers to sign up to serve in the armed forces in World War II — after having been disqualified from service because of flat feet — one of the lon-gest to serve (47 months), and one of the first to re-

turn to the ball field. He hit a pennant-clinching grand slam against the St. Louis Browns on the final day of the 1945 regular season, just weeks after returning from service.

“I almost weep remem-bering what it meant to us, that home run,” U.S. Sena-tor Carl Levin recalled, as quoted in Joel Rosengren’s book “The Hero of Heroes,” recalling the lead of the

next day’s newspaper story on the game. “’Call him the hero of heroes. Call him the champion of champions. Call him the hero of Ben-galtown.’”

Greenberg stayed in baseball for years after his playing days, first serving as the farm director and general manager for the Cleveland Indians, then GM and part owner of the Chicago White Sox.

22#Slugger starred for Tigers, served his country

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit Tigers first baseman, left fielderPersonal: Born Jan. 1, 1911 in New York City, died Sept. 4, 1986 in Beverly Hills, Calif.Nickname: Hammerin’ Hank, Hankus Pankus, The Hebrew Hammer

Notable:• Played 13 seasons in the big leagues (excluding the 1942-44 seasons he spent in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II), all but one of them for the Detroit Tigers• Led the AL in home runs and RBI four times each, earning five AL All-Star berths, and MVP honors in 1935 and 1940.• World Series champion in 1935 and 1945.• His No. 5 is retired by the Tigers.• The first Jewish player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame (1956), Greenberg is also a member of the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.


Hank Greenberg watches the ball clear the left field wall as he takes a turn at batting practice during a spring training session in Lakeland, Florida, on Feb. 27, 1946.

HANK GREENBERG29

21JOE SCHMIDTLions linebacker had knack of knowing what the opposition was going to do

#By Paula PascheDigital First Media

Joe Schmidt didn’t create the position of middle linebacker in the 1950’s, but he helped define and perfect it.

In his 13-year playing career, Schmidt played a huge role in changing the way defenses played in the NFL.

In the 1950’s came the change to the 4-3 frontal align-ment when the middle linebacker became the defen-sive quarterback of sorts.

“He anticipated plays with uncanny accuracy. He was a deadly tackler. He was fast enough to evade a 250-pound guard, to follow a play along the line or to drop back to cover a pass. He was strong enough to power past a po-tential blocker to crumble a play. But his greatest talent may well have been his uncanny knack of knowing what the opposition was go-ing to do,’’ according to his biography from the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Schmidt played in 155 games in 13 seasons. Only Jason Hanson (21 sea-sons), Wayne Walker (15) and Dick Le-Beau (14) played more seasons for the Lions.

He was a part of two of the Lions four championship teams — in 1953 and 1957.

In 1965 he had four of his 24 career interceptions and then announced his retirement. He still wasn’t done with the Lions. He became an assistant coach

for a year and then at age 35 started his six years as the Lions’ head coach.

His best coaching season was in 1970 when the Lions finished 10-4 and made the playoffs for the first time in 13 years. The Lions fell to the Dallas Cowboys 5-0, the lowest scoring game in NFL playoff history.

He resigned on Jan. 12, 1973, saying that coaching wasn’t fun any longer.

One day later he was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Team owner Wil-liam Clay Ford in-troduced Schmidt at his Hall of Fame e n s h r i n e m e n t . Ford tried to ex-plain why Schmidt had been a sev-enth-round draft pick:

“Statistically, I would have to say that he was mar-ginal. He was 6 feet tall and 220 pounds. Joe likes to say that at one

point in his career, he was 6-3, but he had tackled so many fullbacks that it drove his neck into his shoulders and now he is 6 foot. At any rate, he was listed at 6 feet and as I say was mar-ginal for that position. There are, how-ever, qualities that certainly scouts or anybody who is drafting a ball player cannot measure ... Desire, leadership and courage. Nobody knew what quan-tity Joe had of these elements and Joe had tremendous qualities in these ele-ments. These are the things that made him what he is today and what brings him here to Canton, and gets him en-shrined in this Hall of Fame.’’

Michigan connection: Detroit Lions linebacker 1953-65; Lions coach 1967-72.Personal: Born Jan. 19, 1932, in Pittsburgh, Pa.Notable• Was two-time na-

tional champion with Lions in 1953 (as a rookie) and 1957.• Ten-time Pro Bowl selection (1954-63) and team captain for nine straight seasons• Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973.


Linebacker Joe Schmidt, right, and Dr. Stephen Reid, chairman of a project for the American Medical Association to determine effects of blows encourntered in football, look over a specially wired helmet worn by Schmidt in the Pro Bowl game on Jan. 14, 1962 in Los Angeles.

30

20CHARLIE GEHRINGER

#‘Mechanical Man’ one of best second basemen ever


Charlie Gehringer was a quiet, unassuming man from the mid-dle of Michigan, the sleepy town of Fowlerville.

A man who worked in the downtown Detroit Hudson’s store in the offseason, and lived with his diabetic mother, staying a bachelor until the age of 42.

“Charlie says ‘hello’ on Open-ing Day, ‘goodbye’ on closing day, and in between hits .350,” said his Hall of Fame teammate and man-ager, Mickey Cochrane.

He was also one of the best sec-ond basemen in baseball history.

And dreadfully consistent, to boot.

“You wind him up in the spring, turn him loose, he hits .330 or .340, and you shut him off at the end of the season,” said Yankees Hall of Famer Lefty Gomez, who gave Gehringer his nickname of “The Mechanical Man.”

He went 14 straight seasons without hitting below .311.

He played every inning of the first six All-Star Games, hitting .500.

He played in 510 straight games, from late 1927 to early 1931.

Every year from 1931 to 1940, Gehringer received a significant number of votes for MVP, finish-ing in the top 10 for seven straight years, and in the top six for five straight. His batting title sea-son of 1937 — when he hit .371 — earned him American League

MVP honors.During that heyday of Gehring-

er’s career, the Tigers finished in the eight-team AL’s lower echelon five times, but finished first or sec-ond the other five.

Gehringer and the G-Men played in the World Series in 1934, 1935 (winning the franchise’s first World Series championship) and 1940. The second baseman played every inning of every postseason

game in those three seasons.And, yup, he hit .321 in his post-

season career.He scored more than 100 runs

in a dozen seasons in his career (leading the league in 1929 and 1934), finishing with a total of 1,774 that still ranks 21st on the all-time runs scored list.

He led the league in doubles twice, becoming one of just six players to hit 60 or more when he

hit that milestone exactly in 1936.He had seven seasons of 200

hits (only six players have more such seasons)

And he never struck out more than the 42 times he did in his first full campaign in 1926.

“I always thought that Charlie was one of the great hitters of my time,” Hall of Fame catcher Rick Ferrell said in Gehringer’s bio for the Hall. “He didn’t have the tre-

mendous power of Jimmie Foxx, (Babe) Ruth or (Lou) Gehrig or those guys, but he was tough to strike out and he hit more line drives and met the ball more sol-idly than any hitter.”

After serving three years in the Navy in World War II, Geh-ringer was the general manager of the Tigers from 1951-53, be-fore becoming the club’s vice president.

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit Tigers second basemanPersonal: Born May 11,

1903, in Fowlerville, died Jan. 21, 1993 in Bloomfield HillsNickname: The Mechanical ManNotable: • Played 19 seasons with the Tigers after signing in 1924• Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1949, seven years after his playing career ended.• A six-time All-Star, and American League Most Valu-able Player and batting cham-pion in 1937• World Series champion in 1935• His No. 2 is retired by the Tigers


Charlie Gehringer, left, Detroit Tigers’ second baseman and a mighty batsman, talking things over with Joe Medwick, left fielder and equally sturdy slammer of the St. Louis Cardinals, just before the start of the third game of the World Series in St. Louis, on Oct. 5, 1934.

31

By Pat CaputoOf Digital First Media

Put a basketball in Glen Rice’s hands, give him remotely a speck of time and space to shoot, and he was going to score.

At Flint Northwestern High School, Rice was the top player on arguably the best high school basketball team in the history of Michigan.

Playing against top-flight competi-tion during the salad days of the Sag-inaw Valley Conference, Northwestern went 27-1 Rice’s junior season and 28-0 his senior year, winning back-to-back Class A state championships, and even-tually compiling a 60-game winning streak, which was snapped when Rice was a freshman at Michigan.

Among Rice’s high school teammates was Andre Rison, who went on to star as a wide receiver at Michigan State and in the National Football League.

As a senior at Michigan, Rice averaged 25.6 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. When Wolverines’ head coach Bill Frie-der was dismissed late in the season by athletic director Bo Schembechler for ac-cepting a job at Arizona State, and re-placed by Steve Fisher, Rice catapulted the Wolverines to the NCAA champion-ship.

In the final game vs. Seton Hall, Rice had 31 points and 11 rebounds. It re-mains the only NCAA title Michigan has won in basketball despite advancing to the championship game six times. For his efforts, Rice was named as the Final Four’s Most Valuable Player.

He also averaged more than 22 points per game as a junior and was more ver-satile than sometimes given credit.

Only 61 players in NBA history have scored more points than Rice, who is also 23rd all-time in 3-point shots made.

He was fifth in the MVP voting in 1997 with Charlotte.

He led the NBA in minutes played that season, and topped the league in 3-point shooting percentage, making 47.5 per-cent of his shots behind the stripe.

Rice averaged 18.3 points per game during his 15-season NBA career. He made 86 percent of his free throws, 40 percent of his 3-pointers, played in three NBA All-Star games and report-edly earned more than $66 million.

But it was the titles at Flint North-western and Michigan for which Rice is so fondly remembered in this state.

He was not only a brilliant shooter, but a proven winner.

19#GLEN RICE

Michigan basketball star had the scoring touch

Sport: BasketballMichigan Connection: University of MichiganPersonal: Born May 28, 1967, Flint, MINickname: G MoneyNotable: • Played at Michigan

1985-89, and in the NBA 1989-2004 with Miami, Charlotte, Los Angeles Lakers, New York, Houston, Los Ange-les Clippers.• Leading scorer for Michigan’s 1989 national championship team• Second-team All-American in 1989• NBA All-Rookie in 1989, second-team All-NBA in 1997


You’ll search far and wide, and it is dif-ficult to come up with a longer resume for a football player than Charles Woodson’s.

Member of a college national championship team? Check.

Member of a Super Bowl-winning team? Check.

Heisman Trophy win-ner? Check.

NFL Defensive Player of the Year? Check.

The Heisman was an incredible accomplish-ment in that Woodson did so primarily because of his work on the defen-sive side of the football at cornerback, although he did return kicks and play wide receiver, too.

Woodson remains the only player, who was pri-marily a defensive player, to win the Heisman. And the competition was fierce for the award as college football’s best player that season. None other than Peyton Manning of Ten-nessee finished second in the balloting.

At 38, Woodson is still playing. He ranks among all-time leaders in interceptions (12th with 57 entering the 2014 season). He began his career with the Raiders, and just when it seemed to be on the wane during the mid-

2000s, joined the Packers, and was a key el-ement as Green Bay emerged as Super Bowl championship contenders. After the 2010 season, the Packers completed the process by upending Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl.

Woodson returned to the Raiders in 2013.

There have been many signature mo-ments in Woodson’s career. Two that really standout were his in-terception of Michigan State quarterback Todd Schultz in 1997, and his overall performance in the Ohio State game that same season.

Schultz’s pass ap-peared headed far out of bounds when Wood-son jumped, one arm ex-tended, and gathered it in, somehow getting his feet within the field of play.

Against Ohio State, Woodson shutdown the Buckeyes’ highly-regarded wide receiver David Boston. He in-tercepted a pass. He returned a punt for a touchdown. He had a long reception, which set up another TD.

In the NFL, Wood-son has scored 13 non-offensive touchdowns (kick, interception or fumble returns), which is tied for fifth all-time behind only Devin Hester, Deion Sanders, Rod Woodson and Ronde Barber.

18Defensive back has excelled,

been winner in college and pros

# CHARLES WOODSON

Sport: Foot-ballMichigan Connection: University of MichiganPersonal: Born Oct. 7, 1976, Sebring, OH

Nickname: PoochieNotable: • Played cornerback, wide receiver and returned kicks at Michigan 1995-97, including for ‘97 national title team• NFL cornerback 1998- present with Oakland and Green Bay• 1997 Heisman Trophy winner• Three-time 1st team All-Pro, eight-time Pro Bowl selection• 2009 NFL Defensive Player of the Year, 1998 NFL Defen-sive Rookie of the Year• Member 2010 Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers

32

17#


Floyd Mayweather Jr. is widely consid-ered the best boxer in the world.

He is the key element giving boxing a present-day heartbeat, as it is being taken over in popularity on a number of fronts by mixed martial arts, and has waned greatly from its salad days.

At $105 million per year, Mayweather is the highest paid athlete in the world, ac-cording to a 2014 report by Forbes Mag-azine.

He is not only a great and popular boxer, but also promotes his fights. He earns more than double the next highest paid athlete on the list, soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo.

Mayweather is not only a brilliant fighter, who had taken on all challengers and beaten them, but he has proven to be an astute business person.

He is also a study in contradiction.Mayweather has an outgoing personal-

ity. He is viewed as charismatic and like-able in many ways.

He even appeared on “Dancing With the Stars” in 2007, advancing to the fourth round.

Yet, in 2012, Mayweather served two months of a three-month sentence in a Las Vegas jail after being convicted of a domestic battery charge.

He was accused of twisting the arm and pulling the hair of his former girlfriend, while two of their children watched. And there have been numerous other reported incidents involving Mayweather, but didn’t end with convictions.

As a fighter, Mayweather has beaten some of the best boxers of his generation, including Oscar De La Hoya, Sugar Shane Mosley and Arturo Gatti.

Mayweather, who has been trained by his father, Floyd Mayweather Sr., and un-

cle, Roger Mayweather, at various times of his career, was featured in a four-part series by HBO in the lead-up to his fight with the popular De La Hoya. Mayweather won a split decision.

Later that year, he retired from box-

ing, but it was short-lived. Mayweather returned in 2009.

His uncle, Roger, was also a profes-sional fighter,

Taught the sports by his father, who once fought Sugar Ray Leonard, May-weather is a very technically sound fighter.

His defensive skills are second to none, but he does possess a knockout instinct, as well. Mayweather has knocked out 26 of his professional opponents.

FLOYD MAYWEATHER

Champion boxer, Olympian is money in and out of the ringSport: BoxingMichigan Connec-tion: Born and raised in Grand RapidsPersonal: Born Feb. 24, 1977, Grand RapidsNickname: MoneyNotable:

• Professional career spanning 1996-2007, and 2009-present• Bronze medalist, featherweight divi-sion, 1996 Olympics in Atlanta• National Amateur and Golden Gloves champion as a featherweight• Has held various world champion-ships professionally in the super featherweight, lightweight, super lightweight, welterweight and super welterweight divisions• 47-0 as a professional, including 24-0 in title fights• Highest paid athlete in the world according to Forbes magazine

AP PHOTO/JOHN LOCHER

Floyd Mayweather punches Marcos Maidana, right, during their WBA welterweight and WBC super welterweight title fight on Sept. 13, 2014, in Las Vegas.

33

16MEG MALLON# By Pat CaputoDigital First Media

Meg Mallon wasn’t only one of the more popular and personable members of the LPGA Tour, she was also one of the best golfers.

Certainly, she is the most decorated golfer, man or woman, produced by the State of Mich-igan the last 50 years.

Raised in Oakland County, and a graduate of Farmington Hills Mercy High School, Mal-lon took the golf universe by storm in 1991. She captured the U.S. Women’s Open and the LPGA Championship that year. Those were the

first of her four major championships.Mallon was three strokes down with 10

holes to play at the legendary Colonial Coun-try Club in Dallas, but still won the 1991 U.S. Open by two strokes over Hall of Famer Pat Bradley.

Mallon added the Du Maurier Classic and another U.S. Women’s Open in 2004 for her major championships.

At the Orchards Golf Club in Massachu-setts, the state she was born before her fam-ily moved to Oakland County in Michigan, Mallon shot a final round 65 to edge out An-nika Sorenstam by two strokes in the 2004

U.S. Women’s Open. She was 41 years old, and it was 13 years between victories for her in this country’s national title.

Mallon won 18 times overall on the LPGA Tour and consistently finished in the money.

Mallon’s journey from the time she took up golf at the age of 7 was a steady one before her career hit its crescendo. She was an All-Big Ten golfer at Ohio State University, and was the runner-up in the Big Ten Tournament. She also won the Michigan Amateur cham-pionship.

Mallon, 51, formally retired from the regu-lar LPGA Tour four years ago. She has not yet

been inducted in the LPGA Hall of Fame. Her career record fell just short of being automat-ically inducted, but there is a strong possibil-ity she will be inducted in the not-to-distant future by a veteran’s committee.

Mallon had to take considerable time off during her career to help care for ailing family members, an aspect which will likely be con-sidered at some point by the selection com-mittee.

Mallon was recognized as one of the Top 50 players in LPGA history in 2000.

In 2013, Mallon was named the United States’ captain for the Solheim Cup, which is the women’s version of the Ryder Cup. She re-mains an enormously popular figure in the world of golf, and one of the sport’s top am-bassadors.

Sport: GolfMichigan Connection: Farmington Mercy High School.Personal: Born April 14, 1963, Natick, MANotable:• Member LPGA Tour 1987-2010• Two-time winner of the United States Women’s Open

• Four-time wnner of major LPGA titles• 18-time winner on the LPGA Tour


During the “Bad Boys” era of the Detroit Pistons, Joe Du-mars managed to stand out despite being the “quiet one.”

Dumars stood out with his play. Labeled by Michael Jor-dan as the best defender he’s ever faced, Dumars helped the Bad Boys era Pistons earn a reputation as one of the great-est defensive teams in NBA history.

Dumars stayed clear of the

hard fouls and antagonist behavior the Bad Boys were known for, but that didn’t mean Dumars lacked the toughness to get the job done.

It was Dumars who took home the NBA Finals MVP trophy when the Pistons won their first championship in 1989. Dumars averaged 27.3 points as the Pistons swept the Lakers.

The following season Du-mars averaged 18.2 points in 20 playoff games as the Pis-tons won their second straight

NBA championship.Dumars exploded for 33

points in the pivotal Game 3, but learned after the game his father had passed away. At the urging of his mother, he stayed with the team and helped the Pistons defeat the Portland Trail Blazers in five games.

He earned his first All-Star game appearance in 1990 and would go on to appear in six All-Star games. He was a four-time NBA All-Defensive first team selection, two-time All-

NBA third team and one-time All-NBA second team selec-tion.

Not bad for a guy who came to the Pistons with the 18th overall pick in the 1985 NBA Draft out of McNeese State.

Dumars’ spent his entire 14-year career with the Pis-tons. He averaged 16.1 points over his career, averaging a career-high 23.5 points in the 1992-93 season

He’s the Pistons’ franchise leader in three categories and is in the top three in 10 cate-gories.

Dumars is first in games

played (1,018), 3-point field goals made (990) and three-point field goals attempted (2,592). He’s second in points (16,401) and assists (4,612), and third in steals (902), free throws made (3,423), free throws attempted (4,059), field goals made (5,994) and field goals attempted (13,026).

In 1996, he was the first recipient of the NBA’s Sports-manship Award and the tro-phy, still given out annually to the winner, is named the Joe Dumars trophy.

Dumars’ No. 4 was retired by the Pistons in 2000 and he was elected to the Basket-

ball Hall of Fame in 2006.After his playing days

were over, Dumars made his mark as an executive.

Dumars spent 14 years as the Pistons’ President of Basketball Operations, put-ting together the team which won the 2004 NBA champi-onship and reached six con-secutive Eastern Conference finals. He was named execu-tive of the year in 2003.

After the Pistons missed the playoffs for five straight years, Dumars stepped down as President of Bas-ketball Operations in April of 2014.

Sport: BasketballMichigan connection: Detroit Pistons guard (1985-99), Detroit Pistons general manager (2000-2014)Personal: Born May 24, 1963, Shreve-port, LouisianaNickname: Joe DNotable:• Entire pro playing career with Pistons

1985-1999; drafted 18th overall by Pistons in 1985• Helped Pistons win three NBA championships, two as a player (1989 and 1990) and one as an executive (2004) and NBA Finals MVP in 1989• Six-time NBA All-Star, four-time All-NBA Defensive first team• NBA Sportsmanship Award is named the Joe Dumars Trophy• Elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006

Michigan’s most decorated golfer — man or woman

Pistons guard known for defense, sportsmanshipJOE DUMARS

34

16MEG MALLON# By Pat CaputoDigital First Media

Meg Mallon wasn’t only one of the more popular and personable members of the LPGA Tour, she was also one of the best golfers.

Certainly, she is the most decorated golfer, man or woman, produced by the State of Mich-igan the last 50 years.

Raised in Oakland County, and a graduate of Farmington Hills Mercy High School, Mal-lon took the golf universe by storm in 1991. She captured the U.S. Women’s Open and the LPGA Championship that year. Those were the

first of her four major championships.Mallon was three strokes down with 10

holes to play at the legendary Colonial Coun-try Club in Dallas, but still won the 1991 U.S. Open by two strokes over Hall of Famer Pat Bradley.

Mallon added the Du Maurier Classic and another U.S. Women’s Open in 2004 for her major championships.

At the Orchards Golf Club in Massachu-setts, the state she was born before her fam-ily moved to Oakland County in Michigan, Mallon shot a final round 65 to edge out An-nika Sorenstam by two strokes in the 2004

U.S. Women’s Open. She was 41 years old, and it was 13 years between victories for her in this country’s national title.

Mallon won 18 times overall on the LPGA Tour and consistently finished in the money.

Mallon’s journey from the time she took up golf at the age of 7 was a steady one before her career hit its crescendo. She was an All-Big Ten golfer at Ohio State University, and was the runner-up in the Big Ten Tournament. She also won the Michigan Amateur cham-pionship.

Mallon, 51, formally retired from the regu-lar LPGA Tour four years ago. She has not yet

been inducted in the LPGA Hall of Fame. Her career record fell just short of being automat-ically inducted, but there is a strong possibil-ity she will be inducted in the not-to-distant future by a veteran’s committee.

Mallon had to take considerable time off during her career to help care for ailing family members, an aspect which will likely be con-sidered at some point by the selection com-mittee.

Mallon was recognized as one of the Top 50 players in LPGA history in 2000.

In 2013, Mallon was named the United States’ captain for the Solheim Cup, which is the women’s version of the Ryder Cup. She re-mains an enormously popular figure in the world of golf, and one of the sport’s top am-bassadors.

Sport: GolfMichigan Connection: Farmington Mercy High School.Personal: Born April 14, 1963, Natick, MANotable:• Member LPGA Tour 1987-2010• Two-time winner of the United States Women’s Open

• Four-time wnner of major LPGA titles• 18-time winner on the LPGA Tour


During the “Bad Boys” era of the Detroit Pistons, Joe Du-mars managed to stand out despite being the “quiet one.”

Dumars stood out with his play. Labeled by Michael Jor-dan as the best defender he’s ever faced, Dumars helped the Bad Boys era Pistons earn a reputation as one of the great-est defensive teams in NBA history.

Dumars stayed clear of the

hard fouls and antagonist behavior the Bad Boys were known for, but that didn’t mean Dumars lacked the toughness to get the job done.

It was Dumars who took home the NBA Finals MVP trophy when the Pistons won their first championship in 1989. Dumars averaged 27.3 points as the Pistons swept the Lakers.

The following season Du-mars averaged 18.2 points in 20 playoff games as the Pis-tons won their second straight

NBA championship.Dumars exploded for 33

points in the pivotal Game 3, but learned after the game his father had passed away. At the urging of his mother, he stayed with the team and helped the Pistons defeat the Portland Trail Blazers in five games.

He earned his first All-Star game appearance in 1990 and would go on to appear in six All-Star games. He was a four-time NBA All-Defensive first team selection, two-time All-

NBA third team and one-time All-NBA second team selec-tion.

Not bad for a guy who came to the Pistons with the 18th overall pick in the 1985 NBA Draft out of McNeese State.

Dumars’ spent his entire 14-year career with the Pis-tons. He averaged 16.1 points over his career, averaging a career-high 23.5 points in the 1992-93 season

He’s the Pistons’ franchise leader in three categories and is in the top three in 10 cate-gories.

Dumars is first in games

played (1,018), 3-point field goals made (990) and three-point field goals attempted (2,592). He’s second in points (16,401) and assists (4,612), and third in steals (902), free throws made (3,423), free throws attempted (4,059), field goals made (5,994) and field goals attempted (13,026).

In 1996, he was the first recipient of the NBA’s Sports-manship Award and the tro-phy, still given out annually to the winner, is named the Joe Dumars trophy.

Dumars’ No. 4 was retired by the Pistons in 2000 and he was elected to the Basket-

ball Hall of Fame in 2006.After his playing days

were over, Dumars made his mark as an executive.

Dumars spent 14 years as the Pistons’ President of Basketball Operations, put-ting together the team which won the 2004 NBA champi-onship and reached six con-secutive Eastern Conference finals. He was named execu-tive of the year in 2003.

After the Pistons missed the playoffs for five straight years, Dumars stepped down as President of Bas-ketball Operations in April of 2014.

Sport: BasketballMichigan connection: Detroit Pistons guard (1985-99), Detroit Pistons general manager (2000-2014)Personal: Born May 24, 1963, Shreve-port, LouisianaNickname: Joe DNotable:• Entire pro playing career with Pistons

1985-1999; drafted 18th overall by Pistons in 1985• Helped Pistons win three NBA championships, two as a player (1989 and 1990) and one as an executive (2004) and NBA Finals MVP in 1989• Six-time NBA All-Star, four-time All-NBA Defensive first team• NBA Sportsmanship Award is named the Joe Dumars Trophy• Elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006

Michigan’s most decorated golfer — man or woman

Pistons guard known for defense, sportsmanshipJOE DUMARS

34

14KIRK GIBSON#

Sport: Baseball, footballMichigan Connection: Detroit Tigers, Michigan StatePersonal: Born May 28, 1957, Pontiac MINickname: Gibby

Notable:• Wide receiver Michigan State 1975-78, Detroit Tigers outfielder 1978-8, 1993-95• National League Most Valuable Player 1988• All-American wide receiver 1978• Two-time World Series Champion (1984 with Tigers, 1988 with Los Angeles Dodgers)


Kirk Gibson was a rare combination of extraordinary raw athleticism and genuine competitive toughness and the will to win.

He was also a classic exam-ple of an athlete at his very best when the spotlight was the brightest.

With Detroit holding a pre-carious 5-4 lead in Game 5 of the 1984 World Series against the San Diego Padres, Gibson drilled a deep drive into the right field upper deck at Tiger Stadium to seal the Tigers’ Se-

ries-deciding victory. It came off Hall of Fame reliever Goose Gossage, who had previously struck out Gibson consistently.

During the 1988 World Se-ries, as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Gibson was out with a leg injury un-til the ninth inning of Game One. Then, he limped off the bench and drove a home run off another Hall of Fame re-liever, this time Dennis Ecker-sley of the Oakland A’s, It not only won the game, but pro-vided impetus for the Dodg-ers, who went on to take the series with an improbable four-game sweep.

Gibson had signed with the Dodgers as a free agent that year, and changed their culture dramatically. As re-sult, he was named as the Na-tional League’s MVP that sea-son as much for his leadership as his stellar performance on the field.

Born in Pontiac and raised in Waterford Township, Gib-son flew under the radar a bit, even though he was a three-sport star at Waterford Ketter-ing High School.

He was still recruited by Michigan State to play foot-ball and started immediately his freshman year as a wide

receiver. By his senior season, Gibson, who possessed sub 4.3 speed in the 40-yard dash, was an All American. The Spar-tans beat Michigan that sea-son, and would have gone to the Rose Bowl as the Big Ten champs, but were not allowed to appear in a bowl game be-cause they were on probation.

Gibson didn’t play baseball at MSU until his junior year, and after hitting numerous tap-measure shots, was se-lected by the Tigers in the first round of the MLB Draft. He signed with the Tigers before his senior season of football for a $175,000 bonus. He was

later taken by the St, Louis Cardinals in the NFL Draft, but never seriously considered playing pro football.

Gibson struggled initially after reaching the major leagues. He was booed often at Tiger Stadium. But even-tually he became the clas-sic hometown favorite with some terrific Tigers’ clubs during the 1980’s, including the ‘84 world champs and the ‘87 AL East champs. Also, Gibson returned to the Tigers in the 1990s, concluding his MLB career in 1995 at age 38. Gibson, who was recently dis-missed as the Arizona Dia-

mondbacks’ manager, was a coach for the Tigers prior to that, and also a broadcaster on the club’s telecasts.

Gibson was never one for garnering statistics. He wasn’t even close to a Hall of Fame caliber player in that regard. As a winner and clutch performer, few could top him, especially his huge moments in the World Se-ries. He was also one of the top pure athletes of his gener-ation. He was big, exception-ally fast, strong and tough. He was a genuinely unique athlete in many different re-gards.

Home-grown athlete was a hero when it mattered most

13#By Pat CaputoOf Digital First Media

To say Tom Brady’s career at the University of Michi-gan, in hindsight, was un-dervalued, underappreciated and underrated would be a big understatement.

It’s difficult to believe, even as a successful starter at Michigan, Brady was forced to share snaps with

former Brighton High School star Drew Henson. Or that Brady, certainly one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, was only a sixth-round NFL Draft choice of the New England Patriots.

Brady, raised in the Bay Area of California, was a good enough all-around athlete to be drafted by the Montreal Expos as a catcher in the 18th round of the

1995 Major League Base-ball Draft. As a high school quarterback, he did well, but didn’t receive a Division I college scholarship offer except for Michigan. And it only came after Brady’s fa-ther made a highlight tape and it was viewed by Mich-igan head coach Lloyd Carr and his staff. It was report-edly sent to 55 schools.

At Michigan, Brady com-pleted 62 percent of his passes. He threw 30 touch-down passes compared to just 17 interceptions. Mich-igan won 10 games each of

the two years he played ex-tensively. He was named a team captain in 1999.

Yet, Brady was overshad-owed by the anticipation of Henson joining the program and becoming the full-time starter.

With the Patriots, Brady threw just three passes as a rookie, completing one, all in a 34-9 loss to the Lions at the Pontiac Silverdome on Thanksgiving Day.

The next year, he replaced veteran Drew Bledsoe and led the Patriots to an im-probable Super Bowl victory

over the heavily-favored St. Louis Rams.

Brady didn’t throw for a lot of yards that day, but he just kept making plays when they were needed. The Pa-triots went on to win two more Super Bowls, beating the Carolina Panthers and the Philadelphia Eagles, and losing two others, each to the New York Giants in upsets.

In 2007, Brady had one of the greatest seasons ever by an NFL quarterback, completing 50 touchdown passes.

The Patriots were unde-

feated until being upset by the Giants in the Super Bowl.

Though the years, the Pa-triots’ roster has changed dramatically. However, the one constant remains Brady under center. As long as he is the Patriots’ quarterback they are in contention. It’s just the way it is.

Brady hasn’t only been a two-time Super Bowl MVP, and an NFL league MVP, he has displayed remark-able consistency and tenac-ity. He is without question one of the greatest players in NFL history.

Sport: FootballMichigan Connection: University of MichiganPersonal: Born Aug. 3, 1977, San Mateo, CANickname: TB12

Notable:• Quarterback at Michigan 1996-99, team captain 1999• Three-time Super Bowl champion quarterback• Nine-time Pro Bowler, two-time first-team All-Pro• Top 6 all-time among NFL quarterbacks in passing yards (6th), completions (5th), touchdown passes (5th) and passer rating (6th)

Two-time Super Bowl MVP shows consistency and tenacity

TOM BRADY

35

12TERRY SAWCHUKRed Wings goalie was fearless in the net

#By Chuck PleinessDigital First Media

If there was a poster child for the definition of playing through the pain, Terry Sawchuk would be it.

Here’s a short list of what Saw-chuk suffered through his play-ing career – punctured lungs, rup-tured discs, a blocked intestine, mononucleosis, severed hand ten-dons, a broken instep, a dislocated elbow that never healed properly and left one arm shorter than the other, a twice-broken nose and 600 stitches.

Sawchuk once checked himself out of the hospital to play a Stan-ley Cup game.

That was the life on an NHL goalie, which back when Sawchuk played there were just six starters in the league.

Before all those injuries took a toll on Sawchuk, he had totaled 56 shutouts, 195 wins and a 1.94 goals-against average during his first five full NHL campaigns. He led the NHL in wins each of those five seasons.

“I haven’t seen anyone better than Sawchuk,” said Jimmy Skin-ner, who coached Sawchuk briefly in Detroit and passed away in 2007. “He had it all and he also had a lot of guts. He was fearless in the net and extremely confi-dent.

“He’d always say to the guys, ‘Get me a couple and we’ll win,’” Skinner added. “And he meant it. He didn’t say it in a bragging kind of way. He was just that con-fident.”

In the 1951-52 season, he had four shutouts, with an 0.63 goals-

against average and .977 save per-centage in leading Detroit to the Cup in the minimum eight games.

He’s considered by many as the greatest goalie Detroit has ever had.

“A lot of people think he was the greatest goalkeeper who ever played the game,” former NHL goalie Glenn Hall said. “I include myself in that group.”

“He was a great competitor

and someone with a lot of passion for the game,” former netminder and current Colorado Avalanche head coach Patrick Roy said.

Sawchuk finished with 103 shutouts, 435 wins and 971 games played.

Despite his numbers, Saw-chuck still feared he wasn’t good enough to maintain his job in the league.

The Red Wings traded him

to Boston in 1955 and then re-acquired him after he had an-nounced he was retiring.

Detroit left him unprotected on waivers and Toronto claimed him. The Leafs left him unpro-tected during the 1967 expan-sion draft where he was the first player selected by the Los Ange-les Kings. After one season with the Kings he was dealt back to Detroit. He ended his career with

the New York Rangers.“He was always injured, but

even towards the end, when he was over the hill and playing with the Rangers, he was still outstanding,” Skinner said. “He was the best.”

Sawchuk, Dominik Hasek and Jim Rutherford, all goalies, are the only players to skate three different stints in a Detroit uni-form.

Sawchuk and Chris Osgood are the only goalies to win three Stanley Cups with Detroit.

Sport: HockeyMichigan Connection: Detroit Red Wings goalie (1949-64 and 1968-69)Personal: Born Dec. 28,

1929, Winnipeg, Manitoba, CanadaNickname: “Ukey,” “Saw”Notable: • Four-time Vezina Trophy winner as the NHL’s best goalie • Four-time Stanley Cup champ• Won Lester Patrick Trophy as the league’s best defensive player• Inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1971• The Red Wings retired his No. 1 in 1994• Appeared in 11 NHL All-Star Games


Montreal Canadiens forward Maurice “The Rocket” Richard blasts the puck past Red Wings goalie Terry Sawchuck during the third overtime in a March 29, 1951, Stanley Cup playoff game. Detroit fell short that year but Sawchuk led the team to the Cup the next season.

36

12TERRY SAWCHUKRed Wings goalie was fearless in the net

#By Chuck PleinessDigital First Media

If there was a poster child for the definition of playing through the pain, Terry Sawchuk would be it.

Here’s a short list of what Saw-chuk suffered through his play-ing career – punctured lungs, rup-tured discs, a blocked intestine, mononucleosis, severed hand ten-dons, a broken instep, a dislocated elbow that never healed properly and left one arm shorter than the other, a twice-broken nose and 600 stitches.

Sawchuk once checked himself out of the hospital to play a Stan-ley Cup game.

That was the life on an NHL goalie, which back when Sawchuk played there were just six starters in the league.

Before all those injuries took a toll on Sawchuk, he had totaled 56 shutouts, 195 wins and a 1.94 goals-against average during his first five full NHL campaigns. He led the NHL in wins each of those five seasons.

“I haven’t seen anyone better than Sawchuk,” said Jimmy Skin-ner, who coached Sawchuk briefly in Detroit and passed away in 2007. “He had it all and he also had a lot of guts. He was fearless in the net and extremely confi-dent.

“He’d always say to the guys, ‘Get me a couple and we’ll win,’” Skinner added. “And he meant it. He didn’t say it in a bragging kind of way. He was just that con-fident.”

In the 1951-52 season, he had four shutouts, with an 0.63 goals-

against average and .977 save per-centage in leading Detroit to the Cup in the minimum eight games.

He’s considered by many as the greatest goalie Detroit has ever had.

“A lot of people think he was the greatest goalkeeper who ever played the game,” former NHL goalie Glenn Hall said. “I include myself in that group.”

“He was a great competitor

and someone with a lot of passion for the game,” former netminder and current Colorado Avalanche head coach Patrick Roy said.

Sawchuk finished with 103 shutouts, 435 wins and 971 games played.

Despite his numbers, Saw-chuck still feared he wasn’t good enough to maintain his job in the league.

The Red Wings traded him

to Boston in 1955 and then re-acquired him after he had an-nounced he was retiring.

Detroit left him unprotected on waivers and Toronto claimed him. The Leafs left him unpro-tected during the 1967 expan-sion draft where he was the first player selected by the Los Ange-les Kings. After one season with the Kings he was dealt back to Detroit. He ended his career with

the New York Rangers.“He was always injured, but

even towards the end, when he was over the hill and playing with the Rangers, he was still outstanding,” Skinner said. “He was the best.”

Sawchuk, Dominik Hasek and Jim Rutherford, all goalies, are the only players to skate three different stints in a Detroit uni-form.

Sawchuk and Chris Osgood are the only goalies to win three Stanley Cups with Detroit.

Sport: HockeyMichigan Connection: Detroit Red Wings goalie (1949-64 and 1968-69)Personal: Born Dec. 28,

1929, Winnipeg, Manitoba, CanadaNickname: “Ukey,” “Saw”Notable: • Four-time Vezina Trophy winner as the NHL’s best goalie • Four-time Stanley Cup champ• Won Lester Patrick Trophy as the league’s best defensive player• Inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1971• The Red Wings retired his No. 1 in 1994• Appeared in 11 NHL All-Star Games


Montreal Canadiens forward Maurice “The Rocket” Richard blasts the puck past Red Wings goalie Terry Sawchuck during the third overtime in a March 29, 1951, Stanley Cup playoff game. Detroit fell short that year but Sawchuk led the team to the Cup the next season.

36

11By Paula PascheDigital First Media

The talk has begun.When Detroit Lions’ coach Jim

Caldwell was asked earlier this sea-son to compare Carolina Panthers rookie wide receiver Kelvin Benja-min to Lions’ great Calvin John-son, the coach would not take the bait.

“Not very often you’re going to catch me comparing one guy to an-other and particularly when you’re talking about a guy who undoubt-edly is going to be a Hall of Famer,” Caldwell said.

“There are not many Hall of Famers in this league now that come through the ranks that you get a chance to see. Calvin’s go-ing to be one of those,’’ the coach added.

No one will argue.Calvin Johnson, the second over-

all pick in the 2007 NFL Draft out of Georgia Tech, has been every-thing the Lions wanted and more.

Nicknamed Megatron, he has size (6-foot-5), speed, vertical leap and football smarts.

He’s smashed the Lions’ record books.

Through the 2013 season, John-son holds franchise records in re-ceiving yards (9,328), receiving yards in a season (1,964), receiv-ing yards in a game (329), career receiving touchdowns (66) and re-ceiving touchdowns in a season (16).

In the NFL since his rookie year in 2007 (through the first four games of this season), he has the most receiving yards (9,669), most touchdowns (68), most 25-yard or

more receptions (89), most 150-yard games (13) and most 200-yard receiving games (5). That’s the tip of the iceberg.

Johnson is a threat on every down and gives opposing defen-sive coordinators headaches each week.

His coaches love him.New offensive coordinator Joe

Lombardi seems almost in awe of Johnson.

“You have to be careful not to be a fan when you’re watching him, it’s really unbelievable when you see him in person just how big and strong and fast he is,’’ Lombardi said in May. “It’s even moreso than

you thought. It’s impressive.’’Lombardi does not stand alone.“It was a lot of fun,” Caldwell

said after the opening game when Johnson had seven catches for 164 yards and a pair of touchdowns. “It was a lot more fun than being on the other side, trying to figure out how you want to defend him. I have been on that side all too of-ten. One of the great things about him is that he will rise to the oc-casion. He is going to make plays for you, and he is hardly going to say a word. Maybe the humblest superstar I have ever been around in my life. I admire him.”

His teammates love him too.

He’s one of the guys, willing to help the young wide receivers with everything from learning how to watch film to how to behave off the field.

The 29-year-old wide receiver acts like he’s just another kid from Georgia.

Don’t get him wrong. He appre-ciates the Hall of Fame talk.

“Man, you play this game, you play it hard, to be fortunate enough to do some of the things I’ve done it’s great to be mentioned in that light,’’ Johnson said.

He said it’d be awesome.“The biggest thing is play to win

the Super Bowl,’’ Johnson said. “If

you can play so well to one day re-ceive one of those (Hall of Fame) gold jackets, that’s a dream as well.’’

It’s understandable that all the young tall wide receivers that come into the NFL are compared to Johnson.

“It’s pretty cool. I guess it goes back to all the hard work over the course of my career,’’ John-son said. “All the guys I’ve worked with that’s helped me, helped my teammates.’’

CALVIN JOHNSON#‘Megatron’ is headed straight to the Hall of Fame

Sport: FootballMichigan connection: Detroit Lions wide receiver since 2007Personal: Born Sept. 29,

1985, in Newnan, Ga.Nickname: MegatronNotable:• Second-round pick out of Georgia Tech had 572 recep-tions in 9,328 games in his first seven seasons.• He’s a four-time Pro Bowl player (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013) and two-time NFL receiving yards leader (2011, 2012)• In 2012 he recorded the most receiving yards in one season for any NFL player ever with 1,964 yards. He also has the second-most all-time receiving yards in a game (329 yards).

AP PHOTO/RICK OSENTOSKI

Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson has twice led the NFL in receiving yards

37


For much of the 20th Century, there was a longstanding debate about the greatest baseball player of all-time. Was it Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth?

It was the classic baseball debate between power and speed. Ruth undoubtedly transcended the game with his in-credible power during the 1920’s, but Cobb defined the game as it was played before that. He possessed multi-dimensional skills during the so-called “dead ball” era of baseball.

Cobb dominated baseball every bit as much as Ruth did in the 1920s during the early part of the 1900s until the late teens, except in a different way, although he didn’t have nearly the same supporting cast with the Tigers that Ruth had with the Yankees. He not only won 11 American League batting titles in 14 seasons from 1907 until 1919, he hit above .400

twice. In 1911, Cobb hit .420 with 127 RBI and 83 stolen bases. He batted .401 in 1922 at the age of 35, although he finished second in the AL batting race.

Cobb had 96 stolen bases in 1915, which stood as the mod-ern MLB record until 1962. The Tigers were a perennial base-ball power early in Cobb’s career, winning three straight AL pennants 1907-09. However, they came up short in the World Series each time. Cobb never played for a World Series cham-pionship team.

Cobb’s competitiveness was legendary. It is alleged he would spike opposing players on a whim while sliding into bases, and that he was a generally angry person. Cobb was nicknamed “The Georgia Peach,” and was raised in the Jim Crow South. He is often referred to as being a racist, although the evidence is sketchy. Cobb’s mother shot his father weeks before he made his debut with the Tigers in 1905. Cobb was, according to many published reports, not a very good fa-

ther and was involved in many physical confrontations down through the years.

Legendary Tigers’ broadcaster Ernie Harwell, a native of Georgia like Cobb, interviewed Cobb several times and knew him well, and said the extent of his deportment issues were exaggerated.

Cobb left the Tigers after the 1926 season and played his final two seasons with the Philadelphia A’s, retiring from baseball at 41. In his last four MLB seasons, Cobb hit .378, .339, .357 and .323. Not only is his .366 batting average the best of any player in baseball’s modern era, he is the only hit-ter in MLB history with a better than .360 career average.

Cobb left baseball very wealthy. He had invested heav-ily in Coca-Cola. He was part of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s first class in 1936 along with Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson. Cobb, not Ruth, was named on the highest percentage of the ballots.

1OTY COBBMLB’s all-time leading hitter with a .366 batting average

#

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit TigersPersonal: Born Dec. 18, 1886, in Narrows, GANickname: Georgia Peach

Notable: • Played with the Detroit Tigers from 1905 until 1926, concluding his MLB career with the Philadelphia A’s in 1927-28• MLB’s all-time leading hitter with a .366 batting average.• Top 8 all-time in MLB history in runs scored (2nd), hits (2nd), triples (2nd), doubles (4th), stolen bases (4th), Wins Above Replacement (6th) and RBI (8th)• Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936


Detroit Tigers great Ty Cobb is shown sliding in this undated photo.

38

9MIGUEL CABRERASkill separates Cabrera from other MLB hitters

#


Although just 31 years old, Miguel Cabrera is already considered among the best hitters in Major League Baseball history.

His .320 career batting average is the best among active players. Despite playing just a dozen MLB seasons, he is already 58th on the all-time home run list with 390. His OPS (on base plus slugging percentage) is the 16th best in MLB history at .960, ahead of Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Schmidt. His slugging percentage of .514 is 14th of all time, better than Mickey Man-tle and Stan Musial, in addition to Mays and Aaron.

An average MLB season for Cabrera is a .320 batting average with 35 home runs and 122 RBI.

It was considered one of the best trades in MLB history when the Tigers traded half their farm system — or so it seemed — to the then-Florida Marlins in exchange for Cabrera and former 20-game winning pitcher Dontrelle Wil-lis. While Willis didn’t pan out with the Tigers, Cabrera, already a perennial All-Star and con-sidered one of the premier hitters in the game, had his career really take off with the Tigers.

Despite often being pitched around in the Ti-gers’ batting order, Cabrera keyed Tigers’ post-season spots in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

In 2012, he was especially important to the Tigers’ success, in the second half of the sea-son, his OPS was well above 1.000. He came up with clutch hit after clutch hit in September as the Tigers rallied from three games down with 16 to play to outlast the Chicago White Sox and capture the AL Central championship.

As a result, Cabrera was rewarded with the first of two straight AL MVP awards.

Cabrera has played both first base and third for the Tigers. He has been a durable player, playing 159 or more games each year except 2013. And in that season, despite being both-ered by a serious core injury which required sur-gery following the season, Cabrera played 148

games, winning the AL batting championship in the process with a .348 average.

What separates Cabrera from other MLB hit-ters is his incredible skill at driving the ball to all fields. Although a right-handed hitter, he has extraordinary power to right field. Yet, it’s not like he can’t pull the ball. Cabrera is a classic example of a player with outstanding bat con-trol combined with power. He is extraordinary at driving the ball where it is pitched, in addi-tion to having outstanding plate coverage and pitch recognition.

When Cabrera signed a $300 million contract extension with the Tigers prior to the 2014 sea-son, it made him the highest paid team athlete in Michigan sports history.

It is difficult to compare hitters era-to-era, but it would not be a stretch to suggest Cabrera ranks as the greatest hitter in Tigers’ history or that, when it is all said and done with his ca-reer, he will be considered at the very top of all MLB hitters.

He is that good. Or should we say, that great.

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit TigersPersonal: Born April 18, 1983, Maracay, VenezuelaNickname: MiggyNotable: • Acquired by the Tigers in a

blockbuster trade prior to the 2008 season, after spending the first portion of his MLB career with the Florida Marlins (2003-07)• Member of the 2003 World Series champi-onship team (Marlins)• Two-time American League Most Valuable Player• Nine-time All Star and five-time Silver Slugger Award winner• Three-time AL batting champion, and two-time AL leader in home runs and RBI


Detroit Tiger Miguel Cabrera makes contact in the bottom of the first inning against the Texas Rangers on April 10, 2009.

39


No athlete, regardless the sport, ever con-ducted themselves in a more dedicated, grace-ful and genuinely professional manner than Nicklas Lidstrom.

Lidstrom was so smooth, so calculated and so measured that he gave new meaning to the term, “spectacularly unspectacular.”

Lidstrom was incredibly effective at con-taining the top scoring forwards in the Na-tional Hockey League for two decades. Yet, it was never with the big hit. Too much wasted action, you see. He’d merely ride opposing players into the boards, gather the puck and it was at the other end of the ice in an instant.

As defenseman, he used his defending prowess to create much of the Red Wings’ offensive machine, which was really rolling during the 1990s and early 2000s. He made the transition game, even in the era before the rules were changed to unclog the middle of the ice and hinder the neutral-zone trap, an art form.

Lidstrom was also outstanding on the point of the power play. A great backward skater, he would “walk the line” down the blue line until finding just the right time to unload the puck. He was at his best in big games.

Perhaps because his style of play was so understated, it took a long time for Lidstrom to fully be recognized. He was 31 and in his 10th NHL season when Lidstrom won his first Norris Trophy as the NHL’s best defenseman in 2001. He won it six more times. To many, Boston Bruins’ great Bobby Orr was without question the greatest defenseman of all time. However, Lidstrom was good enough to put that notion in question. He played twice as long, won twice as many Stanley Cup titles and did transform his position, although in a different manner than the breath-taking Orr with his end-to-end rushes. Lidstrom also starred internationally. He scored the game-winning goal in the gold medal game for his native Sweden during the 2006 Olympics.

Lidstrom filled an important void as Red Wings’ captain after Steve Yzerman retired. It could have been a devastating void, con-sidering Yzerman’s stature as an outstand-ing leader, both on the ice and in the dress-ing room.

Instead, the Red Wings carried on with-out a hitch with Lidstrom wearing the “C” on the front of his sweater. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup championship in 2008, and reached the finals before losing in Game 7 in 2009, and continued to reach the play-offs annually right up until Lidstrom’s retire-ment in 2012.

In 1,564 NHL regular season games, Lid-strom had a plus-minus ratio of an incredi-ble plus 450. He was plus 61 in 263 playoff games. Only five defenseman scored more points in NHL history than Lidstrom’s 1,142, even though much of his career took place during an era when scoring was down.

Lidstrom was just a brilliant hockey player, and in every imagined way.

8NICKLAS LIDSTROMA brilliant hockey player, leader in every way possible

#

Sport: HockeyMichigan Connection: Detroit Red WingsPersonal: Born April 28, 1970 Vasteras, SwedenNickname: The Perfect Human

Notable: • Played his entire NHL career, 1991-2012, with the Red Wings• Seven-time Norris Trophy winner as the NHL’s best defenseman• Member of four Red Wings’ Stanley Cup championship teams• Scored game-winning goal in gold medal game for Sweden in 2006 Olympics• Red Wings’ captain from 2006-12


Detroit Red Wing Nicklas Lidstrom hoists his Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP of the Stanley Cup Playoffs after Detroit defeated Carolina, 3-1, in Game 5 to win the Stanley Cup on June 13, 2002, at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

40


No athlete, regardless the sport, ever con-ducted themselves in a more dedicated, grace-ful and genuinely professional manner than Nicklas Lidstrom.

Lidstrom was so smooth, so calculated and so measured that he gave new meaning to the term, “spectacularly unspectacular.”

Lidstrom was incredibly effective at con-taining the top scoring forwards in the Na-tional Hockey League for two decades. Yet, it was never with the big hit. Too much wasted action, you see. He’d merely ride opposing players into the boards, gather the puck and it was at the other end of the ice in an instant.

As defenseman, he used his defending prowess to create much of the Red Wings’ offensive machine, which was really rolling during the 1990s and early 2000s. He made the transition game, even in the era before the rules were changed to unclog the middle of the ice and hinder the neutral-zone trap, an art form.

Lidstrom was also outstanding on the point of the power play. A great backward skater, he would “walk the line” down the blue line until finding just the right time to unload the puck. He was at his best in big games.

Perhaps because his style of play was so understated, it took a long time for Lidstrom to fully be recognized. He was 31 and in his 10th NHL season when Lidstrom won his first Norris Trophy as the NHL’s best defenseman in 2001. He won it six more times. To many, Boston Bruins’ great Bobby Orr was without question the greatest defenseman of all time. However, Lidstrom was good enough to put that notion in question. He played twice as long, won twice as many Stanley Cup titles and did transform his position, although in a different manner than the breath-taking Orr with his end-to-end rushes. Lidstrom also starred internationally. He scored the game-winning goal in the gold medal game for his native Sweden during the 2006 Olympics.

Lidstrom filled an important void as Red Wings’ captain after Steve Yzerman retired. It could have been a devastating void, con-sidering Yzerman’s stature as an outstand-ing leader, both on the ice and in the dress-ing room.

Instead, the Red Wings carried on with-out a hitch with Lidstrom wearing the “C” on the front of his sweater. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup championship in 2008, and reached the finals before losing in Game 7 in 2009, and continued to reach the play-offs annually right up until Lidstrom’s retire-ment in 2012.

In 1,564 NHL regular season games, Lid-strom had a plus-minus ratio of an incredi-ble plus 450. He was plus 61 in 263 playoff games. Only five defenseman scored more points in NHL history than Lidstrom’s 1,142, even though much of his career took place during an era when scoring was down.

Lidstrom was just a brilliant hockey player, and in every imagined way.

8NICKLAS LIDSTROMA brilliant hockey player, leader in every way possible

#

Sport: HockeyMichigan Connection: Detroit Red WingsPersonal: Born April 28, 1970 Vasteras, SwedenNickname: The Perfect Human

Notable: • Played his entire NHL career, 1991-2012, with the Red Wings• Seven-time Norris Trophy winner as the NHL’s best defenseman• Member of four Red Wings’ Stanley Cup championship teams• Scored game-winning goal in gold medal game for Sweden in 2006 Olympics• Red Wings’ captain from 2006-12


Detroit Red Wing Nicklas Lidstrom hoists his Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP of the Stanley Cup Playoffs after Detroit defeated Carolina, 3-1, in Game 5 to win the Stanley Cup on June 13, 2002, at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

40

7ISIAH THOMASThe greatest small player in basketball history

#By Pat Caputo Digital First Media

It was the salad days of the National Basket-ball Association. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were in their prime and leading the Boston Celt-ics and the Los Angeles Lakers to NBA champi-onships. Michael Jordan came out of North Car-olina and turned the Chicago Bulls from an also-ran into multiple NBA champions.

Yet, despite such fierce competition, the Pis-tons won back-to-back NBA titles, the first in the history of the franchise.

The primary reason? Isiah Thomas.A brilliant point guard, Thomas could match

Bird, Magic and Jordan in regard to his resume, a factor time has, unfortunately, often chosen to overlook.

The second overall pick in the 1981 NBA Draft out of Indiana University, Thomas was the cat-alyst behind the emer-gence of “The Bad Boys,” who also fea-tured Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman and Bill Laimbeer.

Thomas was a small player by NBA stan-dards, just 6-foot-1. He possessed a baby face and a big, bright smile. However, it was incred-ibly misleading.

Thomas was in-tensely competitive. Fighting was more prevalent during his era, and it wasn’t un-common for “Zeke,” as his teammates called him, to be in the mid-dle of scraps against much larger players.

He was a brilliant passer, an outstanding shooter and had great one-on-one skills. But it was his will to win, which set him apart.

Thomas led Indiana to the NCAA champion-ship. It took a lot of trial and error for the Pis-tons to become a title team. Despite the bril-liance of Thomas, they suffered heartbreaking playoff losses to Bernard King and the New York Knicks, Bird and the Celtics and Magic and the Lakers. In one of those losing series, vs. the Lak-ers in the NBA Finals, Thomas played brilliantly despite a sprained ankle. He had 43 points — in-cluding 25 in the third quarter — eight assists and six steals in a narrow, one-point loss. In that quarter, a noticeably limping Thomas hit 11-of-13 field goal attempts. The next year, the Pis-tons exacted their revenge by sweeping the Lak-ers in the NBA Finals in four straight games, and repeated the next season vs. Portland, with Thomas being named the MVP of the champi-onship series.

Thomas had excellent statistics in his ca-reer. He is seventh on the NBA’s all-time list

for assists. He aver-aged more than 19 points per game. He played in 12 NBA All-Star games, twice be-ing named the game’s MVP during a period when it meant more than it does today.

But it was the in-tangibles that set him apart from most of his contemporaries, and put him in select company. It was an utter travesty he was bypassed for the 1992 U.S Olympic “Dream Team.”

To this day, many consider Is ia h Thomas the greatest “small” player in bas-ketball history. There

is strong evidence to prove them right.Yet, one factor nobody ever questioned was

the size of his competitive heart.

Sport: BasketballMichigan Connection: Detroit PistonsPersonal: Born April 30, 1961, Chicago, ILNickname: ZekeNotable:• Spent his entire NBA

career, 1981-1994, with the Pistons• Three-time first-team, and two-time second-team All-NBA• Member of the 1989 and 1990 NBA championship teams• Member of the Basketball Hall of Fame• Scored 25 points in one quarter while playing with a severely sprained ankle in a heroic effort to will his team to victory in the NBA Finals


Detroit Pistons’ Isiah Thomas (11) goes up for a basket as Los Angeles Lakers’ Sam Perkins (14) and Byron Scott (4) try to block at Great Western Forum in Los Angeles on Dec. 4, 1990.

41

6GORDIE HOWEMr. Hockey hoisted Lord Stanley’s Cup four times


Say “Mr. Hockey,” and across the United States and Canada the name Gordie Howe is immedi-ately mentioned in response.

Although his last NHL game was in 1971, and Wayne Gretzky shattered the vast majority of his records, and Bobby Orr changed hockey as a rush-ing, brilliantly skating defenseman, there are many who still insist Howe is the greatest hockey player of all time.

And the case for Howe remains compelling. Gretzky didn’t remotely possess the physical tough-ness of Howe. Orr’s career was cut short by injury.

There was nothing missing from Howe’s re-sume. It was complete, and lengthy.

The “Gordie Howe Hat Trick” is a goal, an as-sist and a fight. It fit because Howe could literally beat you with a shot, a pass and his fists.

To say he created room on the ice because op-ponents feared him would be an understatement.

To this day, one of hockey’s most legendary hockey moments ever is Howe literally re-arranging the face of New York Rangers’ tough guy Lou Fontin-ato.

It was even immortalized by Life magazine with a picture of Howe, shirtless and his biceps bulg-ing, next to a photo of Fontinato’s heavily-ban-daged face.

A quarter of a century of Michigan sports fans were advised to watch Howe away from the puck because his elbows were always up. He’d crush op-ponents, one way or another.

Howe was an incredible athlete, who possessed amazing reflexes and durability, in addition to his strength. An outstanding baseball player dur-ing his youth while growing up in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Howe would some-times take batting practice with the Tigers and routinely pound offerings into the upper deck at Tiger Stadium.

Howe played until he was 52 years old, re-turning to the NHL after a long stint play-ing in the World Hockey Association with his sons, Marty and Mark, the latter another for-mer Red Wing, who has joined his father as a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

One of the classic moments in State of Michigan sports history is when Howe, as a member of the Hartford Whalers, played in the NHL All-Star game at the Joe Louis Arena during his final season in 1980. The ovation he received was deafening.

The Red Wings won four Stanley Cup Championships within the first nine seasons of Howe’s career. During that period, he was part of the Production Line with Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay. Later in his career, Howe played on another version of The Production Line with Frank Mahovlich and Alex Delvecchio. Like Howe, they are all in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

When Howe retired, he was by far the NHL’s all-time leading scorer.

The stories about Howe are almost mythic in scope, but they were very real.

He was that great, and genuinely deserving of the title, “Mr. Hockey.”

Sport: HockeyMichigan Connection: Detroit Red WingsPersonal: Born March 31, 1928, Floral, Saskatchewan, CanadaNickname: Mr. HockeyNotable:

• Played from 1946-1971 with the Red Wings, spent 1974-1980 playing in the WHA with Houston and Hartford, returning to the NHL for one final season in 1979-80 after the two leagues merged.• Member of four Stanley Cup champion-ship teams with Detroit• Five-time winner of the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s MVP, 14-time first-team NHL All-Star, 2nd all-time leading goal scorer in NHL history.• Member of the Hockey Hall of Fame


Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings is shown in October 1966.

42

5AL KALINE#By Pat CaputoDigital First Media

Al Kaline was our Mickey Mantle, our Willie Mays, our Frank Robinson.

During what is often considered the salad days of Major League Baseball, the 1950’s and 1960’s, as the baby boom gen-eration was growing up, and while the do-mestic automobile industry in Michi-gan roared, Kaline — Detroit’s star — soared.

A native of Bal-timore, Kaline ar-rived with the Ti-gers at the age of 18. He didn’t play a single inning in the minor leagues. By the age of 20, Ka-line was the Amer-ican League’s bat-ting champion.

Consistency was Kaline’s trademark. He is the all-time Ti-gers’ leader in home runs with 399, yet he never hit more than 29 homers in a single season. He was a brilliant right fielder. His throws, seem-ingly on a rope because of their extraordi-nary velocity and accuracy, from deep in the corner of right field at Tiger Stadium, is a classic visual for Michigan sports fans. So is the No. 6 because Kaline wore it.

Kaline was a smart and efficient base runner. He was a genuinely great clutch hitter.

For much of his career, Kaline’s bril-liance was curtailed because of injuries and the New York Yankees, who were at the height of their dynasty during the 1950’s and the 1960s.

It is often forgotten how hard the Ti-gers pushed the legendary 1961 Yankees by

winning 101 games. Kaline led the Amer-ican League in doubles that season while compiling a .324 batting average.

The frustration ended in 1968 when Kaline was 33 years old. The Tigers were down three games to one, and trailing dur-ing Game 5 of the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals.

It was their first appearance in the Fall Classic since 1945. The Tigers were be-hind 3-2 in the sev-enth inning when Kaline delivered a two-run single to give the Tigers a 4-3 lead. They went on to win that game, 5-3, and eventually capture the World Series in seven games. Ka-line hit .379 in the ’68 World Series.

History has been kind to Kaline. The advent of Sa-bermetrics, which measure the all-around ability of players more exten-

sively with statistics, have been particu-larly telling. Kaline’s career WAR (Wins Above Replacement) of 92.5 ranks him as the 41st-best player in MLB history.

Kaline picked up his 3,000th hit in 1974, his final season in MLB. He is 27th on MLB’s all-time hit list with 3,007, 52nd in home runs and 61st in doubles with 498. Only Mays and Roberto Clemente won more Gold Glove Awards among MLB out-fielders than Kaline.

But Kaline was about so much more than just statistics. He carried himself with a certain dignity and grace that truly set him apart him, and made him the quintessential Tigers’ player for gen-erations of fans.

Sport: BaseballMichigan Connection: Detroit TigersPersonal: Born Dec 19, 1934, Baltimore, MDNickname: Mr. TigerNotable:• Career spanned from

1953 until 1974, all with the Detroit Tigers• More than 3,000 hits in his career.• 10-time Gold Glove winner• 1955 American League batting champion at age 20• Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980

A Hall of Fame career full of dignity and graceASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

Al Kaline, Detroit Tigers outfielder, is shown in this 1970 photo. Kaline played 22 years in a career that would land him in the Hall of Fame. But the season he remembers most fondly is 1968, when the Tigers won the World Series.

43

4EARVIN ‘MAGIC’ JOHNSON

A team player with a genuine love for basketball

#


Nicknames have long been a great part of sports tradition, but no nick-name ever stuck like “Magic” for Earvin Johnson.

Given to him by Lansing State Journal sports writer Fred Stabley Jr., when Johnson starred for Lansing Everett High School during the 1970’s, Magic transformed basketball in a number of different ways.

At 6-foot-8, he was the consummate floor general, something which had been reserved for much shorter players until that time. Johnson handled the ball like he played for the Harlem Globetrotters, and made the no-look pass an art form. He could also score, but unlike many of the great players of the day, it was his last choice, not the first, to shoot.

Johnson had instincts and savvy that allowed him to literally control the floor like somebody with a joystick playing a video game.

At Everett, he led his team to the state title his senior year. He had a huge rivalry with his future MSU teammate, Jay Vincent, who starred at Lansing Eastern High School. The games were moved to Jenison Field-house on Michigan State’s campus, and they sold out.

There have been few days celebrated in the Lansing-area quite like when Johnson made the decision to stay in the area and play collegiately at Michigan State.

The Spartans, who had a floundering basketball program for a num-ber of years, immediately became a national power, reaching the Elite Eight Magic’s freshman year and beating Larry Bird and Indiana State for the national title in 1979. To this day, it is still considered the game that changed the course of college basketball, and especially the NCAA tour-nament. It truly became a marquee event after the Magic-Bird encounter.

Drafted by Los Angeles Lakers, Johnson immediately led his team to the NBA title. He won five NBA titles before being forced to retire early after it was discovered he had the HIV virus.

Johnson’s resume is unbelievably full, but it doesn’t measure his true greatness. He had a flair, a style, a competitiveness that truly set him apart from other players. He played basketball with genuine love for the sport, and it rubbed off on those around him.

Magic played with many great players — Gregory Kelser at MSU, Ka-reem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy with the Lakers, among them. But what set him apart was not only making the great players around him even greater, but taking every bit of his team and making it bet-ter collectively.

He is without question one of the greatest basketball players of all time.


In this March 26, 1979 file photo, Earvin “Magic” Johnson of Michigan State participates in victory ceremonies as

the net comes down after the Spartans defeated Indiana State, 75-64, to win the NCAA championship in Salt Lake City on March 26, 1979.

Sport: BasketballMichigan Connec-tion: Michigan State UniversityPersonal: Born Aug. 14, 1959, Lansing, MINickname: MagicNotable:

• First-team All-American and member NCAA Championship team in 1979• All-Big Ten selection both his sea-sons at MSU, 1977-78 and 1978-79• Three-time NBA MVP and five-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers 1979-91, and 1995-96• Named one of Top 50 players in NBA history in 1996• Named to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002

44

4EARVIN ‘MAGIC’ JOHNSON

A team player with a genuine love for basketball

#


Nicknames have long been a great part of sports tradition, but no nick-name ever stuck like “Magic” for Earvin Johnson.

Given to him by Lansing State Journal sports writer Fred Stabley Jr., when Johnson starred for Lansing Everett High School during the 1970’s, Magic transformed basketball in a number of different ways.

At 6-foot-8, he was the consummate floor general, something which had been reserved for much shorter players until that time. Johnson handled the ball like he played for the Harlem Globetrotters, and made the no-look pass an art form. He could also score, but unlike many of the great players of the day, it was his last choice, not the first, to shoot.

Johnson had instincts and savvy that allowed him to literally control the floor like somebody with a joystick playing a video game.

At Everett, he led his team to the state title his senior year. He had a huge rivalry with his future MSU teammate, Jay Vincent, who starred at Lansing Eastern High School. The games were moved to Jenison Field-house on Michigan State’s campus, and they sold out.

There have been few days celebrated in the Lansing-area quite like when Johnson made the decision to stay in the area and play collegiately at Michigan State.

The Spartans, who had a floundering basketball program for a num-ber of years, immediately became a national power, reaching the Elite Eight Magic’s freshman year and beating Larry Bird and Indiana State for the national title in 1979. To this day, it is still considered the game that changed the course of college basketball, and especially the NCAA tour-nament. It truly became a marquee event after the Magic-Bird encounter.

Drafted by Los Angeles Lakers, Johnson immediately led his team to the NBA title. He won five NBA titles before being forced to retire early after it was discovered he had the HIV virus.

Johnson’s resume is unbelievably full, but it doesn’t measure his true greatness. He had a flair, a style, a competitiveness that truly set him apart from other players. He played basketball with genuine love for the sport, and it rubbed off on those around him.

Magic played with many great players — Gregory Kelser at MSU, Ka-reem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy with the Lakers, among them. But what set him apart was not only making the great players around him even greater, but taking every bit of his team and making it bet-ter collectively.

He is without question one of the greatest basketball players of all time.


In this March 26, 1979 file photo, Earvin “Magic” Johnson of Michigan State participates in victory ceremonies as

the net comes down after the Spartans defeated Indiana State, 75-64, to win the NCAA championship in Salt Lake City on March 26, 1979.

Sport: BasketballMichigan Connec-tion: Michigan State UniversityPersonal: Born Aug. 14, 1959, Lansing, MINickname: MagicNotable:

• First-team All-American and member NCAA Championship team in 1979• All-Big Ten selection both his sea-sons at MSU, 1977-78 and 1978-79• Three-time NBA MVP and five-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers 1979-91, and 1995-96• Named one of Top 50 players in NBA history in 1996• Named to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002

44

3JOE LOUISAn image of a boxer that this nation will never forget


It is an interesting argument about the greatest boxer of all-time. Is it Muhammad Ali? Is it Sugar Ray Rob-inson? Is it Jack Dempsey? Is it some-one else?

However, it would not even be a le-gitimate conversation without men-tioning Joe Louis.

Raised in Detroit, Louis was the undisputed heavyweight champion of boxing from 1937-1949, when it was widely considered the most prestigious athletic title in the world.

An African-American, Louis, whose great grandfather was a slave, broke the color barrier long before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, before the U.S. Supreme Court made its ruling in Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education outlawing segregation of schools, and before the Civil Rights Act.

After winning his first 27 fights, Louis rose quickly through the heavyweight ranks. His first bout with Germany’s Max Schmeling ended with Louis being knocked out in the 12th round.

It was the rematch with Schmeling that brought Louis to legendary status. This was at a time when Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler were in the midst of terrifying Europe and claiming, among other things, racial superiority.

Louis destroyed that myth and Schmeling in a boxing sense. After win-ning the heavyweight title over “Cinder-ella Man” James Braddock, Louis ham-mered Schmeling with a relentless bar-rage of punches in the first round.

The fight was stopped, and this na-tion, blacks and whites, together cele-brated.

Afterward, New York sports writer Jimmy Cannon famously referred to Louis as “a credit to his race – the hu-man race.”

Louis went on to serve the nation dur-ing World War II, and retired as heavy-weight champ.

He did come back, losing a bout to Rocky Marciano, which many of his sup-porters wish had never taken place.

Not everything was perfect about the life of Joe Louis. He had issues with the IRS over unpaid taxes that drove him deep into debt. In his later years, he was a greeter at a Las Vegas casino.

But the image of Joe Louis rising above it all as a boxer is one this nation will never forget.

He wasn’t big, just 200 pounds, nor tall, just a shade above 6-foot-1, for a heavyweight. Yet, while he was soft spo-

ken outside the ring, few have ever been able to unleash the fury Louis did in the ring with his fists.

He didn’t back-pedal. He didn’t dance. He moved forward constantly, and with precision.

Louis was also under the microscope like few athletes in history, and he han-dled it better than most at the time.

It was often written how Louis fought the “Bum of the Month” club. What should be noted, however, is how Louis was such a great fighter he made every-body seem like a bum in the ring.

He was really tested just once after winning the title until his retirement for the first time. It was by Billy Conn in 1941. The rematch, though, wasn’t close.

Sport: BoxingMichigan Connection: Raised in DetroitPersonal: Born May 13, 1914 in LaFay-ette, AL, Died April 12, 1981 Paradise NVFull name:

Joseph Louis BarrowNickname: The Brown BomberNotable: • Heavyweight champion of the world 1937-49• Longest reigning heavyweight champion in history.• Defended his championship a record 25 times


This is an undated photo of boxer Joe Louis as he watches his

mother Lila Brooks cook in Detroit.

45


Barry Sanders played exactly a decade in the National Football League. Each of those seasons, he easily topped the magical 1,000-yard rushing mark. Sanders retired in his prime. Had he decided to play longer, Sand-ers would have obliterated the all-time NFL rushing mark, held at the time by Walter Payton, and eventually broken by Emmitt Smith.

Yet, defining Barry Sanders by statistics is missing the point. They tell only a small part of his story. The biggest claim to fame for Sanders was simply his runs.

There was the one at Chicago, on which he broke a number of tackles, made a cou-ple nifty moves and rolled to a long touch-down. The Lions have won just one playoff game since capturing their last NFL champi-onship in 1957. In that victory, at the Pontiac Silverdome, Sanders made Dallas Cowboys’ defensive tackle Tony Casillas look dazed, confused and totally discombobulated on a

long TD run. Former Michigan State defen-sive back Harlon Barnett, now an assistant on the Spartans’ coaching staff, understood what Casillas went through. The same thing happened to him a few years later, also at the Silverdome, while Barnett was a mem-ber of the New England Patriots.

There were so many of those type of runs made by Sanders. It’s what kids in this na-tion, let alone this state, were reared on dur-ing the 1990s.

So the Lions were up and mostly down during Sanders’ time. So his retirement, on the eve of training camp, via fax to his hometown newspaper in Wichita, Kansas, left a sour taste in the mouth of many in the State of Michigan. So Sanders never spoke up against the Lions’ legendary ineptitude the way some would have expected given his stature in the game. So there was this all or nothing aspect about Sanders’ runs.

Somehow it didn’t matter because Sand-ers’ was so utterly breathtaking a performer.

It was one of those things you can’t de-scribe accurately by the written word. Only seeing is believing.

Sanders wasn’t that big. Actually, he was small for the position. He wasn’t as fast as some NFL running backs. Boy, could he ever make them miss in the open field, though.

Sanders was brilliant from the day he ar-rived until the day he departed the field for the last time. Even if the Lions’ go on and fi-nally win a Super Bowl, and Sanders didn’t even really come close, it isn’t going to mat-ter.

Anybody who saw him play is going to have trouble disputing Sanders isn’t the greatest Lions’ player of all time.

There was never a player like Barry Sand-ers before him. There will never be another one after him.

It’s just the way it is.He was magnificence in football cleats.

With all due respect to Gale Sayers and some others, Barry Sanders was, simply put, the greatest pure runner in NFL history.

2BARRY SANDERS#The greatest pure runner in NFL history

Sport: FootballMichigan Connection: Detroit LionsPersonal: Born July 16,1968, Wichita, KSNickname: Big Bad BarryNotables:

• Played his entire decade-long NFL career in Detroit• 10-time Pro Selection, 6-time first-team All-Pro, two-time NFL Offensive Player of the Year• Averaged 100 yards rushing per game in 153 NFL games• Inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2004


Barry Sanders, shown here playing against the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1998, averaged 100 yards rushing in 153 games played in the National Football League.

46


Barry Sanders played exactly a decade in the National Football League. Each of those seasons, he easily topped the magical 1,000-yard rushing mark. Sanders retired in his prime. Had he decided to play longer, Sand-ers would have obliterated the all-time NFL rushing mark, held at the time by Walter Payton, and eventually broken by Emmitt Smith.

Yet, defining Barry Sanders by statistics is missing the point. They tell only a small part of his story. The biggest claim to fame for Sanders was simply his runs.

There was the one at Chicago, on which he broke a number of tackles, made a cou-ple nifty moves and rolled to a long touch-down. The Lions have won just one playoff game since capturing their last NFL champi-onship in 1957. In that victory, at the Pontiac Silverdome, Sanders made Dallas Cowboys’ defensive tackle Tony Casillas look dazed, confused and totally discombobulated on a

long TD run. Former Michigan State defen-sive back Harlon Barnett, now an assistant on the Spartans’ coaching staff, understood what Casillas went through. The same thing happened to him a few years later, also at the Silverdome, while Barnett was a mem-ber of the New England Patriots.

There were so many of those type of runs made by Sanders. It’s what kids in this na-tion, let alone this state, were reared on dur-ing the 1990s.

So the Lions were up and mostly down during Sanders’ time. So his retirement, on the eve of training camp, via fax to his hometown newspaper in Wichita, Kansas, left a sour taste in the mouth of many in the State of Michigan. So Sanders never spoke up against the Lions’ legendary ineptitude the way some would have expected given his stature in the game. So there was this all or nothing aspect about Sanders’ runs.

Somehow it didn’t matter because Sand-ers’ was so utterly breathtaking a performer.

It was one of those things you can’t de-scribe accurately by the written word. Only seeing is believing.

Sanders wasn’t that big. Actually, he was small for the position. He wasn’t as fast as some NFL running backs. Boy, could he ever make them miss in the open field, though.

Sanders was brilliant from the day he ar-rived until the day he departed the field for the last time. Even if the Lions’ go on and fi-nally win a Super Bowl, and Sanders didn’t even really come close, it isn’t going to mat-ter.

Anybody who saw him play is going to have trouble disputing Sanders isn’t the greatest Lions’ player of all time.

There was never a player like Barry Sand-ers before him. There will never be another one after him.

It’s just the way it is.He was magnificence in football cleats.

With all due respect to Gale Sayers and some others, Barry Sanders was, simply put, the greatest pure runner in NFL history.

2BARRY SANDERS#The greatest pure runner in NFL history

Sport: FootballMichigan Connection: Detroit LionsPersonal: Born July 16,1968, Wichita, KSNickname: Big Bad BarryNotables:

• Played his entire decade-long NFL career in Detroit• 10-time Pro Selection, 6-time first-team All-Pro, two-time NFL Offensive Player of the Year• Averaged 100 yards rushing per game in 153 NFL games• Inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2004


Barry Sanders, shown here playing against the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1998, averaged 100 yards rushing in 153 games played in the National Football League.

46

1STEVE YZERMANThe undisputed leader of back-to-back Stanley Cup titlesBy Pat CaputoDigital First Media

There have been many great teams, college and professional, that have captured the collec-tive imagination of sports fans in the State of Michigan.

But none has rated quite as highly as the De-troit Red Wings of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Maybe it was because the wait was so long. It had been more than four decades since the Red Wings won their last Stanley Cup championship when they finally broke through in 1997 by sweep-ing the Philadelphia Flyers in the finals. It was the first of back-to-back Stanley Cup titles for the Red Wings, each captured with four-game sweeps in the finals. It was the last time an NHL franchise has won back-to-back Stanley Cup titles.

The undisputed leader of those teams was Steve Yzerman.

Yzerman’s statistics were brilliant. He is among the NHL’s all-time leaders in virtually all offensive categories. But it’s his nickname that sums up his career the most. You simply say the words, “The Captain” in this state, and everybody instantly knows who you are discussing. Yzerman was a tremendous leader.

He did so with a glare, a stare and by example. He didn’t speak that often. He didn’t need to. He commanded such great respect by example. When he spoke, it was quietly. Yet, it might as well have been turned up to full volume for all the weight it carried.

It was a learned process. Yzerman was the fourth overall pick in the 1983 NHL Draft, one selection behind Waterford’s Pat Lafontaine, a local product the Red Wings were interested in selecting.

However, Yzerman immediately let it be known he wasn’t going to take a back seat to anybody. Yzerman scored 37 and 30 goals, and garnered 87 and 89 points, his first two NHL seasons. By the age of 23, Yzerman put together one of the NHL’s best seasons ever when he scored 65 goals, had 90 assists and 155 points. There was a serious knee in-jury, which slowed Yzerman’s ascent, but only to a certain degree.

He was named captain of the Red Wings at the

age of 21 prior to the 1986-87 season, but really didn’t fit the role perfectly until later in his career. After Scotty Bowman became Red Wings’ coach, he reportedly considered trading Yzerman to Ot-tawa if he didn’t become more responsible defen-sively.

Not only did Yzerman comply, he took it to a level beyond by becoming an unquestioned leader. Yzerman’s legend was sealed with a goal in overtime to secure the Red Wings a 1-0 vic-tory over St. Louis in a playoff game, and with the Red Wings back-to-back Stanley Cup titles. They captured another one in 2002.

For much of his career, Yzerman was over-shadowed, by Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. His statistics were never quite as good as those two. Gretzky and Lemieux would inev-itably be named as the first- and second-team All Star centers at the end of most seasons ex-cept for one.

However, as time has moved on, Yzerman stands as high as anybody in hockey history. It is because of his unquestioned leadership, which he has gone to exhibit as one of hockey’s top ex-ecutives since retiring as a player.

Sport: HockeyMichigan Connection: Detroit Red WingsPersonal: Born May 9, 1965, Cranbrook, B.C. CanadaNickname: The CaptainNotable: • Entire pro playing career with Red Wings, 1983 - 2006; drafted 4th in 1983 by Wings

• Current Tampa Bay Lightning GM• Team captain for over 1,300 NHL games, three-time Stanley Cup championship teams (1997, 1998, 2002)• Ninth all-time in NHL goals scored, seventh in assists, sixth in points• Elected in 2009 to the Hockey Hall of Fame

#


Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman hoists the Stanley Cup after the Wings beat Carolina, 3-1, in Game 5 to win the Stanley Cup, 4-1, at Joe Louis Arena on june 13, 2002.

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